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Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip is a charming "casual exploration" title in the vein of A Short Hike , Lil' Gator Game , and Alba: A Wildlife Adventure . This burgeoning genre centers around open-world exploration in a small, contained, but content-dense hub world. Terry's adventure in particular borrows from driving sims like The Simpsons: Hit and Run, and features the trademark odd humor of snekflat's other adventure, Wuppo.
The world of Spranklewater is an excellent hub world of diverse biomes and locations. Each part of the map has some quest or activity to participate in, and each one fleshes out the world nicely. The driving mechanics are delightfully chaotic, and there are plenty of things to collect. The game's main lifeblood comes from the excellent humor and aesthetic. The game has this deadpan, psuedo-realism tone that permeates throughout, with characters speaking like real people in an unreal world. For example, Spranklewater has a famously lax government that doesn't really enforce against crimes... but the only confirmed criminal is a guy who's personal code of ethics is so strong that he can't commit a crime that involves any kind of violence. There's a giant tower in the middle of the city that was commissioned by the mayor, but it lacks any doorways to get in and ended up bankrupting the city. One of Terry's friends has a dad that steals cars for a living, but since the cars are immediately bought by new clients, it's totally legal. The game is legitimately pretty funny, and a large part of the appeal is just existing in this world. Couple this with an incredible soundtrack, some memorable characters, and an excellent laid-back tropical atmosphere, and it looks like Turbo Trip/ is a recipe for a good time.
Unfortunately, I found Terry's gameplay to be pretty boring. Basically every "quest" in the game boils down to collecting an item, and they all end in a currency bonus for upgrading your car. The game ends incredibly quick (just over three hours), and even in that short time I found myself getting really bored of the core gameplay. This is a shame, since there are so many ideas here that just go to waste. I was actually surprised at how many ideas get shut down over the course of the game. Terry gets his car from signing up to be a taxi driver... but there are no missions involving the taxi gameplay at all, which is a crazy waste of potential. You have a melee attack, but it's only used to bust open trash. You have a glider ability, but you never need it to get anywhere in the game, and so on. This stands out in this casual adventure genre, as each game listed in the intro of this review has some kind of gameplay hook that is compelling. A Short Hike has the climbing mechanics, Alba/ has the photography angle, and so on. Turbo Trip being so unambitious is a real shame, and one of the reasons why I ultimately don't recommend it. Wuppo had much simpler mechanics and ideas, but continually innovated and challenged the player with new and interesting concepts. Even if the gameplay was just light platforming and shooting, it evolved constantly ovet the course of the game. By comparison, Turbo Trip never pulls out any truly interesting ideas and remains quite uninteresting the entire way through, while actively rejecting anything that could spice it up.
This is a pretty big disappointment for me. I loved Wuppo, so to see that it's followup just isn't exciting is a real big shame. I think that if this game continued to get worked on, it could really shine. All of the pieces are for a compelling and enjoyable sandbox, but rejecting that potential instead of living up to it just doesn't sit right.