izigame.me

fruitbus has a super cute concept and a great foundation. however, the game is incredibly buggy and lacks direction in numerous areas.
lets start positive. fruitbus has an incredibly cute art style and a pleasant soundtrack. theres a pretty solid story too, with the main story being about grandma’s farewell feast. numerous other characters have their own stories and quests, plus unique designs that set them apart from the tourists. some characters have quests spanning across multiple regions, while some have quests across the island.
having no timer on quests and cooking is nice. the process of collecting ingredients and prepping dishes is a monotonous and relaxing process. theres a decent variety in what you can make and you unlock more as you progress through the game. you can even create custom dishes!
however, the game is absolutely riddled with bugs. id encountered areas missing collision (such as part of the floor in the mill at breezy bay), so items would fall through and get lost. ive had ingredients teleport around the fruitbus as i try to prepare them, as well as numerous items just float in midair. ive even had problems with flashing lights, both due to lighting issues and due to ingredients going in and out of my head. ive also read about other people losing key quest items due to glitches, the fruitbus getting stuck in the ground/air (where the unstuck button doesnt work), the ferry not taking you to different regions, etc. several of these bugs are genuinely game breaking and its upsetting that they havent been patched. and from what ive seen, a lot of the developers’ solutions is to mess with your game files to reset yourself to a location where this wasnt an issue, meaning you could lose a lot of progress.
theres also numerous quests that give you absolutely no direction, making it incredibly hard to progress through the story. youll discover most ingredients naturally, but some ingredients are in harder to find locations that can easily be missed (such as the pineapple, chili pepper, potato, etc). some quests require you to go to really obscure locations and dig up the required items. the banana topper and the lucky coin are some of the first quests like this that you'll run into. consuming some of the specific meals that grandma made can help you with a general location, but theyre often misleading/not entirely accurate. numerous quests lack direction, leading to a lot of frustration for what is supposed to be a cozy and relaxing game.
ingredients can also be super annoying to collect. some ingredients are specific to a certain region, which makes sense. but its incredibly annoying when youre on a different island and customers are requesting ingredients that you have to go to a different island to collect. its even more annoying when its quest-related, so you cant progress the story without hopping around the islands. even more annoying is the “rare” ingredients. the ingredients on the islands already take a really long time to respawn, but when you have rare ingredients that spawn in a couple locations on one specific island, it can make gathering enough of that ingredient incredibly difficult.
speaking of ingredients, i want to touch on a mechanic that is never explained: icons behind the ingredient. a regular circle just means chopped and prepared at normal. the drop/liquidy icon means it needs to be blended. a steamy icon means it needs to be tossed in the oven. a flame icon means it needs to be stirfried. i was confused for so long because customers were saying i was incorrectly making their orders, despite using all the correct ingredients. i seriously think the game should explain this mechanic and have a reference of some kind in the journal, because i know im not the only one who was confused by the lack of explanation on this mechanic.
theres also a lot of quality of life changes id like to see in fruitbus, such as better storage (especially for decoration items), the ability to wash dishes so you arent constantly buying them, the ability to dump out blenders and dishes if youve made the wrong thing, etc. maybe even a hint system for finishing quests or finding certain ingredients.
all in all, fruitbus has the potential to be a great game. but for a $25 USD pricetag, theres just way too many issues to justify paying that much money.