Among The Sleep studio's next game lets you run a food truck for anthropomorphic animals
Fruitbus' open-world road trip looks delightful
Krillbite Studio are good at making unsettling games, from the toddler-horror Among The Sleep to the eerie corporate follow-up Mosaic. But the team have announced their next project and - surprise - they’re putting on a happy face with Fruitbus, a joyful open world game about running a food truck. Yummy food and seemingly friendly animals? That's good vibes. Get a taste below.
From a first-person perspective, you’ll drive the titular truck, gear stick included, across a colourful archipelago, looking for ingredients like fruit or literal sludge from the trash along the way. Then you’ll invent recipes and sell them to customers - such as Strawberry Trash Smoothies that the badger above went absolutely feral over. Though entrepreneurs can, in fairness, sell literal trash and also convince people to like it.
I’m in a committed food relationship with my local kebab boss and am therefore forbidden from ordering a chicken shish wrap anywhere else. Fruitbus works on the same logic since you can gain a customer’s loyalty through certain recipes that unlock memories or elicit feelings for them, further strengthening that relationship. Kinda like the Ratatouille flashback scene, but without the restaurant’s shutdown after.
More customers means more coin, though, useful for customising the Fruitbus’s insides and outsides. The truck’s custom paint job can attract more hungry animals, meanwhile, the interior can be outfitted with cooking devices that will probably let you make increasingly complex dishes.
Krillbite made their debut with the chill insect side-scroller The Plan and then went on to make the sleeper hit Among The Sleep, casting you as a baby who needs to crawl around spooky places. Adam Smith’s (RPS in peace) review admired the game but also found it to be “messy, loud, confusing,” much like an actual child. That was followed by the brutalist job-quitting adventure Mosaic and the philosophical walking sim Sunlight.
That’s quite an eclectic roster and I’m excited to see the studio marinate in another totally different vibe with Fruitbus. The game is due to release next year, and you can wishlist it on Steam.