Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip Review: A Bona Fide Sandbox Of Pure Joy
How are you going to get yourself to Space in a car? With a car, of course! A Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip review, played entirely on the Steam Deck!
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is part of a fiendish experiment by snekflat and Super Rare Originals to hypnotise gamers into thinking that a gaming world is much better than ours. Terry’s world is mental; nobody can string a coherent sentence, and the job centre is handing out free cars, where applicants invalidate the insurance by equipping it with turbo boosters cultivated from junk and built by an illiterate imbecile.
Why on Earth would someone equip turbo boosters to a dinky little dodgem car? To go to Space, obviously. Do you see that colossal, almost infinite road pointing towards the sky? That leads to Space. Get enough turbos, and you can hoon it all the way there. Even if you run short, you’ll simply bounce when you hit the dirt without a single bruise.
To say that Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is madcap is an understatement. It’s GTA without the guns and profanity, Crazy Taxi without the fares, The Simpsons Hit & Run without the Simpsons, and the English language without grammar. It’s wonderful. To imply that this is a bona fide sandbox would be beating around the bush: it is a bona fide sandbox! Do as you please, go where you want, and hit whomever you wish.
Unlike GTA, you can commit as many crimes as you like, as crimes don’t really exist. Being free to do as you please comes at a price, as, believe it or not, we all need rules. Thankfully, Terry is subjected to gravity like the rest of us, so it’s meaningful to scavenge for money to buy a glider and reach previously unavailable areas. I wish there had been a double jump, however. At least there are hats.
Let’s rewind a smidge and confirm the plot: Terry wants to drive to space and has to collect hidden junk to transform into turbo boosts for his newly acquired car. For every 150 pieces of junk, you’ll get a turbo – collect them all, and you can confidently drive into space. It doesn’t take long to get the required parts, so you’ll want to explore this wacky world, as once you get to Space, the job is done.
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip presents multiple side quests, from car-jacking to checking in on someone sunbathing, creating new fast food menus, and wooing the job centre clerk. Unlike verbose RPGs, these side quests are quick and fun and encourage you to play through them all – even when you have enough turbo boosts. Each time you complete a sidequest, the world map is updated so you can find buried junk and hit the crap out of it, pinata style.
Terry can equip a number of tools such as baseball bats, shovels, and nets. They’re all self-explanatory, and as alluded to earlier, there are no crimes, so you can hit whoever you like for the fun of it, with zero consequences. The same goes for car-jacking, but don’t do it in your own front yard, as they’re harder to flip. Unlocking money to buy goods is simply a case of bashing bins and exploring the city – the same for junk, though get yourself a radar hat as fast as possible.
Hats are very prominent in Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip, as you can buy them from the hat store and dramatically improve your life. You can also locate blueprints for pets and have them follow you around and bounce off your wrench should they get in the way. Again, there is no health bar, so do as you please.
What stood out most about this game when I first played it during Steam Next Fest was the freedom and brilliant fixed camera angles. It was like playing a golden age Nickelodeon cartoon from the 90s, and the characters are so quirky and hilarious. I’m not using the last word lightly – the comedy in this game is brilliant – from the intentional pigeon English to that profound, elusive question: what is Terry? A fish? A bird? Best of all, you don’t need a good memory for numbers as the first person you meet shares theirs ‘1’. If only.
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip was one of my most anticipated games for 2024, and it did not disappoint. If we’re being critical, the only downside would be the length of it and sometimes a lack of direction due to the sandbox aspect. Yes, that’s why Apple restricts your tech: you won’t know what to do with all that freedom if it was on a plate. But really? Those are the negatives? Honestly, save yourself wasted time debating it – buy Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip today!