Merge Fruit Time is a merge game similar to 2048 and Suika Game. The player drops happy anthropomorphic fruit characters into a walled-in area with a gradient gray and black background to merge identical pieces to create larger ones for as long as possible. They also earn points that they can track at the top-center of the screen.
The fruit options start out with strawberries as the smallest fruit and then extend to lemons, oranges, apples, grape clusters, pineapples, melons and watermelons. The player might merge two strawberries to create a lemon, two lemons to create an orange or two apples to create a grape cluster. The game gives them a preview of the next fruit in a box below the pause button near the upper-right corner of the screen.
Merge Fruit Time challenges the player by making the pieces drop realistically. A fruit might bounce against surfaces. It might slide or roll. To drop a fruit with more accuracy, the game provides double, white aiming lines.
The game helps the player by allowing them to earn a level-up star that automatically creates the next larger fruit when the star drops on a fruit that normally they would need to merge. It also offers bombs to remove unwanted fruit, but the player must watch ads to use these tools.
