Question about fruit names in a game

[Ticklebelly]

So this watermelon game has gone viral in the vtuber world and I’ve got all my friends hooked, but while I can easily enough translate most of the fruit names, using context clues on some of them, I can’t really seem to make sense of the format, and not even Google translate or searching really gives a clear answer.

So I learned ぽい is a way of expressing similarity, the way it was explained I understand it like adding “ish” or “-like” at the end of something.

So I have three questions.

First, are these basically saying something like “this is a lemony orb thing”? Or am I misunderstanding the poi, and it’s not the ish version, it’s just a fun Japanese onomatopoeia sound effect that a squishy orb might evoke?

Second, and I’m still pretty fresh to this side of grammar, so excuse me if this is a silly question, but what is the reason here for not using the katakana for the loan word fruit and hiragana for the others? Does adding the ぽい actually count as part of the word, much like adding ish to hungry would be a new single word “hungryish”? That would make sense for not combining katakana and hiragana…or, is it just for uniformity so it looks cleaner somehow? (edit: this is probably just because they are character names, huh?)

Third, why the shortened versions of most of the fruit? I’m assuming it’s just common slang but figured I’d ask. Or is this because they are “characters” and its just a cutesy name (which would probably make sense doubling back to the first question, if I was misguided on what the ぽい was representing…and in hindsight could apply to question two as well, since they are character names).

Thanks for the help. Such a simple question, and kind of silly since as I said…i understand what all the fruit are (except I learned what a dekopon was)…but I remember this stuff 100x better if I understand the nuances as to why things like this are like this, and not “that just means that, don’t worry about it.”

[WeebPotato]

@Ticklebelly

So I learned ぽい is a way of expressing similarity, the way it was explained I understand it like adding “ish” or “-like” at the end of something.

It’s not so much ぽい, but っぽい. I wouldn’t say they’re the same thing, but I could be wrong.

@Ticklebelly

First, are these basically saying something like “this is a lemony orb thing”? Or am I misunderstanding the poi, and it’s not the ish version, it’s just a fun Japanese onomatopoeia sound effect that a squishy orb might evoke?

Hard to say in this case. I would say it’s more of an onomatopoeia than っぽい. Would need to watch more Vtubers playing it, but so far I’ve only seen Tsukino Mito playing it and didn’t pay so much attention to the various ぽいs.

@Ticklebelly

Second, and I’m still pretty fresh to this side of grammar, so excuse me if this is a silly question, but what is the reason here for not using the katakana for the loan word fruit and hiragana for the others? Does adding the ぽい actually count as part of the word, much like adding ish to hungry would be a new single word “hungryish”? That would make sense for not combining katakana and hiragana…or, is it just for uniformity so it looks cleaner somehow? (edit: this is probably just because they are character names, huh?)

Sometimes it’s a matter of stylistic choice. For instance, you have スイぽい, but りんぽい, even though it could be リンぽい.

@Ticklebelly

Such a simple question, and kind of silly since as I said…i understand what all the fruit are (except I learned what a dekopon was)…but I remember this stuff 100x better if I understand the nuances as to why things like this are like this, and not “that just means that, don’t worry about it.”

The thing is, once you reach a certain point in your studies you’ll also be thinking ‘that just means that, don’t worry about it’ . Do notice that the game itself is quite lighthearted and so is the explanation of the rules to it.