Cute, yes. Dumb? Not in the fun way.
The Yeah, it’s a little fun, but a few of the cutesy elements, like the fruit transformation (the watermelon especially), make strategic play. Just want to watch fruit pop in fun ways? This game is awesome. But the cute stuff ruined the game for nearly everyone else, and not for the reasons you’d think. Cute is fun. I love the vibe. The biggest issue is the mechanical impact the animation physics of the fruit transformation have on strategic/puzzle based play; the watermelon especially. The little burst animations of the fruit, where it pops back in the opposite direction, like a little explosion, tends to make the fruit combine with matching fruit above it, rather than below, causing larger fruit to stack on top of smaller fruits. The worst culprit is the watermelon. The way that the animation centers in the screen during a gate transition interrupts the drop, causing it to pile on top of all the smaller fruit, most of which have fallen past the transition point. This frequently occurs in the transition to Gate 5, to the point that it’s just an obvious flaw in the game. Also, in the previous version the formation of the combined fruit centered on the fruit being dropped, which allowed for drops to more effectively cascade down. Now the merge animation centers the new fruit at the mid point between the original fruit, which, combined with the animation issues, tends to pull the fruit into the space the previous fruit occupied rather than targeting shots for further combinations. For these reasons, getting past Gate 5 is mostly luck, though rewarding if you do. I like that two watermelons form the flashy berry thing. Targeting a single fruit for combining with is a fun and interesting mechanic. I just wished the gates were moved from the arbitrary numbers they’re at now, and try and set the gates such that Gate 6 isn’t a brick wall. Hot tip, you can pass the first two gates my just releasing the fruits to one side, rapid fire, and they will combine as they roll down, guaranteed to get you past Gate 2. I’m not even sure how to fix that, so just enjoy being able to skip the first couple gates and watch the satisfying animations. It is cute. I wish it played better. I still play it, but those issues are consistently irksome. So, devs… did anyone actually play the game after you added the fun cutesy bits? If they did, I assume they also gave you this obvious feedback on the core basics of the game and y’all just ignored them to get the game out the
