High Fructose puts you in control of a sword-wielding fox and throws hordes of demonic fruit in your direction. Staying alive means wall-running across arenas, double-jumping over enemies, dashing through gaps, and slicing anything that manages to get close.
Developed by Chazak Games, it’s a first-person survivor-like that mixes the escalating hordes and build crafting of a bullet heaven with much faster, more involved movement. Your ranged weapons fire automatically, leaving you free to concentrate on getting around the arena and using your melee weapon yourself.
Runs are split into waves, with new weapons, perks, and upgrades gradually turning Fox into something capable of shredding through the growing number of possessed bananas, watermelons, and other fruit filling the screen.
Don’t Stop Moving
Movement is a huge part of High Fructose. Fox can dash, double-jump, and wall-run, giving you plenty of ways to move around each arena as the number of enemies starts climbing.
The levels are built around those abilities too. Handcrafted areas are mixed with procedurally generated layouts, paths, and different elevations, giving you walls to run across and higher ground to reach while putting some distance between yourself and the horde.
That makes positioning particularly important. You need to keep moving through the level, finding routes through groups of enemies and avoiding getting boxed in while your weapons gradually clear some space around you.
Your Guns Do Their Own Thing
Ranged weapons in High Fructose fire automatically at nearby enemies, bringing the combat closer to something like Vampire Survivors despite the first-person perspective. That doesn’t mean you’re just running around waiting for everything to die. Fox also carries a melee weapon that you control directly, allowing you to attack enemies yourself whenever they get within range.
Combining the two means you can have guns constantly firing into the horde while you dash towards individual enemies and cut through them yourself. As more fruit fills the arena, movement and melee become increasingly important for creating an escape route rather than simply avoiding whatever is coming towards you.
Recipes Can Completely Change Your Build
Surviving a wave gives you the chance to add to your build before heading into the next one. Weapons and perks can be collected and upgraded throughout a run, but High Fructose also has a recipe system built around finding particular combinations of items. Complete a recipe and you’ll unlock a powerful new effect, giving you another reason to think about which upgrades you take rather than simply grabbing whichever one offers the biggest immediate boost.
There’s permanent progression between attempts as well. Seeds collected during runs can be used to unlock additional power, helping you push further as you learn how the different weapons, perks, and recipes work together.
With the number of enemies increasing as a run continues, those upgrades can quickly turn the relatively simple starting combat into something much more chaotic.
There’s More Fruit on the Way
High Fructose launched into Steam Early Access in December 2025, with Chazak Games using the Early Access period to expand what’s already there.
The current version includes one playable character and 20 unique combat waves, alongside its weapons, perks, upgrades, recipes, and procedurally generated level layouts. Future updates are planned to add more playable characters, enemies, elite variants, recipes, upgrade paths, and potentially additional wave types and environments.
There are plenty of survivor-likes built around automatically blasting through enormous crowds, but the first-person perspective and focus on parkour give High Fructose a very different feel. You’re not simply circling a horde while waiting for your build to take care of it. You’re wall-running above it, dashing through openings, and jumping straight back in with a sword. If you haven’t come across this game yet, we recommend trying it today.