Below this paragraph is my full review of Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip—a new comedic open-world action game out now on Steam and playable on Steam Deck. And it’s a good review. It does what you expect. But I can save you some time now. If you’re a fan of The Simpsons: Hit and Runthen you should play Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip. It’s a perfect recreation of that silly open world GTA-like collecting experience, just without Homer and Springfield. Anyway, for anyone still reading, here’s the review.
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip tells the classic story of a strange teenager who skips summer school while his family is on vacation to focus on his dream of driving a car into space. That is the basic premise of Turbo trip. You are Tiny Terry and after lying to get a job at a taxi company, you get a car. Now your job is to go around collecting scrap and money to upgrade your taxi and make it faster and faster. If you upgrade it completely, you can use it to drive up a huge building and into space. Probably. At least that’s the plan. And that’s your goal in Tiny Terry’s turbo trip.
However, to get all the scrap and cash you need to fully outfit your cab and get into space, you’ll have to explore a gloriously colorful and wacky open world full of characters to help and collectibles to find. Turbo tripI was impressed by the cartoonish graphics. Even on a Steam Deck, the game looks great, like a trippy, lively Saturday morning cartoon directed by Weird Al.
Every character I met in this strange world was a misshapen blob of bright colors and limbs. Better yet, they all made me laugh, often because they didn’t know how to react to Tiny Terry. His bizarre antics and his desire to be the weirdest person in the room led to some of the best awkward pauses I’ve ever experienced in a video game.
I also appreciated that, so strange and wild Turbo trip gets, it never feels like it’s just doing things by accident. It still feels like a (somewhat) real world with real people living in it. Even Terry has his moments of genuine development and caring. All of this helps the game avoid falling into the trap of being a haphazardly pieced-together collection of internet memes and bad jokes, which is how other comedy games often feel. There’s depth here.
But great text, colorful pictures, silly jokes and a nice main character are not enough to make a great game. You also have to have fun playing and Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is also excellent at this.
It seems sluggish, but the best description of this game is: Simpsons: Hit and Runbut without the copyrighted characters. How Hit and runIn Turbo trip You explore a large, but not huge, open world full of random trash (literal garbage in this case) that you can collect. Sometimes the trash is just lying around. Sometimes it is hidden in remote places. How Hit and runYou’ll have to do some light platforming to reach these locations, while also completing silly quests for the townspeople that often require you to drive and jump around the town. I also like Hit and runyou can get into any NPC’s car and drive through the city as a passenger.
Turbo trip actually expands to Hit and run by adding more upgrades that you can unlock as you play, such as a glider and various weapons. (Oh, don’t worry, there is no combat in this game. You only use weapons to break open crates or annoy random NPCs.) I also much prefer running and driving in Turbo trip because the platform game feels really good and reacts super fast compared to the stiffer controls in Hit and run and even some other big open world games out there. (I’m looking at you Assassin’s Creed…)
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip will probably take less than four hours, but if you try to do and collect everything, it can take closer to six hours. Either way, you can expect a fantastic and fun open-world comedy game that Strictly speaking made me laugh a lot and it is a dream to play. It may not be Hit and run 2, but overall it’s a damn good game.
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