The game is extremely easy to play, with a variety of fruits popping up on the screen - watermelon, pineapple, kiwi, strawberry, blueberry, banana, pomegranate, poppy, apple, dragon fruit, etc. The player sees the thrown fruits and uses his finger to move across the screen to cut through them like a ninja warrior, before they fall. You have to chop them all up quickly before they fall; however, in addition to the many thrown fruits, there are also bombs mixed in with them, which can cause an explosion if you cut into them. There are large and small fruits, with the smaller ones being less likely to be cut. Cutting through different fruits reveals brightly coloured pulp and, like some fruits with a lot of water, various colours of juice splash into the air or onto the walls. There is no distinctive soundtrack, only the sound of chopping fruit and the crisp chirping of birds.

Main modes

Fruit Ninja's single player game has three different modes to choose from, with the possibility of more modes as the version is updated.

Classic mode (watermelon icon): In Classic mode there is no time limit and fruit and bombs will keep floating on the screen. The player has three chances to miss a fruit and the game ends as soon as the bomb is hit. Every time you accumulate 100 points, you automatically replenish the previous lost chances. In this mode, pomegranates (sliced in succession to increase the score, depending on how fast the player slices), dragon fruits (+50 points for slicing) and peaches (+150; 175; 200 points for slicing, at random) appear randomly.

Time limit mode (icon for apples): also known as time mode or Zen mode, timed at one and a half minutes (90 seconds), there are no bombs and only fruit keeps appearing, so players have to use their skills to slice as many pieces of fruit as possible, with a certain chance of novelty fruits popping up from the left and right side of the screen that are difficult to cut.

Arcade mode (banana icon): In Arcade mode, both fruit and bombs appear at the same time and are timed for 1 minute (60 seconds). There are three different special bananas in this mode - the Ice Banana (blue + white freeze banana) which pauses time and slows down the flight of the fruit considerably; the Double Banana (blue + yellow double banana) which doubles the score of a short cut; and the Frenzy Banana (red + yellow frenzy banana) which causes a large amount of fruit to fly from both sides of the screen. The Frenzy Banana (red + yellow Frenzy Banana) makes a lot of fruit fly out from both sides of the screen. You also have to dodge purple bombs in this mode. You get extra points for strikes when you have enough combos. Bonus points are also awarded at the end of the game.

The 1.71 update adds pomegranates to the classic mode and at the end of the arcade mode, which will appear randomly when time runs out or during the game. Those with fast hands will be able to slice forty or fifty points.

Once the achievement goal has been surpassed, players can challenge the world's high scores through the OpenFeint platform with the highest scores; their success will delight the learned ninja teacher and they will also learn some interesting fruit trivia and quotes from him.