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.

I didn't really like this game enough to recommend it.

It overall felt unfinished.

I encountered a log of bugs, some weird performance issues (for a game that looks this visually simple, it runs like hot garbage). The story is barely present.

On a more positive note, I liked the fact that it was short (especially because of the lackluster story). I also somewhat liked the humor and the visual style.

The dev asked in game for a review so.. Main thing is that the trailer looks much more exciting than what the game pans out to be, which is just.. relaxing, really.

The Good
• Good, bright presentation. Soundtrack is good.
• Quirky dialog, well presented story. His uncle is a good character.
• Most of the collectibles are easy to find, including the optional ones. No cryptid placements except for one (spoiler: behind the job recruitment place was annoying to get up to)
• Short (You can see the credits in two hours. ..Every game is a million hours or live service these days.)
• Phone Hint system is great, and adds to the story.
• Runs great on deck, if that applies to you!

The bad
• Terry could stand to be a little more nimble. The jog is okay, but lacking when retreading ground for things you miss. Certain ledges are a pain to get up to. Glider should be cheaper, imo, more on that later.
• 'Empty' feeling once you hit the few activities, which are very brief.
• Little variety, other you will spend most of your time at the end slowly jogging looking for 'coins.'
• Grinding money by the end for the tracker and government debt, dunno if there's much to do other than dig up dirt and deliver stolen cars. Very slow, so I'm not gonna bother.
• No replay value (Feels like wasted potential, polished world and smooth presentation wise -- but its over already. No reason to return or goof around in the world, lack of things to do/terry is just kinda slow.)
• Laundromat hint system stinks.

TLDR; you're going around a single platforming hub for a few fetch quests, but the platforming isn't great. It doesn't feel like an open world game. Price is kind of right though, $15. Buy it for an alright afternoon, movie ticket style.

The camera seems to be implemented such that if you move your mouse left/right it turns left/right at a constant rate regardless of the speed or distance you move your mouse, which was very dizzying and gave me motion sickness. The way the camera works inside of buildings is also very dizzying. Adjusting the FOV did not help. I think this problem would be at least partially remedied by playing on a controller but not entirely.

If you're looking for a four hour, funny experience with some stylish presentation, go at it. If you really want to play this game though, I'd get it on sale. I personally got it for $12 USD using the Short Hike bundle, because already owning A Short Hike reduced the base price.

Ultimately, despite some really great writing, I was disappointed with the moment-to-moment gameplay that connected each character interaction. For a collectathon, none of the collectibles feel intentionally placed or organized. The turbo junk is just placed all over the ground and rooftops, and they are often phasing behind objects in the environment, making them easy to miss. The blueprints, bugs, and mushroom chimes are just placed in the outskirts of town in areas that don't feel finished. I spent a lot of time walking up and down the sides of the highways trying to pick everything up. You primarily collect cash by either meleeing literal dumpsters and garbage bags or digging up the hundreds of dirt mounds strewn about everywhere.

The collectible economy is also unbalanced. I can't recommend trying to 100% this game, as the cash you need to collect every hat and item is way higher than the money you'll find completing every quest and digging every hole on the map. From what I can tell, the only real way to gain cash quickly is to grind out a repetitive car theft mission, and that's only if you're able to find the fancy car that randomly spawns on the map. The fancy car doesn't even get you that much cash either. At least 30 minutes of my playtime was spent grinding this mission because I decided to complete the government debt quest before buying the hang glider, which the latter is needed to get a large amount of junk left on the map.

I was also disappointed in how the car is implemented into the game itself. Don't get me wrong, I love how the car feels, and I've had a blast driving around town. But other than one pretty simple destruction derby minigame, there aren't a lot of places to really have fun with the car. There are maybe two ramps on the entire map, so don't expect any fun jumps or stunts to send your car flying. Also, the boost just increases your car's movement to a fixed speed. Upgrading the boost doesn't make you go faster, it just increases the time you get to go at this increased fixed speed. After I hit the required boost count needed to beat the game, I couldn't really see a point in upgrading it any further. This game is silly, why not let me launch my car across the map at absurd speeds once I hit the endgame collectibles?

Also, the jumping feels janky with the camera. There were a ton of times where I felt like I was just shy of a ledge in ways that felt unpolished instead of intentional.

I could nitpick more, but the point is this game really shines with some laugh-out-loud cutscenes, just don't go in expecting the collectathon gameplay to be as addictive as some of the other shortform experiences that have hit steam in the last couple of years. And this isn't to knock the developer, either! I'm genuinely impressed by the polish and production values from this one-man dev team. I could see these mechanics and universe making for an excellent sequel at some point. But at a base asking price of $18 USD with only 3-4 hours of gameplay before you're forced to grind your way to 100%, I wouldn't recommend it at this time.

Nauseating. Even with the addition of a FOV slider and toggle for shake, the camera is just fundamentally flawed and induces motion sickness as a result. Steer clear.

Thought i was onto a winner with this. It made me laugh twice in the first minute, the game looks nice, it controls pretty okay. If you gel with it the humour is well paced.

However the moment to moment gameplay is as exciting as warm tap water. It's a collectathon where the collectables aren't placed in any kind of deliberate or engaging manner. They're just sort of strewn around the place.

The interactive setpieces where the game's humour can come through are the highlight, but they just aren't frequent enough, or of high enough quality. And the scale of the world means you'll probably come across them by consulting the map, rather than organic exploration.

My biggest disappointment is that despite being ostensibly again about upgrading a car, you spend most of your time on foot. As far as I can tell from the hour I spent with it, the ONLY car upgrade is a brief boost which presumably gets longer as you improve it.

TL:DR

It's a collectathon that doesn't make me want to collect stuff. It's a driving game in which you spend more time on foot. It's a character (vehicular) progression game where the progress isn't exciting.

I can't recommend this even on discount.

small sandbox game about a wacky adventure to collect enough scrap to attach powerful enough rocket boosters to your car so you can send it to space.

it *should* have been great. maybe I'm just a soulless monster, but unlike the cozy vibes and humour of A Short Hike or Lil Gator Game it was a bit all over the place. My theory is the addition of a car forces the world to be too oversized and barren for its own good. Towards the later half it feels like a slog, and it's not that long to begin with. Sorry!

Cool game, but not $18 cool!

Pls optimize for integrated graphics