Review: Fruitbus drove me to frustration with some bugs, but overall the gameplay was berry sweet

Fruitbus is a game for those who enjoy exploration. You get to drive around an island visiting cities and people, harvesting ingredients, and then using those ingredients to make various recipes. Certain characters will send you on quests that are essential to progression, but thankfully there are no time limits and you can do it all at your own leisure.

If you’ve seen the list of cons, you’re probably thinking that Fruitbus must be a glitchy, unplayable mess. While it definitely had frustrating moments, I know that most of my issues are likely bugs. I played the pre-release version and have been informed that the team is working on polishing the game before release. Unfortunately, I can’t guarantee which bugs are fixed, so they all get highlighted in this particular article. 

Fruitbus: With Grandma’s Urn riding shotgun, what could go wrong?

In Fruitbus, we start the story after Grandma has passed. She used to run all over the islands with her Fruitbus feeding people salads, smoothies, and more. Sometimes, we would ride with her as a kid. So, it only seems fitting that we inherit the Fruitbus.

Our first foray into running the Fruitbus is to honor our Grandma’s last request to hold a Farewell Feast. We’re bid to drive the old routes, meet familiar faces, and get everyone together for one last hurrah in Grandma’s honor.

You can expect to customize your Fruitbus, make orders, complete quests, and forage for ingredients. What you might not expect is that you’re doing it all with Grandma’s urn buckled into the passenger seat. Or that every so often, the urn will sparkle or emit hearts and you’ll hear Grandma commenting on things from beyond the grave.

Is it creepy or is it cute? Is it Cuteepy?

Let’s just go ahead and be honest with each other. I’m gonna highlight a lot of bugs and negatives in this article because I got a pre-release copy — bugs kind of come with the territory. However, I did enjoy Fruitbus immensely and do think that it only needs minor improvements to take it from a good game to a great one.

When you load up the game, you start on an island with a map completely covered. You’ll have to drive around discovering the little towns for yourself. In these towns, you’ll always find a host of hungry characters. Generally, you’ll find a mix of random food enthusiasts and characters with quests.

The characters that require more attention will have an indicator above their heads. Some quests are super simple and just require you to make a certain menu item while others can take a bit more effort in locating items. 

You are cordially invited to Grandma’s Farewell Feast; come hungry.

It’s through these quests that we’re able to get RSVPs to Grandma’s Farewell Feast. So, paying attention to the quests is kind of a major plot point. You could even say that quests are what drives the story. Ha ha.

In the towns, you may find a convenience store or a gas station. In both of these shops, you’ll find items to customize your van. These items can range from interior to exterior. Obviously, you can refuel your Fruitbus at the gas station as well.

Interior items are going to help you with your Fruitbus business. You’ll be able to buy decorations, but, also, countertops, crates, and equipment that help you expand what you can offer and help you forage.

Exterior items are more cosmetic. You’ll be able to change the topper, add side decorations, and later, on a different island, you’ll be introduced to paint that lets you change about 90% of the colors inside and outside of your Fruitbus.

Each island will have its own items, but every new island has upgraded things. On your first island, you can get a small backpack and fruit grabber, but on the second island, you can upgrade to a bigger bag and a better grabber.

It’s on this second island that you’re introduced to more forms of cooking. Juggling your fruit storage with the large items needed to make different recipes is going to be a bit of a challenge.

Speaking of fruit, you won’t ever have to worry about purchasing ingredients because nature has taken care of that for you. Looking around, you’ll find bushes and trees bearing fruits as well as some treasures hidden underground.

You’ll need the aforementioned fruit grabber to get the fruits hanging up high and a shovel to dig up the goodies in the ground. You’ll find the shovel in your starter town, but heading to Sorello early will be essential to your foraging game. Trust me.

Fruit grabbers are basically picker poles but with a plunger instead of a dinosaur head. Yummy.

As you might imagine, if the items change on the island, then surely the fruits change as well? And they do. You get a completely different set of fruits on your new islands. However, customers may still ask for ingredients from your previous island. My Fruitbus looks like an explosion of fruit.

I had a hard time managing the fruit from one island; two seems impossible. And, have I mentioned there’s a third island?

So, what’s the downside? Well, there are a lot of bugs, especially in my version. As I’ve mentioned, I had the pre-release edition, so I ran into a few issues. Happily, I can report that nothing game-breaking has happened, so it’s not unplayable even in its buggy state.

Even more happily, I got an email that asked for bugs I’ve encountered and the assurance that the team is working on rectifying them. So, you may not run into the same issues that I’m going to mention below.

First things first, however, and we have to talk about the controls. These weren’t bugged, they’re just complicated. This is one of those rare moments where I’m going to suggest playing with a keyboard and mouse because my fingers got confused SO often with a controller.

Hell, my brain still took several hours of gameplay to get comfortable and I still messed up 9 hours into the game.

Walking around and driving are fine. The issue comes when you need to use your hands. You’ll find that there’s a lot of clicking to select the hand and then hitting “R” to put something in your backpack. Or clicking and hitting “E” to place things down. 

You do get the hang of it, but it jumbles up in the ol’ noodle for me.

As far as bugs go, I’ve dropped a package through the bottom of the Fruitbus and some items will drop on the ground and fall just beneath the visual line. Luckily, you can still hover over them and retrieve them, but there’s no visual confirmation of their existence.

I’ve only had it happen once, but I lost an item from one day to the next. I saved and closed the game with everything in order and when I booted up the game, I was missing the blender cup. I had to drive back over to Sorello and buy a new one. It completely poofed.

The fruits are on a timer, but right now the timer seems to be central to cities rather than the island. You’ll notice that the days are counted off, but if you’re on day 12 in Sorello, you might be on day 4 at the Volcano. This matters because the fruits come back over a period of days.

If a particular fruit takes a week to respawn in Sorello and you spend a week elsewhere, when you come back 8 gameplay days later, that fruit still isn’t there.

This makes replenishing the rare fruits quite the struggle.

Something that’s not a bug, but should be mentioned are the tutorials. There’s a lot in the way of information, but a lot of basic stuff doesn’t get explained. Maybe it’s because it should be obvious, but my brain doesn’t like to take hints.

When you first boot up the game, you don’t know recipes, so you’re kind of just guessing. Well, what I learned the hard way is that customers may ask for vague things. For instance, I had an order for two empty circles. I didn’t know this meant I could just pick any two fruit and get it right. 

I guess it’s important to read visual clues… it’s, also, important to know to look for them.

The tutorial only taught me a recipe with one item. So, I would just throw one item in and then lose out on the ingredient and the bowl because they don’t pay you for getting it wrong. Pay attention to the circles, you could get orders with three blanks and you just need to pick three random things.

Lastly, this isn’t a bug so much as a poor design choice. At each island, you’re going to find that Grandma has buried two items, these items are likely going to relate to a quest. They’re basically essential.

Fruitbus is designed so that as we progress, we get little cut scenes from Grandma and it’s through these scenes that we’re delivered clues as to where things are hidden. You better be paying attention because if you aren’t, you’re screwed.

I got a cutscene in the jungle when I made a recipe that I was prompted to make. It gave me a cutscene of Grandma burying a banana topper. This was my first brush with these things, so I assumed the item was buried in the jungle. The way I got the clue seemed very ceremonial and like something might pop up around me. It didn’t.

It was only several hours later and the next day in real life that I got far enough in the game that I was asked to dig up the banana topper as a quest. Unfortunately, I’d already seen the cutscene and couldn’t remember where the item was buried. I couldn’t trigger the cutscene again AND my journal didn’t update with the location.

Since this is pre-release, I could not find any answer beyond “do the recipe in the jungle for a cutscene”. That was beyond frustrating. Thankfully, I had a guide sent to me that told me where it was, but I feel like if you’ve seen the cutscene, the journal or map should update to show where something is. 

I have a squirrel brain, please make the information readily accessible. I wasn’t paying attention.

So those are my qualms with Fruitbus. Even with the frustrations, I had a great time. It’s a fun game and I think a lot of people will find enjoyment in it. Just know that not everything is intuitive and the controls take some time to get used to.

If you’d like to give Fruitbus a try, it will be released on October 28th (2024), but I’m unsure what the price will be. Thankfully, some of my issues should be patched out upon release. If you want to check out a different review of ours, you can check out the one we did for Minami Lane.