People who are more into modern mobile gaming trends than me know of the existence of viral Chinese game Suika Game. You must have seen ads about it on Instagram or TikTok, or may have read our review of the Switch port, written by our own Oliver Shellding: it’s that game that fuses the gameplay loop from 2048 (fuse pairs of the same thing to create a bigger thing), but using fruits as visual indicators. A simple, carefree gameplay loop that is fun for, like, five or ten minutes at a time.

A 3D take on the formula, aptly named Fruit Mountain, was released by BeXide in 2024. It was essentially the same game, with the difference being that you needed to juggle fruits inside a bowl, spinning said bowl around to fit every berry the game throws at you. Whether or not that game was a hit is beyond my comprehension, but I doubt it was a surefire disaster. Had it been a flop, how would justify the release of this brand new “definitive edition”, Fruit Mountain Party?

Throw fruit onto another fruit, fruits combine and become another fruit. Logic? Nowhere to be seen. Don’t care, though.

The title is as self-explanatory as possible. Fruit Mountain Party takes the same clunky, but otherwise competent control scheme and gameplay loop from its 2024 predecessor, but turns what was once an exclusively single player joint into a party game, with way more modes than initially anticipated. More than just a multiplayer update of a single ruleset, Fruit Mountain Party goes for a handful of different modes which, individually, are as shallow as a puddle. As a full package, there is just enough to justify their existence, however.

Some of the modes featured in Fruit Mountain Party include a standard time attack, a slight variation centered around seeing who gets to the biggest fruit within the time limit, a more competitive mode with Mario Kart-esque items, and more. None of those feel too different from one another, and aren’t very revolutionary. Yet, for some odd reason, despite the somewhat clunky nature of the controls, the irritating “kawaii” sound design (if you’ve ever played a game featuring anime girls, you know the kind of saccharine and high-pitched voice acting in here), and the repetitive nature of the gameplay loop, I never felt utterly irritated with Fruit Mountain Party. Maybe it was the fact I was playing it on a ROG Ally, without a lot of care. Just like Suika Game on a phone, this felt right on a portable, not dedicating too many of my brain cells.

Four-player shenanigans, even locally on PC. Then again, if multiplayer is what you’re looking for, grab this game on Switch or Switch 2.

I expected less from Fruit Mountain Party. It’s a clunky, somewhat repetitive puzzle game with just enough content and charm to justify the occasional ten to twenty minute gameplay session on a portable. It features charming visuals, decent performance, and a handful of different modes to experiment with. I still think that playing 2048 on a phone is less time-consuming and more cost-efficient of a solution than actually investing money on this title, but there’s nothing overly wrong about it. It gets the job done, it didn’t anger me, it’s just fine enough to exist without being considered a poor clone or a waste of time.

Fruit Mountain Party is available now on PC, Switch and Switch 2.

Reviewed on Intel i7-12700H, 16GB RAM, RTX 3060 6GB and Asus ROG Ally.

A copy of Fruit Mountain Party was provided by the publisher.