Pineapple: A Bittersweet Revenge Review

Most games are easy enough to categorise. When reviewing titles for GameGrin, it's often possible to say things like — “Bloopy Shoot v2.3 is like Tetris meets Sonic Spinball, but with elements of Sniper Elite and SimCity. On steroids.” — or similar nonsense. It isn't that often that I come across something that's quite unique, so it's a nice change of pace when I do.

Pineapple: A Bittersweet Revenge is one of those games that isn't immediately obvious as a recognisable genre, so it might need a little bit of explaining. The tasks that you are given are all pranks played on the school bully, in order to get revenge. Most of them take the form of mini-games, like obscuring yourself from discovery while sneaking into the locker room in order to hide a pineapple in her locker, or breaking into her car with the intent to fill her boot with pineapples. You'll no doubt have noticed the key thing here, which is the persistent presence of pineapples.

In order to perpetuate the pineapple pranks, you also have access to a notebook, created by our main character. It's explained early on that you have been stalking the game's antagonist, known as ‘The Witch’ for a few weeks, and learned her locker code, favourite food, schedule, etc. It's a lot of effort to put into pranking the school bully, and it's certainly an unusual concept, but so is a blue hedgehog collecting rings or an Italian plumber jumping on mushrooms, so I won't complain.

The art style in Pineapple: A Bittersweet Revenge is very striking, with the creators paying homage to one of their favourite comic book artists. Our protagonist also has a fruit sticker for a head at all times, because why not? Not wanting to spoil anything, there's a reason for that other than the artistic, which becomes apparent when you complete the game.

Thinking of completing the game; you will do that very quickly. The challenges are quite easy, and it's unlikely to take most people more than about 45 minutes to get through the whole thing. There are scores recorded for the mini-games, but these don't seem to be accessible anywhere after they have been registered, meaning that replayability is largely non-existent.

What little there is in the game is enjoyable, and I particularly enjoyed the little pop-punk jingles playing between the mini-games that recap the story. It's a well presented game from a visual and sonic point of view, and that definitely helped make up for the brevity.

There's a strong message of social justice and anti-bullying that runs through the game. In fact, it feels a bit like the sort of thing you can see schools using as an educational tool, and for that purpose, the short runtime could be a positive, as it fits neatly within the timescale a class might run. 

With so little time spent playing Pineapple: A Bittersweet Revenge, I can't really say too much more about it. It's certainly far shorter than I would like, but it has a heap of charm, and it's got its heart in the right place. Manage your expectations that this is a short indie game with an important message and you can't go too far wrong.