Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip

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Terry has finally made his way onto PlayStation in his comical adventure, Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip. Originally released on Steam last year (check out our PC review here), Tiny Terry can now cause chaos on PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch as of February 13th 2025. Join me as I explore the wacky world of Spranklewater and help Terry achieve his dream of going to space.

Terry Tries To Take-Off

Terry wants a car to go to space, so he obviously goes to the Job Application Centre to get one. After accepting a job as a taxi driver, purely for the car of course, Terry can begin his mission. This introduction to some characters of Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip immediately sets the tone for the humour and dialogue of the game. If you ever think you know what direction a conversation is going, you can be sure you’re wrong.

Gameplay

A screenshot from Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip. Terry and Grony are sat on adjacent armchairs in an office-like waiting room. Terry is saying “I need a car.” — Terry is extremely goal oriented.

Now that Terry has his car, it’s time to explore Spranklewater. As the player, you are given complete freedom instantly; able to explore the whole town — pursue any activity you please. One of the first things you’ll notice will be a lot of spark-plug-like items lying around on the ground. These are Turbo Junk, a very important currency for Terry. Turbo Junk can be used to upgrade Terry’s car with Turbo Up’s, which is ultimately the main objective of the game. 8 Turbo Up’s will be needed in total for the car to reach space. I liked that there was way more than enough Turbo Junk available to complete the main story, meaning there was no tedious searching to hold me back once I wanted to see the ending.

Alongside Turbo Junk, Terry can also find money. Much in the same way as in real life, money can be found by beating people with a steel pipe and taking their wallets, by destroying bin-bags and cardboard boxes, or simply digging it out of the ground. That’s real attention to detail by developer snekflat. Money is also a far less significant resource in Spranklewater, so expect to collect a good amount fairly quickly. It can be used to buy hats, items from Jack’s Junk Shops, or solve governmental budget issues.

People Maketh The Place

A lot of what makes Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip a fun adventure is the interactions with other characters and the general absurd humour found within the world. As you explore the map and uncover new locations, you’ll meet the people of Spranklewater and have a chance to help them in various quests. One young lad is helping his Dad in a heroic quest to un-steal stolen cars by selling them. Another person wants to commit non-violent, non-threatening crimes, despite Spranklewater having no laws. Completing these quests usually leads Terry to the location of some buried Turbo Junk to help boost his numbers. I really enjoyed the comedic interactions, and the dialogue certainly always took me in unexpected directions. One of my favourite ones was the sunbathing guy on the beach.

Screenshot from Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip. Terry is on a beach, looking at another character sunbathing. The sunbather's face is on fire, though they don't appear to be bothered about it, still laying down on their beach towel. Terry is saying, “You're not gonna like this, but your face is on fire.” — Well, this is awkward.

Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip provided a fun sandbox experience, with a few surprises and several secrets to discover. The map is not too big or small, but I did find the roads slightly complicated to navigate early on. Once you’ve upgraded the car fully though you unlock fast travel, which is handy for those final clean-up activities.

Graphics & Audio

As you can tell from the screenshots and trailer, Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is filled with a cast of colourful characters, drawn uniquely. Despite the low detail of the character models, they are able to express plenty of emotion. Of course, the camera movement, editing, and sound all work together to enhance the experience. I did feel at times that in some scenes, the fixed camera position felt a little restrictive, but out in the open world this wasn’t an issue.

There are various highlights in the audio presentation of the game. The soundtrack provided by Thomas de Waard lends a joyful tone to the game. There’s a mix of upbeat, bouncy tracks along with some slower, peaceful pieces. Also, there are great sound effects in the game, including the money collection chime, which I now want to play in my head whenever I get paid. Additionally, the character’s speech is a gibberish language of weird mouth sounds that often accentuate the hilarious dialogue perfectly.

Screenshot from Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip showing titular character Terry in conversation with Zmirapfy, his quote-unquote employer. Terry is saying, “I'm not doing to do the job.” — Terry is completely uninterested in capitalism.

Longevity

Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip is a short, tightly curated, open-world sandbox adventure that contains about 5 or so hours of content. My play through was about 3 hours long, and while I completed the story and all-but one listed quest in that time, I’m at 53% completion. I’m sure there are additional secrets waiting for me to discover. I’ll be heading back to clean up the Platinum trophy as soon as I can.

Final Thoughts

I loved Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip. The story is great, and we should all admire and aim to emulate Terry’s focus on achieving his dream. Towards the end of the story I began to feel like there might have been a darker twist waiting to happen, similar to the Angelica Rugrats theory, but I think I was maybe being paranoid.

I’m all about short, indie games that know exactly what they want to be and focus on delivering that vision with a tight scope and great polish. In a world where we are inundated with myriad video game releases each week, many of which demand insane amounts of play time and attention, I want to see more of these types of games.

Tiny Terry’s Turbo Trip receives a Thumb Culture Gold Award.