Review: Fruit Mountain (Nintendo Switch)
Fruit Mountain is a cozy puzzle game for the Nintendo Switch. It involves merging smaller fruit to create bigger fruit until they no longer fit in the play area, all while chasing the highest score. Sound familiar? Yep, it’s the same premise we know and love from other games like Fruit Merge and Suika Game. Thankfully, Fruit Mountain puts its own spin on the formula to create a fun outing in its own right.
If you’ve ever played a fruit-based matching game – or any of the many variants involving merging objects based on color or shape – you’ll feel instantly at home with Fruit Mountain. What I love about it, though, is that this isn’t merely another puzzle title that drops objects from the top of a long column. In fact, it takes things into the third dimension. There’s a reason why the name includes the word “mountain”.
The premise is simple: You’re presented with an empty bowl ready for piling high with fruit. As fruits of the same type touch each other, they merge into a new, bigger type of fruit à la Suika Game. It’s almost first-person in nature, as you appear to be standing before the bowl, tossing fruit one by one. The neat thing is that you can rotate the bowl and adjust your angle, so you can aim for anywhere between the edge or the center, depending on where you’d like to land. This unique formula changes things up enough to create an entirely new approach to these types of games.
There are two modes on hand to entertain you. Firstly comes the pressure-free standard mode that allows you to take your time. You can spend as long as you like contemplating each throw, adjusting and rotating to your heart’s content to get it just right. Secondly comes the timed mode, which provides you with three minutes to combine as much fruit as possible. This mode is terrific for quick bursts to enjoy while commuting, between other more hefty titles, or just for a quick round before bed.
A cute theme sits behind the gameplay. An artist sits behind her easel ready to paint the bowl of fruit while you stack it higher and higher. There’s an anime-esque quality to the visuals, sporting a soft, pastel color palette that adds to the soothing background music. It all adds to a relaxing experience.
Another nice feature is the addition of an online leaderboard. Similar to Suika Game, there’s daily, monthly and all-time boards, giving you plenty of data to compare and compete with. I hope the team adds more modes and features to this game to keep it feeling fresh. As it is, Fruit Mountain is a nice deviation from the genre norm that provides a simple yet fun time that’s easy to pick up and play.
Overall, Fruit Mountain is an enjoyable little puzzle title that changes the fruit-merging formula just enough to make it stand out. With sweet visuals and a couple of modes, plus online leaderboards, there’s plenty to make this one worth checking out for fans of the genre.
