"Pumpkin! Pumpkin!" - you can hear your grandmother's voice calling for you as you play hide and seek in the camp.
And that's where the tutorial begins. Standard explanations of camera movement and movement, as well as interaction with objects - first, find your teddy bear, and then your grandmother sends you to pick apples and make her a salad. Then you enter the back of the truck, take a knife, chop the apples, take a bowl, and pour the apples into it. You place the bowl on the counter, your grandmother happily takes the salad and gives you some pocket money, putting a few coins in the box. She invites you to sit on the bench next to her and enjoy the sunset.
Fast forward 10 years, you find yourself at the gates of a junkyard. You go inside and notice your grandmother's old truck in pretty bad shape. A worker comes and tells you that if you want to take the truck, you need to put tires on it and fill it with gas in another mini tutorial on how to use the tools. You get into the vehicle, sit in the seat, turn the key in the ignition, release the handbrake, and start driving - I'm writing this because you literally have to do each of those actions.
In the passenger seat, you notice an urn and find your grandmother's old diary. From it, you learn that your grandmother has passed away, her truck is now yours, and she invites you on one last adventure - you will prepare a farewell feast for her friends scattered across the islands. Of course, they still need to accept the invitation, and some of them will need a little convincing - that's where you come in, preparing a variety of delicious and colorful treats for them.
You board the ferry, talk to your mother who is not very happy that you took your grandmother's truck, and the ferry captain refuses to start the boat because he is hungry, so you prepare him a fruit salad of apples and bananas and the boat sets off. You disembark on one of the islands where your grandmother worked, Banamas, and this is where the game really begins.
You will spend time driving around the islands, making friends with numerous characters, and preparing a mountain of fruit specialties. You will gather ingredients around the island, prepare everything for the opening, and when you think you are ready, press the button, the order counter will open, and a cheerful jingle will play to attract customers.
Customers will have special requests; the more complicated the dish and the more diverse the ingredients used, the more money you will earn. Use the money to buy additional tools, more storage boxes for ingredients, larger preparation tables, new devices that you will use to prepare the most diverse delicacies, and to renovate and decorate the food truck. A great advantage is that there is no time limit; if a customer orders something, they will wait until they receive it. So, sell salads and other dishes to be able to buy a blender, oven, cups, bowls, which you will again use to prepare new dishes. And so on.
You will visit three islands, make many friends, gather the most diverse ingredients, and discover a large number of new recipes. Although there are missions you complete to progress through the game, there is no rush to do so. You will engage in decorating the interior of the food truck as you wish, drive around freely, and stop wherever you want.
Although the game is beautifully designed, with humorous characters and interactions, it also has its drawbacks. These are mostly graphical in nature: items you hold will sometimes pass through tables and walls, some mountains in the distance will appear and disappear depending on how you turn, and characters will look like they have motor tics. I understand that the game has just recently been released, and I believe that all of this will be fixed in the next few updates, especially since the developers are very responsive on Discord channels, listening to feedback and trying to fix everything in real time.
To summarize: Fruitbus is a very fun game with humorous situations, beautiful animations, and a wonderful story that you will want to tell to the end.
It is available on the Nintendo eShop for the price of €29.99, and I believe it is worth every cent.
A copy of the game for review purposes was provided by the publisher Silver Lining
