Bad Apples was a great game made by Metaversal Studios that had both visual charm and a new take on the traditional connect puzzle derivative. First being an online flash game, it quickly gained enough fans for the developers to release This sequel, entitled Bad Apples: Battle Harvest, seems like it has promise. For fans of the first game, the world of Orchardia is now open to you with this second title.

In the game, you play as Squire Mac, a young jubilant citizen of Orchardia who lives with his fruit-and-vegetable family and friends. All seems well in Orchardia when suddenly, those dispicable Wormwits had awakened the ancient evil spirit that is the Nephridus. It seeks to turn every fruit and vegetable in Orchardia into a Rotling, ugly and evil fruits that are the complete opposite of the good residents of Orchardia.

Nephridus swore to destroy the Tree of Harmony and all of Orchardia, so you need to do what you can to stop him. You must use strategy and wit to match up three of each fruit and vegetable together at the same time continuously to win, unlocking special powers that can help you win the battle along the way. This is quite a premise for such a casual and fun puzzle game.

Like in the first game, the gameplay is composed of four columns where you swap one fruit’s position for another. Once the swap is done, four new fruits drop down, including bad apples and crushers that complicate the situation. The goal is to connect as many three similar good fruits as you can to get higher scores. If you connect three bad apples, you fill up with rotten juice and it works against you, which just makes this game even more challenging.

An improvement that Battle Harvest has over the previous game, aside from new fruits and power-ups, is the number of game modes available. Aside from arcade and puzzle modes, there’s the Invasion, which is basically a survival mode; and Recruit mode, where you are put into tough tests of mental skill to see if you can solve the puzzles. Both of them are quite fun to play with and shows how deep this series can go right now and in the future.

The colorful art style shows each fruit and vegetable’s expressions whenever an army of stern-looking Wormwits start coming in after bursting out of some random gourd. It’s quite interesting to see how their faces and emotions change as things happen in the game, which adds more flavor and character to this game. The sounds are quite appropriate as well for such a quirky game, adding even more flair.

There isn’t a lot that anyone can say bad about this game. For $0.99, you get an addicting distraction that you can take out of your pocket and play whenever things are low and dim. Bad Apples: Battle Harvest is worth the two whole dollars since it is such a gem of a mobile game that has a lot of potential in the mobile gaming market.