Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip review

• Reviews by Matt Aukamp
• Published:

It’s easy to get revved up for this fun, whimsical, if somewhat repetitive open-world cartoon platforming adventure

I think we can all agree that “dumb” isn’t always an insult. Sometimes, all you want is just to turn your brain off and enjoy something that’s both fun and so excruciatingly dumb that, even if you wanted to think deeply about it, you couldn’t. This is the experience of playing the delirious, usually fun and always supremely dumb action-adventure game Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip, by snekflat. 

Terry is a little floppy blueberry-headed kid whose only goal in life is to drive a car to outer space. You discover this in an opening scene as Terry, 100% totally unequivocally without guile, cons a hiring agency into giving him a car by applying to be a taxi driver. Through dialogue, you can literally just tell the person you have no intention of working for them at all, but they still give you a free car. You then bounce out of the building and into your small one-seater taxi and begin crashing and zooming all around the bizarre town of Sprankelwater. 

You soon stumble upon the mayor, announcing his completion of a project to build an impossibly tall building extending into the clouds with a curved base, flat sides and conspicuously road-looking markers on its side. This, before he blows himself up like a balloon and floats off into the sky. Anyway, it doesn’t take much thought to realize that this road-building is your key to reaching space, if only you could get up enough speed to make it all the way up the side. Thus, your mission is to run around this world, trying to collect enough parts to spruce up Terry’s ill-gotten taxi so it can drive up the side of a really tall building and go into space.

Like I said, dumb, but in a good way.

Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip

Genre:	Adventure, Science Fiction
Presentation:	Realtime 3D
Theme:	Treasure hunt
Perspective:	Third-Person
Graphic Style:	Stylized
Gameplay:	Action-Adventure, Casual, Quest
Control:	Direct Control
Game Length:	Medium (5-10 hours)
Action:	Platforming
Difficulty:	Low

Tiny Terry fits, if somewhat awkwardly, into this new hybrid sub-genre of platforming and adventure games that I’m calling the “Playground Game.” If you’ve played Lil Gator Game or A Short Hike, you know the basic vibes of the Playground Game: a short, cute, all-ages open-world game with one simple goal that gets continuously sidetracked by platforming challenges, progressive upgrades to your basic abilities, quippy Gen-Z dialogue, and a trove of mini-games and collectibles. You’re basically just a little guy running around a meticulously designed world, having as much fun as humanly (or gator-ly, or bird-ly, or blueberry-head guy-ly) possible. These games lead with a “fun-first” philosophy, bright colors, interesting traversal mechanics, bouncy physics, and an overall good vibe. Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip fits all these prerequisites, then mixes in some Grand Theft Auto for a far more mischievous take on the genre.

This game is best played with a gamepad and runs on the same basic controls as any twin-stick 3D platformer. Your sticks control character movement and the camera, and you have your jump button, your action button, and a button that toggles a run, with other button prompts appearing over certain hotspots allowing you to interact in certain ways, like entering a door, talking to a person, or hopping into a car. The action button is used to swing whatever weird item Terry is holding, be it a butterfly net to catch bugs, a shovel to dig up treasures, or a pipe to “assert dominance” (aka whacking people and things across the screen).

The cars have their own controls, which can be a little awkward to adjust to, but basically consist of forward, reverse, and turbo boost. Hilariously, besides your own car and parked cars that you can steal, you can also hop into the backseat of anyone else’s car at any time and control their driving. This makes it extra funny when you smash their car into a burnt-out wreck or, even funnier, try to pawn it at a chop shop with them still inside. Tiny Terry is packed with moments of emergent narrative like this, all springing from the chaotic limitlessness of the game. It was never not amusing to grab my baseball bat and knock every person walking near the edge of a pier into the water. 

Like a mix between Grand Theft Auto and Super Mario 64, you basically run around doing small quests for people in the town, like helping them commit a crime or find all the recipes for “gummy pups” (little bouncy pets that do nothing but follow you around), or discovering cars to steal and sell. There are also little mini-games sprinkled (sprankeled?) throughout the world, like a soccer game or a demotion derby match. All the while, you are collecting money to buy cosmetic or utilitarian upgrades (like a Breath of the Wild-style glider that lets Terry float through the air) and pieces of “Turbo Junk,” which can be used to enhance your car’s rocket boost. Along the way, you have the option to mercilessly beat up any passerby on the sidewalk you’d like for absolutely no reason at all. Though, because the world is little more than a silly cartoon, they just flop around on the ground for a second, then pick themselves up and keep on about their business like nothing weird has happened at all.

The presentation of Terry’s world is bright and colorful, with distinct visuals and a sunny, vibrant backdrop. The animations are rubbery and smooth, making you feel like you’re seamlessly bouncing around a Looney Tunes locale and wouldn’t bat an eye if an anvil dropped on your head. The game substitutes voice acting for some of the most bizarre squawks and chirps I’ve ever heard in a video game, adding another layer of absurdity and humor. And complementing all this, the soundtrack is jaunty and upbeat like a Saturday morning cartoon. One small quirk about the music, however, is that each track is triggered by the entering of certain areas or getting in and out of your car. Since this game can be so frenetic and fast-paced, you end up hearing the first 15 seconds of every song over and over as you hop in your car, drive down the road, hop out to get a collectible, run into the next area, leap into a new car, etc. When each of these actions causes a new track to start over from the beginning, it makes the otherwise well-composed music a bit unbearable after a while. 

Tiny Terry’s world is also, perhaps, a little less dense than one would expect at first. For all the collectibles littered around, the mini-games, and the cast of characters, you spend a lot of time just jumping or driving around doing the same things over and over. The quests are few enough and far enough between that it often feels like there should just be a little bit more. Some characters’ arcs consist of a single action or an objective that is better stumbled upon than searched for, leaving a lot of the gameplay feeling aimless. I spent much of my eight hours playing the game feeling like I was just revisiting areas of the map to see if there were any pieces of Turbo Junk or Gummy Pup recipes I missed. Or digging up the same flowerbeds over and over, trying to collect enough money to buy an equipment upgrade.

Final Verdict

When your car is upgraded enough, you’ll be able to boost your way up the building and… go to space? Maybe. You’ll have to find that out for yourself. I largely enjoyed my time spent reaching that point, and I am impressed with how well the addition of car mechanics fit into this style of platforming game. Still, for every hour of manic fun, I can think of an equal hour of monotonous collectible-hunting that was diverting enough but I wish was just a bit more dynamic. Yet despite some wasted potential from gameplay stretched a little too thin, with its bizarre setting full of weird characters, fun physics, and all the charm of an oddball Saturday morning cartoon, Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is often great and a superbly dumb addition to a growing sub-genre of “Playground Game” platform adventures that is sure to keep you amused and smiling throughout. 

Matt played Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip on PC via the Steam Deck using a review code provided by the game's publisher.