Review | Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip — More Than A Feeling
Every so often, a game releases that despite a clear, simple premise somehow defies explanation. Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is one of these games.
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is not a complex game, yet describing it has become an intense exercise in frustration. For over five months, I have been struggling to cleanly define the things that make playing it an incredible experience. Part of the reason is the way that every aspect — from art to mechanics to story — blends and weaves together to create an indelible tapestry that’s so precise and perfect for specific audiences, and it’s difficult to pull out each and every strand to show how they fit within the whole. The more imposing reason, the part that’s hardest to work around, is how overly well the entire experience can be condensed to a single, four-word phrase:
“Goofy Goober’s Gentle GTA.”
This article could stop right there, and you’d have everything you need to understand what this game is and who it’s for. However, that doesn’t exactly provide enough details to showcase just how perfectly suited that phrase is, especially for those who may not be able to parse every word. I would argue there isn’t an English-speaking person in the world who wouldn’t be able to glean enough information to know what to expect in Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip from the smallest portion of that phrase, and for lower-priced indie games that can be enough to spur curiosity. No legitimate attempt at a review should settle for so little, though, so please bear with this possible folly of an attempt to clarify everything that makes Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip a fantastic game for freshly-formed gamers and the young at heart.
Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip includes many popular open-world game tropes, as well as a healthy influence from 3D platformers. Terry, the player character, freely runs and jumps around a small cityscape, drives cars, talks with characters, swings a weapon, discovers collectables, and jabbers to himself at the push of a button. Jumps are quite high and the timing for them is incredibly responsive; aerial attacks provide a bit of extra manoeuvrability and a slight hover; pathways to collectables are clear and distinct; and mechanics are quite simple to control. Projectiles don’t exist, there’s no health meter or enemies — there are no negative consequences. The world is but a playground to run around in, with only the simplest of objectives, making it perfect for players who haven’t yet mastered their skills with video game controllers.
The city of Sprankelwater, the setting for Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip, is a place of ridiculous wanton selfishness that promotes itself as the capital of crime. Not in a gritty, realistic way, like what would be expected in a crime drama like Grand Theft Auto or Sleeping Dogs. Rather, the mood is very playful and non-dramatic, much closer to toybox stories children tell with dolls and action figures. Everything in the environment is resistance-free. Characters can get knocked around, robbed, run over, or abducted, then get back up unscathed and move on as if nothing had happened — because nothing actually impacted their well-being. There’s nothing overly outlandish happening like an old Looney Tunes cartoon: no anvils fall from the sky, no cannons rearrange the location of faces, and no destruction of the environment takes place in the world of TTTT. The worst that happens from the swing of a bat is an NPC bouncing like a balloon for a few seconds, a mere inconvenience that’s not even worth griping about. If you hijack a parked car, nobody cares enough to storm out and give chase, and the complete lack of a police force guarantees no one will be hot on your tail. Hey, it’s worth half the price of a hat, so it couldn’t be that big of a loss, right?
It’s not just the environment that exists in this state of childish non-consequence. The titular Terry is of ambiguous age: young enough for certain immature situations like attending summer school and being unable to cook meals for himself, while old enough to responsibly drive and live independently. This holds true for the entire population to a degree, similar to the residents of Bikini Bottom in Spongebob Squarepants and the puppet characters from Sesame Street. Terry in particular exemplifies this nebulous aura, encapsulating the energy to a level comparable to the most well-known non-kid-non-adult characters like Pee-wee Herman, Buddy the Elf, Stephanie from LazyTown, Undertale’s Papyrus the skeleton, and yes, even Spongebob himself.
All of these are what’s been the hardest to write about this silly little game - to conjure the exact words to describe this game in all its cathartic silliness. The best I’ve been able to come up with is the aforementioned comparisons to other characters and worlds, whose vibes have also defied my ability to describe them for decades. The atmosphere of Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip can only be summed up by referencing the way that the most comparable property — The Spongebob Squarepants Movie — refers to its characters: “goofy goobers”.
That’s the unfortunate truth that has haunted me for almost half a year. Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip exudes an unabashed, untethered joie de vivre that I adore wholeheartedly, to the point that it’s nearly indescribable. Outside of pointing to a bunch of other properties and saying “it dat,” the second best method is that simple phrase— “Goofy Goober’s Gentle GTA” — which still requires a reference to outside media. It makes it convenient for people who are already fans of that kind of character archetype to know what exactly they would get out of Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip. For the rest, unfortunately, this game is not recommendable. An overly-simple mini-collectathon is all that remains for those who don’t care for the story or need the generous open space to practise their hand-eye coordination with a controller. As difficult as it is to talk about TTTT, knowing who it’s a good fit for is an easy task.
If any part of “Goofy Goober’s Gentle GTA” sounds intriguing in the slightest, then there’s a high chance Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is worth your time. And if nothing in that phrase sparks interest, it’s safe to not give it a second thought.
