www.zielok.com recently released a new freeware game called FruitsDay.  If you haven't been to the site before, basically there are several PocketPC and Windows games available for free, and for a donation you can get the game Next Element Deluxe.  I recommend checking it out if you get the chance.

Anyway, while I didn't feel there was enough to write a full review on FruitsDay, I decided to share my thoughts on the game with you in sort of a free roaming style.  It won't take you long playing the game to make the obvious comparison to Pac-Man.  This time around, however, you're some sort of blue creature trying to gobble up fruit before you get sidelined by some nasty bugs.  You have a certain number of lives you can use before the game is over, and every so many points you get another life.  There's also an exit you need to get to after you've collected all of the fruit, but other than not getting a bonus, I haven't seen any down side to not getting to the exit before your time is out (you have 10 seconds from the time you eat the last fruit on a level to get to the exit).

That's basically all there is to the game.  In all honesty, I thought it got kind of repetitive rather quickly.  There were some interesting level designs, but many of them were littered with annoying areas that were either too easy to get trapped in or that slowed you down because you had to wait until the enemy vacated the premises.  The two big pluses to the game play were that when you lost a life you kept on playing right from where you got hit, and if you exited the game you could resume from the last level you completed.

The graphics were nothing special, and in fact I had trouble telling what much of anything was.  I suppose it might look better on a VGA screen, but sadly I don't have access to one of those.  The sound effects were sufficient, but like the graphics nothing extraordinary.  What got me, however, was the music.  On the down side, most of the tracks had several bars of annoying repetition before the song got rolling.  However, once the music kicked into gear it was quite mesmerizing.  I really think the songs were what kept me playing for more than two or three levels.  The style seemed to range from mystic far east to jungles of Africa to downtown Brooklyn, New York.  At the same time, though, I couldn't really put my finger on any particular genre, which is what made the tunes so enchanting.  Even if you don't really get into the game, it's worth a try just to hear the soundtrack.

Since this isn't a full fledged review I'm not going to post a score, but I will say that for my personal tastes I probably won't play the game beyond this post.  In all fairness, though, while I played Pac-Man a lot when I was younger, that's one of those games that I've not been nostalgic for in my adult years.  If you are a Pac-Man fan, or you just want a solidly built free game that might also appeal to you, I'd recommend giving FruitsDay a try.  It's not terribly resource intensive, and once again, it's free.

Product Site: FruitsDay information page