Fruit Factory is a wholly uninspired puzzler that makes no attempt to either expand on the sokoban mold or deliver a solid game within the conventions of the genre. The game is formulaic to a fault, and too easy to be engaging. An almost unbearably cutesy presentation and some incredibly grating music doesn't help its case, either.
In each level, you must open a door by collecting fruit, croissants, and other such things. This delightful petit déjouner is ill-used by Fruit Factory, which places hackneyed puzzle-game obstacles between you and said repast. These impediments include, but are not limited to, anthropomorphic pigs with Metal Gear-style exclamation points over their heads, puppies walking back and forth, helpfully labeled movable blocks, and unthreatening-looking retracting spikes. Circumnavigating these small hindrances is practically never challenging, however.
Your onscreen avatar throughout this nonsense is an enthusiastic lass who wears her flaxen fibrils in pigtails. She does nothing but trudge resolutely in whichever direction you select. If a movable object lies in her path, she'll push it. Apart from some light puzzle-solving of this sort, you'll mostly be walking toward fruit or away from enemies.
Particularly noteworthy is Fruit Factory's sound, which mostly consists of a disjointed, unmusical MIDI song that will continuously and awkwardly loop in the menu screen, should you let it. This plays at the game's default volume, which can only be described as mind-bendingly loud. In the game, you'll thankfully be spared almost all sound, but that initial din will quite possibly ring in your ears forever, as though a shotgun was discharged directly next to them. Consider yourself forewarned.
Fruit Factory's graphics aren't so offensive; they're just very saccharine. The game's color palette packs more pastels than Toulouse-Lautrec, and by that, we don't mean Fruit Factory is set in smoky barrooms. It's difficult to really consider the threat posed by a rose-pink pig that flaps her arms jauntily at you, beaming all the while. She seems the good-natured sort of sow who might well appear in an Easter display or in an early morning cartoon show. For what it's worth, the graphics are bright and colorful.
There's really not much reason to play Fruit Factory, since it follows in the footsteps of so many similar, better games. Maybe a young child would enjoy the ego-stroking of repeatedly beating the game's simplistic stages, but it's hard to imagine most players having much fun here.
