Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip Review: An Indie Simpsons: Hit And Run

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 right now. If you are a fan of The Simpsons: Hit and Run, then you should play Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip. It is a perfect recreation of that silly open-world GTA-like collecton-a-thon experience, just without Homer and Springfield. Anyway, for everyone still reading, here’s the review.

Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip tells the classic story of a strange teenager who skips out on summer school while his family is away on vacation to focus on his dream of driving a car into space. That’s the basic premise of Turbo Trip. You are Tiny Terry and after lying to get a job with a taxi company, you get a car. It’s now your job to go around collecting junk and cash to help you upgrade your taxi cab and make it go faster and faster. If you upgrade it all the way, you can drive it up a giant building and into space. Probably. That’s the plan, at least. And that’s your goal in Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip. 

However, to get all the junk and cash needed to max out your taxi and reach outer space, you’ll need to explore a delightfully colorful and zany open-world filled with characters to help and collectibles to find. Right away, Turbo Trip’s cartoon visuals impressed me. Even on a Steam Deck, the game looks marvelous, like a trippy, vivid Saturday morning cartoon directed by Weird Al.

Each character I met in this odd world was a misshapen lump of bright color and limbs. Even better, they all made me laugh, often because they didn’t know how to react to Tiny Terry. His bizarre antics and dedication to being the weirdest one in the room lead to some of the best awkward pauses I’ve ever experienced in a video game.

I also appreciated that, for as weird and wild as Turbo Trip gets, it never feels like it’s doing things just to be random. It still feels like a (somewhat) real world with genuine people living in it. Even Terry has his moments of genuine growth and care. This all helps the game avoid the trap of being a collection of internet memes and bad jokes haphazardly stitched together, something other comedy games can often feel like. There’s depth here.

But great writing, colorful visuals, silly antics, and a nice lead character aren’t enough to make a great game. You also need to have fun playing it, and Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip excels at that, too.

It feels lazy, but the best way to describe this game is: Simpsons: Hit And Run, but without the copyrighted characters. Like Hit and Run, in Turbo Trip you explore a large but not massive open world filled with random junk (in this case, literal junk) to collect. Sometimes the junk is just sitting around. Other times it’s hidden in out-of-the-way locations. Like Hit And Run, you do light platforming to reach these places while also completing silly quests for townsfolk which often involve driving and jumping around the city. Also like Hit And Run, you can hop into any NPC’s car and ride about town as a passenger.

Turbo Trip actually expands on Hit And Run by adding more upgrades you can unlock as you play, like a glider and different weapons. (Oh, don’t worry, there’s no combat in this game. You just use weapons to break open boxes or annoy random NPCs.) I also greatly prefer running and driving in Turbo Trip as platforming genuinely feels nice and is super responsive compared to the stiffer controls in Hit And Run and even some other big open-world games out there. (Looking at you Assassin’s Creed…)

Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip will likely take you less than four hours to complete, though if you try to do and collect everything it might take closer to six. Either way, you’re in for an awesome and funny open-world comedy game that actually made me laugh a lot and which is a dream to play. It might not be Hit And Run 2, but it’s a damn fine game on its own.

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