Plum Crazy

Plum Crazy is a great name for a video game, a game that really gets under the skin of the socio-political nature of fruit and the struggles they face to forge a cohesive society. Actually, that is a bit of bunkum, it’s more about wiping out as many plums as possible as quickly as you can.

You are a grapefruit and your job is to roll over plums to collect their juice. Collect enough juice and you complete the level. It’s a great, simple idea that lends itself well to the iPad. It might be too simple if not for a couple of reasons; the level moves around on it’s own and at the edge of the screen are demonic rollers that will squish your grapefruit. What this does is turn the game into a bit of a memory test, the screen moves in a certain way each time so if you move right and the level moves left you end up under the rollers. You can get caught behind the maze like walls that are in each level which means you get squished by the rollers.

The idea then is to stay in the middle, move with the level and keep safe. But don’t forget to also squish those plums, putting the game into a nice sweet spot where you have to weigh up the risks and rewards for rolling behind a wall to squish a group of plums. There are power-ups to help, like fruits that explode wiping out all plums on the screens or that turn you into a wall smashing grapefruit of righteous fury. Throw in hazards, like acid pools and spinning blades, and things get complicated very quickly.

Plum Crazy looks good with chunky, well animated characters dotting the levels. The way that every fruit on the level looks at your character as it moves around the level is well done as well. It’s also quite comically violent as well, but all fruit based of course so you can get away with it.

The controls are also well implemented, though at first it does feel rather ponderous. Your grapefruit moves one square at a time at the same pace that the rollers and level moves. It takes a couple of tries to get used to, but once you do the pace helps build up the tension in the game, and when you get the power-up that lets you roll around in a plum squishing frenzy it feels even better.

There are a decent amount of levels available and the Claymore Games are also looking to add more as time rolls on. This is welcome because each level is essentially the same; roll around and squish the fruit. Bonus levels help to keep things fresh, but it’s not the kind of game that you will be returning to once you’ve cleared all the levels.

While Plum Crazy lasts you’ll have an enjoyable, fun little game that does a lot right. It’s a great fit for the iPad and is well worth picking up.