Thanks 3DClouds.it for sending us this preview copy to review.

Have you ever played Mario Kart and thought that the game was too tame with not enough ways to mess up your friends? If so, then this game is perfect for you. All-Star Fruit Racing is a kart racing game all about going fast and using a mixture of power-ups to 1-up the competition. To juice things up even further, the game is themed entirely around fruits and what seasons they grow in. Who hasn’t ever been in last place and wanted to blast the person in front with a pineapple shot from a bazooka?

In All-Star Fruit Racing, one of the main features is the juicer. This is a series of tanks that fill up depending on what color power-up you collect. When one tank fills, you can use that ability. If two tanks fill, you can use a multi ability that combines those different abilities. If you fill all four you can use your super ability. This super ability is defined by what character you select. You can also choose to turn off different tanks which will give you control over which ability to use. I really like the juicer mechanic, but I rarely found myself using it to its full extent. The game is a pretty fast racing game so I never really got around to mixing abilities nor did I ever really target a specific color of pick-up to fill certain tanks. I found it more beneficial to focus on racing and just use abilities when I got them. I seemed to do fairly well racing like that, but focusing more on abilities could still be a solid choice. It just wasn’t what I had much success at. There were also some pick-ups that would fill your tanks completely while also deactivating two of them. These were pretty interesting. They are also the best way to learn how to combine the tanks to make certain abilities.

This game’s races are all really fast-paced. To help you keep building up speed is the game’s drift mechanic. The longer you drift, the bigger the speed boost you’ll get from doing it. If it wasn’t for the speed boost I probably wouldn’t drift. A lot of the turns are really easy to do without drifting. In addition, the drifting can be a little weird. To drift, you need to be turning and hit the drift button. When hit, you can then turn to do a tight drift or a wide drift. I’ve found very few turns are tight enough to require the tight drift. In addition, the tight drift is the default drift since it is triggered by the same button you use to turn. You need to quickly change to the other turn button to change in a wide drift, but you have to change so quickly that I found myself sometimes changing before I hit the drift key. Luckily, if you mess up, the speed boost you get from turning is good enough that it normally helps offset some of the negative effects from hitting a wall. Maybe in some of the courses that still need to be added the drifting will become a more vital component, but as of right now there is not much of a reason for me to try mastering it.

I really enjoy the variety of different types of races in this game. In addition to the standard races you have time attack, elimination, and dragster. Dragster is a pretty unique one where it puts your special ability on a cooldown. I feel like in this race, the character you pick is really the most important since you’ll be using their special ability the most often out of all the races. I also enjoy how there are different types of tracks to race on. Some tracks have shorter laps and have more laps, some are your standard three lap tracks, and some are sprints which have you just racing from one point to another. The different cups you can race have a mixture of these tracks in them. Some tracks even had shortcuts in them. I enjoyed how some shortcuts weren’t always the most optimal route to take since some had obstacles on them that could really slow you down.

This game also allows for a lot of customization. You get to build your own kart to race in. Some of the options here, like the frame, are a little lacking, but I hope that to just be because it is still in early access. The selection of characters is also nice, but the reason for choosing them really comes down to what ability they have and whether or not you like it. Everything in this game looks really good. For this game, they went with a very cartoony artstyle with a lot of bright colors. My only real complaint for the art is that some of the stuff is so bright it kind of overwhelms different parts of the UI. The sound design is also nice. The music is good and really helps build the feeling that this is a fast-paced game. The sound effects are also decent.

This game controls pretty smoothly. The only problem I really have is with getting the drift to work properly. The keys for deactivating the different tanks were a little funky, but I never messed with them much. The game does come with a tutorial that teaches most of the stuff you’d need to know about the game. I wish it covered some more stuff about what all the different abilities are, but that might have made it last too long. The game was stable for the whole time I played it. I didn’t notice any bugs or have any crashes.

Currently, the game allows for up to four players to play in split screen multiplayer. There is an online multiplayer mode, but it still has a big WIP on the button to select it. To play online, you either need to host a server or join a server being hosted by somebody else. When I was checking it out, no servers were currently open. It says they are working on improving the online multiplayer mode so it should become more populated as time progresses.

This is a game that is really safe for kids to play. The only thing that brings its score down is some cartoony violence with shooting pineapple rockets and melon sharks at the other players. Vehicles, when damaged, only slow down for a bit. The bigger thing I see that might make it not suited for younger kids is that the game has more difficult controls that could frustrate some children, but they might just brute force their way through like I did.

All-Star Fruit Racing is a very promising Early Access game. It needs more content, but the ground work they have laid so far is good. The game feels well worth its $14.99 asking price. If you are interested in kart racing games and are looking for something a little bit different, this game is for you. I know I am most certainly looking forward to what else they add into this game by the time it gets fully released.