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.

It's a fun game, with a few too many issues to recommend as of right now.
The game has been out for about a month at the time of this review.
There are several bugs, that make the gameplay quite annoying at times.
-Walking into the store and your camera suddenly being aimed somewhere completely different. (slowly but surely making me nausious)
-My soup pot magically duplicating.
-Ingredients bugging out and not wanting to be added.
-My items suddenly disappearing (one moment I've got a shovel and a suction gun, the next... poof... gone.. had to re-buy them. My blender jug was suddenly gone, and I've lost some paint and decorations..)
-Items falling through the floor (I've heard of others being able to find them again later, but so far I've had no such luck?) I've literally had an item I needed for a quest, fall through the floor. gone.... go back to an old save... hurray
-An NPC talking about me having to finish fixing the radio tower when I finished it a while ago.
-NPC's sometimes not putting the money in the container, but just dropping it in front of them on the floor. (rude!)
There are also some instructions that are unclear in my opinion.
For instance: I'm trying to make soup, I think I'm following the instructions, and yet.. no matter how often I put new water in, directly into the pot, or via the blender jug, and no matter how I stir.. cut up the ingredient, or throw it in whole.. It's never finished?? I cannot poor whatever concoction I've made into a bowl, but I can pour it into the mixer... and then it just disappears into thin air. Am I missing something????

Another thing that I find odd, when making the bread dough, I believe you need one part water, one part flour, but you have to get the water via the Jug. And the Jug automatically gets two servings of water in it.. so when you poor the water into the mixer, there is water left behind in the jug... and I cannot figure out how to get rid of that? Adding more water to the dough mixture doesn't end well.. So I just.... make my next smoothie extra watery... I guess.... I just find that odd... Did I miss something?? Is that how it's supposed to be??
I also still haven't found out what to do with my trash.. empty fuel containers, decorations I no longer want, rotten fruit.
The only thing I can think off is to just leave it somewhere and ignore it the next time you see it... or throw it into the volcano... Again, did I miss an instruction?? Or is leaving junk laying around part of the charm....
These are all small things in an otherwise very fun game. The thing is, it's the amount of small things.
At the start I was able to ignore some of them. But the more these things happen, the more I come across these bugs, the more I just have to close the game mid-session, because I can just feel myself getting angry.. And I don't want to be angry, I want to relax and have fun!
So for now, until there are more fixes/improvements, it's going to be a "no" for me.
I hope to change this into a "yes" later.

It pains me to write this review because I absolutely love the game, but it should not have been released. It just isn't in a playable state.
There are constant lag spikes when (i guess) new objects are loaded into view, turning or moving around is really annoying this way. Saving also completely freezes the game, but the mouse movement is still calculated, resulting in you moving around, the game suddenly freezing, and then your camera wildly spinning into some random direction, it's really disorienting.
The game is also locked at 60 fps despite it having a 144hz option in the settings.
There are a lot of visual glitches, for example things popping into view, but the most annoying one are the shadows. They from time to time flicker, disappear, realign, and just cause a bunch of ugly artifacts when looking around.
Also, for some reason the mouse movement felt really off somehow. I had to increase my DPI to play comfortably because the options allow for a really small range of values, but somehow it felt really off while playing. It might have just been the lag spikes though.
But the biggest issue is the bugs:
- The NPCs have some issues, they really struggle to exist. I had them vibrate, get stuck on objects, sit inside each other, run away from you while talking, fight to get in line to get their food, or a shopkeeper not understanding which side of the counter he is supposed to be on. It's kind of funny, but still.
- Every time I loaded into the game the items inside my truck were misplaced. My fruit would just fly above my containers which made some of the spoil. I had to fix this every time I started the game.
- I also had a close call with the banana topper, which got stuck on my character without me holding it. I couldn't interact with it, it moved alongside me, and I was still able to hold two other items. It just disappeared from my plane of existence. I had to quickly close the game to prevent a soft-lock.
And now for the bug that made me write this review: I almost finished the first island and shortly after unlocking the key I just suddenly couldn't sell anything anymore. The area where I would normally place the items just disappeared. I only noticed this at the festival. I had to send everyone away, but I think the game expects you to sell something, so now I'm just completely soft-locked. Even if I could get out of the festival, I would still not be able to progress.
Maybe I will give this game another chance in a few months time, but I really don't want to do everything again just to have it bug out on me on some other occasion.