When you first start to play with Fruit Salad there is an obvious comparison to Bejeweled that springs to mind. This is a good thing because Bejeweled is brilliant, but a bad thing because it could be seen as a clone and little more. To be fair it is more than a clone of Bejeweled and adds some extra features that are not obvious when you first play it.
It works by sliding fruits to create lines of three and is easily accessible the first time you play it. I was merrily sliding away on my first play and, dare I say it, not overly excited by the experience. This lack of excitement gradually fell away as I started to understand what to do and what was happening within the game. You see, there are features that pop up including when you match 4 fruits such as spins, wilds, nudges, blends and selected others which completely change what you are doing on a particular level. They can change the level to such a point that you feel like you are starting again and at this point the head scratching starts.
I started playing my first game at 11pm one evening and stopped at 1am. The odd thing is that I couldn’t put my finger on why I played for so long. It is not as obvious in its implementation as Bejeweled, but is rather a game that you pick up and start playing without thinking. The therapeutic attributes of this style of game are there and I find myself falling into my own sliding void as I tried, and tried, to beat my previous high score.
The goal is to create as much fruit juice as possible to progress to the next level and then you start again from scratch. The best thing about the game is the balance that has been built in between offering a challenge and helping you to sit down and just enjoy the experience. Graphically it is good, not stunning, but a game like this has to include personality in the presentation and that has without doubt been achieved with the minimalist approach to the individual graphics throughout the game.
I don’t know why I like Fruit Salad so much, but I am surely addicted and have played it countless times over the past week. It is one of those games that does not jump out at you when you view it on iTunes, but will gradually take hold of you over time and become one of your most played titles when you have a few minutes, or hours, spare. A bargain at £0.59 / $0.99.
Disclaimer: The developer of Fruit Salad does advertise on PDA-247, but such relationships never affect reviews on the site. To do so would make all of our content meaningless.
Available from iTunes for £0.59 / $0.99.
