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Turnip Boy may be a bank robber but he isn’t robbing YOUR wallet

Overview
Turnip Boy Robs a Bank is a sequel to the very funnily named Turnip Boy Commits Tax Fraud. While it has references to the first game, the premise is absurd and silly enough to be enjoyable without really understanding any of the tie-ins to the first game (mostly the setting and characters). Plot-wise, the game works just fine as a standalone, and the sequel is much more centered on gameplay anyways. Overall, it’s a fun time if you enjoy roguelites. If you’re wanting more of the same from the first game, this game has some similar elements but overall feels quite different in terms of gameplay. However, if you enjoyed the humor and fetch quests of the first game, that still exists.
Story
You’re a turnip and the veggie mafia recruits you into a grand heist to rob the botanical bank. Not really much more to it than that, honestly! But who is playing a Turnip Boy game for the story? It’s all about the humor and gameplay, really. Overall, if you laugh at the title, you’ll probably enjoy the game. Otherwise if you think it’s cringe you aren’t going to enjoy the game at all.
Presentation
Music is pretty good – I was jamming along as I played quite often. The art is very cute. I had a guest over and she thought the game was cute! I told her “I’m robbing a bank” and she just nodded slowly and backed away. But hey, the first impression was cute! She definitely didn’t see some of the bosses that look really freaky. Overall, the art style is very fitting for the game and its usually quite clear to tell things apart – i.e. what is breakable, where is the exit, what is going to harm you or not. Although some enemies and NPCs blend in and not always clear if I should talk to someone or shoot first. Kinda makes sense though since it’s a bank heist – guess it is part of the job to know who you want to shoot versus spare.
Gameplay
Turnip Boy Robs a Bank is a roguelite action game where you repeatedly rob a giant labyrinth of a bank until you get to the MOTHER LOAD. It’s impossible to win in one run as you won’t have all the required items to pass through the next area. So you’re expected to constantly rob the bank, earn money, then spend that money on upgrades and items that will help progression. The map is a mix of set rooms and elevators that will randomize. The random elevators helps keep things fresh but they get kind of annoying during the mid and late game. This is perhaps my one and only criticism of the gameplay. Eventually you run out of things to spend money on and the elevators have rooms that are purely for making money. They may also have NPCs and it can be annoying to be unable to find a NPC because their room won’t spawn. This could have easily been resolved by giving the player an option to spend money to reroll the elevators.
You get a good variety of weapons but you can only hold two at a time. You’re highly encouraged to drop weapons you bring with you in favor of taking some from your victims. The purpose of this is to increase research to unlock more weapons.
Overall, the game is not too difficult. There are enemies throughout the bank and I’ve died a few times from being careless. There are also bosses which aren’t overly difficult either. There is a “boss rush” but it’s thankfully been patched to be able to be done over multiple runs and saves your progress so don’t have to repeat it if fail what happens after.
Specs
No issues.
Operating System: Windows 10
Processor (CPU): Intel Core i5-3570K CPU @3.40GHz
Graphics Card (GPU): NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070
Memory (RAM) 16 GB
Summary
It’s a fun game. A bit of a different vibe from the first game as it seems to highly prioritize the gameplay loop over the rest. It’s still fun, but overall I think I enjoyed the absurdity of the first game a bit more. The sequel sometimes got a little annoying with the excessive dialog, but it was still a good time in the end. It’s worth a look, especially if you’re into a short silly game. Don’t expect to get much more than 5 to 6 hours out of this game, including time to grind out 100%ing it. Probably more worth it on sale than full price due to the shorter length. However, the playtime seemed perfect and didn’t really feel like it was padding out playtime for the sake of it.