The Weirdest Indie Game of 2024! — Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip Review

Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is a game that’s hard to describe. You start out in a job placement center, where your character, Terry, reveals that he doesn’t actually want a job, he just wants a free car. The drooling girl at the counter sends Terry to a woman with a moustache who interviews him for a job as a taxi driver. Terry tells her that he doesn’t have a driver’s license, has never driven a car before, and doesn’t plan on actually doing his job. The moustache lady is fine with this and hires Terry anyway.

This opening scene gives you a good idea of what to expect from Turbo Trip. The world is surreal, the characters are grotesque, and everything follows a bizarre sort of dream logic. If you’re the kind of gamer who enjoys unique settings and absurdist humor, Turbo Trip offers an experience unlike any other.

Once you leave the job center, Terry gets his car, and you now can explore the entire city of Sprankelwater however you like. The map isn’t that large; you can drive around the whole city in about five minutes. On the plus side, every mission in the game is available as soon as you leave the job center, and you can complete them in whatever order you choose.

The gameplay is a mix of GTA and Banjo-Kazooie, but with the weirdness turned up to 11. You switch between driving and some basic platforming as you explore the city looking for Turbo Junk to upgrade your car. You can find junk scattered on the ground throughout the map, as well as earn it by completing missions for NPCs. Missions include things like finding blueprints for a pet shop that only sells fake pets, helping a pacifist criminal think up a crime that won’t violate his morals, and catching bugs to be served at the local fast food joint.

Terry carries a metal pipe for smashing obstacles, and he can teleport his car to him by hitting parking signs placed throughout the city. You’ll be backtracking up and down the city a lot, but movement is quick and zippy, so it isn’t much of a chore.

In addition to turbo junk, you can also collect money to buy tools like a shovel, a butterfly net, and a Zelda-style air glider. Money can be found by smashing different objects, beating up pedestrians, or selling stolen cars. Turbo Trip takes place in a city that doesn’t have any laws, so you’re free to cause as much mayhem as you want. The NPCs’ goofy appearance and ragdoll physics make it hard to resist smashing through them at every opportunity.

There are also three different mini games that can be completed to earn turbo junk. There’s a rhythm game where you have to match the movements of a yoga instructor, a bumper car battle against Terry’s rival, and a soccer match against Terry’s schoolmates. I found the controls to be awful for all three of them, but luckily completing them isn’t necessary for beating the game.

Terry’s ultimate goal is to drive his car into space. As you drive around the city, you’ll quickly notice the giant tower in the center of town. The tower is unique in a couple of ways. For starters, it doesn’t have an entrance. When you approach the tower, you’ll trigger a cutscene where the Mayor of Sprankelwater gives a speech before a disinterested crowd. He explains that the tower’s sole purpose is to impress the surrounding towns, and constructing any way to enter the enormous building would defeat the purpose.

The Mayor also explains that there are roads going up the sides of the tower to celebrate the city’s high number of car crashes. He tells you that you shouldn’t drive up them, but if you did, it would look really cool. Then the Mayor says he has important business, so he inflates himself like a balloon and floats into the sky. Did I mention this game is weird?

If you try to drive up the side of the tower, you’ll fall off before you reach the top, but if you bring 150 turbo junk to the moustache lady’s garage, she’ll upgrade your car with a turbo boost. You’ll need to collect enough junk for 7 upgrades before your car is fast enough to climb the tower and beat the game.

Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip can be completed in around three hours, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself throughout the entire playthrough. I highly recommend checking it out for yourself. However, given its meager length, you might want to wait until it goes on sale.