Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip [Review]
Help Terry get to space in this oddball adventure.
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip. Credit: snekflat / Super Rare Originals
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is the latest game from publisher Super Rare Originals and developer snekflat, creator of Wuppo. It’s a short open world adventure through Terry’s town of Sprankelwater, with a wholesome story and filled with hilarious moments. Aside from some endgame issues, it’s a great game. Help get Terry to space, for… reasons.
The game opens with Terry at a temp agency, looking for a job that’ll get him a car. You see, Terry’s single minded goal is to go to space, and for that he’ll need a car. It’s definitely better than going to summer school. Terry gets the car despite his refusal to commit to actually doing the job, and from then on, Spranklewater is completely open for you to explore.
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip. Credit: snekflat / Super Rare Originals
You’ll meet several people who you can help or complete jobs for to get money or Turbo Junk. Terry’s doesn’t know why he needs junk, but is sure it’ll help him get to space. Soon you’ll discover that his “boss” can use junk to make turbo boosters for Terry’s car—get enough of them, and you’ll be able to get Terry to space and finish the game.
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip plays like a wholesome Grant Theft Auto. You run around the city doing missions for different people, you’ve got a car (and can steal other cars), and you can beat people with your pipe, wrench, or bat to get them to drop their wallets. Your victims aren’t hurt; they just get up and move on with their lives.
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip. Credit: snekflat / Super Rare Originals
You need money to buy some tools and to do a couple of quests, but your primary goal is collecting Turbo Junk. Completing a quest will usually get the person you helped to tell you where they’ve buried a trashcan full of the stuff. Most quests involve fetching an item or making a discovery for a character, though some are minigames, such as soccer.
I found the minigames a bit frustrating; the control and action are not the highlights of this game, as it all feels a bit floaty and imprecise. Thankfully, you don’t need to complete all of them to finish the game. Turbo Junk is also scattered all over the city, and as long as you find enough of it to make enough boosters, you’ll be fine.
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip. Credit: snekflat / Super Rare Originals
The look of Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is great. The game takes place in a toonish, flat textured, simply shaded 3D world with exaggerated proportions. Every very character is a more or less flatly shaded, solid colored figure with weirdly offset eyes. They’re almost always standing with their arms in a pose that reminds me of the Gumby characters from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, with blank expressions, bouncing in their idle animations as they stand. When the camera is up close, their outlines also jitter, as if they were animated frame by frame by hand. It’s a really nice detail that whenever Terry rotates, his head doesn’t rotate smoothly with him, rather it jumps between fixed angles that keep the offset look of his eyes and mouth intact.
I love the dialogue and interactions in this game. From the moment of the first conversation in the game, where a character gives Terry his phone number and it’s just “1,” I knew I was in for something special. It took me a little while to realize Terry is a child, because everyone’s dialogue and behavior is just as absurd as Terry’s. It felt like Terry was Calvin and Hobbes’ Calvin, but in a world where everyone took him seriously at face value.
I wish there were more characters and opportunities to interact with them, because it feels like there isn’t quite enough to do in the world otherwise. By the end of the game, when I couldn’t easily complete more quests, it became a bit of a chore to hunt for hidden junk, so that desire became more sharp for me. Since the game was already short, it could have been a bit tighter near the end if there weren’t going to be more characters to meet.
I still very much enjoyed the time I spent in Sprankelwater, and the game’s ending was surprisingly heartwarming. Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is definitely worth a play if you’re into adventure games or wholesome games.
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is available now on Steam for PC.
Overall Score: 7/10
Played on: Steam Deck
