Is this game worth playing? Is there more to it than just seeing cartoon fruit landing on your reels? Have a read of our in-depth review and make up your own mind.
Special Features
There’s literally only one special feature that comes into play when you get involved with the Fruity Burst game, so have a read of the details here:
Exploding Fruit Feature
If you land five or more of the same fruit symbols next to each other in a non-diagonal manner then it will be a winning line. You’ll have the prize money added to your winnings pot and then the fruit will ‘explode’. On the lefthand side of the game screen you’ll see a glass which will fill with the juice from the exploded fruit, letting you know how much you’ve won.
The fruit that has disappeared will then be replaced by the other fruit on the reel dropping into its place, with additional fruit pieces coming in from above. If the newly created field of fruit puts more winning symbols next to each other then they too will explode and the feature will continue until there are no more winning combinations. At that point, all of your winning money will be added to your balance.
Gameplay & RTP
Fruity Burst might be one of the most random games on the Virtue Fusion network, but one thing that can’t be said is that it isn’t consistent in the theme that it’s trying to portray. The idea seems to be that you’ve popped down to a market stall to get yourself some fruit. As a consequence, the reels are contained within said stall, complete with a red and white striped awning across the top off the screen. There’s also the market stall holder standing in a little space with a basket of tomatoes in front of him and some bananas and grapes above his head. If you’ve got your sound on then you’ll hear the general chatter of a market in the background, punctuated every now and again by a really weird whizzing type sound. The ‘Auto Play’ and ‘Stake’ symbols appear to be ‘written’ on a chalk board, much as you’d expect to find at the market.
The symbols are, unsurprisingly, all made up of different fruits. There are Strawberries named Lester, Blackcurrants called Chester and Apples called Pippin, to tell you about just a few of the characters that you’ll encounter. One of the fun aspects of the game is that if you hover your mouse over them then they’ll each do something a bit different. Jaffa the orange, for example, will go from looking quite happy to looking a bit surprised or having her face rollover. Cherry the Tomato, meanwhile, looks quite worried and then starts shaking and shining when you put your mouse icon over its face. There are other nice little moments, such as the bananas swinging backward and forwards or one of the basket of tomatoes in front of the stall holder rolling off when you go close to them. In terms of the actual gameplay, meanwhile, everything is perfectly fine without being all that exciting. The fruit seems to drop as if the floor has fallen away, dropping back into place reasonably smoothly.
The Exploding Fruit Feature is a fun one, with the juice seemingly splashing onto the camera screen. Yet you can’t help but feel as though the makers could have done a bit more with this game. Perhaps they could have added a feature whereby you peel a banana or open an orange and reveal a prize, say. The point is, of course, that they didn’t want to make the game that complex. It’s only really supposed to be mildly distracting, taking you away from a bingo room if you want a bit of a break or are waiting for a specific one to open. On that front it does exactly what’s intended, so you can’t fault it too much. You might want to fault it for its Return To Player average of 95%, however. It’s better than the 94% we’ve encountered on the majority of Virtue Fusion games, but it’s still a decent way off a return average that we’d be happier with. After all, if the gameplay is going to be so uninspiring then don’t you want to see at least something that will encourage players to return a bit more often? Fruity Burst isn’t a bad game by any means, but if you’re hoping to encounter something that keeps you engaged then the likelihood is that you won’t stick around here for long.