Cruisin’

How do you feel about 6th gen open world games? I’m talking Vice City/San Andreas era GTA games and even moreso their various imitators, think Simpsons: Hit & Run. If you’re wired like me you probably like them fine, but the real draw was goofing off and finding sidequests to get distracted by. Don’t get me wrong, I’d progress the plot, but only as a means to the end of unlocking more side stuff to do. It would appear I’m not alone in my distractability, because snekflat opted to make a game that entirely consists of ordering every side dish on the menu instead of an entree. And would you believe it, it works!

Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is the tale of Tiny Terry and his task to track trajectory off terra firma. For those who don’t speak alliteration, Terry wants a car so he can drive it up the comically tall building in the middle of town straight into space, achieving global fame and accolades. Unfortunately, stock cars don’t go that fast. More fortunately, the owner of the local taxi service isn’t especially discerning as to who he lends his vehicles to and is all too willing to mod his fleet into spaceworthiness assuming you provide sufficient turbo parts. It’s a real BYOP situation. As to where and how you acquire those parts, well, that’s the game.

What’s the actual gameplay? Exploring every inch of a moderately packed city. Your moveset starts incredibly basic: run, jump, swing pipe, get in/out of car, drive said car, and that’s about it. Eventually you gain access to more functions, a glider being the big standout, but it never approaches becoming anything overly complex. You may naturally wonder, “what if I succumb to my Id and start beating bystanders with that pipe?”, and the answer is nothing, beyond them making a funny noise and rolling around on the floor before getting up unharmed. Sprankelwater is a cop-free wonderland, uninterested in punishing you for things like “not having a driver’s license” or “attempted manslaughter”. Granted this is canonically due to the town’s inability to manage its finances, but hey, they got defunded one way or another!

The mechanics are fairly rote for this sort of game, but the self-paced open world structure means TTTT is less about providing a challenge and more interested in presenting a variety of ways to utilize them. Wherever you go and whatever you do, you’re going to find plenty of parts to collect and people to chat up. This will lead to a wide range of antics: vehicle battles, engaging in lowercase grand theft auto for fun and profit, participating in local government reform, the works. In a strange omission, despite this game being entirely about making a fast car faster, there are no races to be found! Terry’s commitment to chill vibes is absolute.

This is also true of the game’s completion requirements. Not feeling a particular sidequest or chunk of gameplay? Skip it! You can achieve maximum overdrive without doing everything, it’s not even particularly hard. Terry may be all in on the destination but you’re mostly along for the journey. In many ways this experience bears a resemblance to Lil Gator Game, but I hardly see that as a negative. Wrapping all of the questlines took me just shy of 4 hours, and that’s with a bit of post-credits “yeah I think I want to see how that ends” goofin’ off. I didn’t technically 100% it because there are so many parts to collect, but I’d already made it to space, I didn’t have anything to prove.

The titular trip is made all the better for a few dollops of quality writing. Everyone in Sprankelwater is a goober, and I’m not just saying that because they look like 3D models made from a child’s MS Paint doodles and speak in Banjo-Kazooie-ass garble. You’ll talk to all sorts of weirdos, learn about their problems, and maybe even solve them if you feel so inclined. Most of them are just setups for punchlines that’ll give you a chuckle, but some show a surprising amount of humanity. I highly recommend going out of your way to read stuff and talk to everyone; you’ll be surprised at how it re-contextualizes some of your interactions and sets up the ending. Might even make you feel some emotions!

“Cozy” games get a mostly justified bad rap. The majority of them are wallpaper first and video games fourth, refusing to offer anything stimulating because god forbid the gameplay present any amount of friction. TTTT’s vibes may be chill and goofy to a fault, but it achieves those vibes without ever once being boring. The game delivered exactly what it promised: doing side jobs for wacky little guys until you earn the means to take to the skies. Spranklewater may be a bit of a failed Libertarian cityscape, but it’s a damn fine place to visit. Try the beach fries.

8/10