Terry may be tiny, but he’s a whole mountain of charm. He’s a boy on a simple mission; to get a car, drive it to space, and become famous.
That’s the whole premise of Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip. There’s a simplicity to snekflat’s short, collection-based adventure and that simplicity allows the game to be focused and have a whole lot of heart.
Turbo junk in the turbo trunk
There are two core gameplay elements of Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip that form the core of your experience while playing — freedom and collection. After a short introduction to the game you are sent out into the world with complete freedom to achieve Terry’s goal.
In order to get Terry’s car space-worthy you’ll need to explore the world and complete tasks for the strangers and friends Terry will meet along the way, in order to collect the Turbo Junk needed to upgrade the car’s boost duration so that it lasts long enough to drive you all the way to space.
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip isn’t a long game, clocking in at around four hours to complete the story and a few hours more to achieve 100% completion, so it will only take around seven upgrades or 1,050 Turbo Junk to get you there. The freedom to gather the resources needed, complete objectives, and upgrade your car at your leisure is reminiscent of the structure of an early sixth-generation console game like Jak and Daxter or Kingdom Hearts.
The freedom Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip offers does have a downside — though only a minor one. Pacing. It’s maybe slightly odd to talk about pacing as an issue in a game that’s only four hours long, but it was something that started to creep up on me towards the end of my playthrough.
As the game revolves around the collection of junk, you start out with a huge amount of ways to get that junk. There’s loads lying around the world to collect, plenty of objectives to uncover and rewards to earn, but as you draw closer to the end of the story those methods start to dry up and things start to slow down. It never quite felt as though there was a drought of content but junk and money did become a bit more difficult to find during the last upgrade.
The process of getting there though is just pure fun. It’s not complicated and there’s no real difficulty but it’s refreshing to pick up a game and be able to so easily achieve your goals in a way that’s as satisfying as it is entertaining.
Hidden heart
All of this collection is done in a vibrant and colorful world. I’m not sure the exact nomenclature for this particular art style but it’s a style that evokes the feel of a child’s drawing or Play-Doh creation, perhaps befitting of the child-like Terry, and it matches the tone and writing of the game perfectly.
The balance of Terry’s deadpan delivery, the surreal scenario, and irreverent humor remained entertaining throughout. It had the vibe of classic quirky British comedy with comparisons to shows such as Monty Python’s Flying Circus or The Mighty Boosh.
A surprise though, was the amount of heart that the game exudes. As Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is such a short game, it would be easy to forgive it for just resting on its strong gameplay and humor, but the couple of small moments the game affords to expanding Terry’s motives along the way transform the game from something short and quirky to something that speaks to universal concerns as we grow and make that difficult transition from child to adult.
Wrapped in the packaging of the game’s quirky art and irreverent humor, a simple yet heartfelt letter I found from Terry’s parents, maybe later in the game than intended, recontextualized the story to one of coming to terms with responsibility, growing up, life and your place in the world. It was a particularly unexpected moment, but one that coupled with the game’s ending solidified the game as a stand-out.
Minor issues
In my playthrough I did come across some minor issues that, though they didn’t have much of an impact on my enjoyment of the game, I did spot them often enough that it is worth mentioning.
Most notably was a significant amount of clipping, including a large number of instances where NPCs would path and clip through buildings and objects. This was particularly present in areas with a large number of NPCs and objects, in one instance I observed a large line of NPCs clip through the ground near City Hall instead of following the path as no doubt intended, like some kind of ghostly conga-line. In addition to this were some minor camera glitches, particularly in tight spaces.
Conclusion
All in all, Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is a good time. It may be short, but it offers a well thought out and crafted experience, the freedom to dive in and explore at your own pace, while offering enough to do that your time with it won’t start to bore. There’s a strongly themed and heartfelt narrative at the center of an otherwise funny and entertaining game and it’s one one that I would certainly recommend.
The Review
Superb
