8bit Ninja

If there's one thing we've learned from smartphone gaming, it's that fruit plays a much larger part in the training regime of the ninja than any of us might have previously imagined.

Luckily, our window into that secret world has been opened a crack more with the release of 8bit Ninja from DogByte Games. Not only did the ancient and mysterious martial artists slash fruit into globby chunks, but they also dodged bouncing, boulder sized pieces in a variety of dojo settings.

Orange you glad that one missed

The game casts you as a pixel art-ninja and then throws fruit at you until you get squashed. Your main defence is to move around the dojo floor, tapping buttons on the left and right of the screen to avoid colossal melons and coconuts.

While you're weaving through the fruity onslaught, coins drop from the ceiling. You can spend these at the shop to unlock new abilities. These abilities also fall from the top of the screen, and are only activated when you run over them.

You can have three special powers equipped at once, and they range from spinning blades that hack any nearby fruit into messy splodges on the wall to super ninja reflexes that slow down time and make fruit avoidance that little bit easier.

You also have a super-powered mode that unlocks after a certain amount of dodges and turns you invincible when you tap on the screen.

Wrath of the lychee fling

Power-ups last for a matter of seconds, and then you're back to running away. You can buy hats that grant you extra lives from the shop, but they don't come cheap, and they only last for a single run. Each try earns you XP, though, and the more proficient you get at fruit dodging the more extras you can unlock.

8bit Ninja is accessible and enjoyable enough that it's difficult not to get swept away. It might not be historically accurate, dwelling as it does on the questionable association of ninjas with fruit, but chasing high scores and dodging weird spiky pineapples is a pretty good way to waste a few hours.