Alien fruit in UFOs are invading Earth, and it’s up to a half-cat, half stereo speaker (?) to shoot them down in Fruit Attacks. It’s a free-to-play shooter for iOS, Android, and Kindle devices, but reviewed on iPad here.

Fruit in UFOs will advance from the top to the bottom of the screen, and if they penetrate your shields at the bottom and it runs out of energy, you lose the level. Defeat all the waves of alien fruit to pass. But it’s how you shoot that is unique. On the bottom of the screen, you’ll use two fingers to guide where your shots will go, kind of like a boomerang. You want to try and destroy rows of fruit so you can get more points. Only problem is the controls take a little getting used to.  When you fill a meter, you can also shake the device to attack everything on screen.

As you destroy alien fruit, you can collect seeds which you use to buy upgrades for your character, sidekicks to help boost your attack, and more. As you play you can also earn goodies to put in your house, like a fridge or a pet cat. The cool thing is that these items are functional in gameplay as well. The cat can find seeds for your and the fridge can store juice that can help you unlock items as you play.

As a free-to-play game, you’ll have to deal with minor annoyances like needing to wait to play again if you lose all your lives, some pop-up ads (but not very many), and in-game purchases that probably become necessary to progress after you get so far. But really the main thing that turned me off of this game was the awkward play control, and the fact that it seems like they’re just trying to ride the coattails of the more popular Fruit Ninja game.

Kid Factor:

You shoot beams at alien fruit and they splat into seeds and juice when defeated, but that’s about as violent as it gets. Reading skill is helpful for the text, and younger players may have difficulty with the controls. Parental supervision is recommended for the in-game purchases.

Tags: Game Reviews