Greenalink reviews Turbo Kid #AD

 

Developer: Outerminds Inc.

Publisher: Outerminds Inc

Price: Roughly £16.75/$19.99, different platforms and regions may vary on exact price.

Filesize: 2.18GB

Website: https://outerminds.com/games/turbo-kid/

Turbo Kid the video game was first announced as a Kickstarter project way back in October 2021 with a final build released just over a month ago in April 2024. This game is a 2D pixel platforming adventure (aka Metroidvania) where your character ends up at the Middle-Waste and in order to escape to travel back into the wasteland to become a great hero, The Kid (that's his name) has to collect 4 weapon chips to unlock the giant gate and be free. 

The game takes place as a continuation to a film that is considered to be a cult classic: Turbo Kid released over 9 years ago.

You don't have to watch the film to understand the game as the references from that film are reduced to just quotes from the intro and the short flashback sequences players will get to see after completing certain parts of the game.

Graphics

The level of detail hugely varies, most human NPCs are relatively simple but Turbo Kid stands out as his sprite kit isn't mirrored when facing the other side, just look at his blue turbo glove as an example, this requires producing twice the amount of work to pull this off. The charge effect can also be used to light up dark areas, this effect also happens whenever you get a new weapon chip as a giant beam of light shine down towards the player. 

                 

Boss fights and certain animals have a lot more detail due to bigger sizes and/or using a few more colours.  

                         

The HUD and Menu give out a very pre-2000s digital feel with thick bold text. There is a notebook journal that has a lot of personality thanks to the drawings in each page, this is also a nod to the prequel film where the kid used these drawings mainly for personal guides but also his personal life on other people (and robots) he met along the way including Apple. 

                  

Gameflow

The game is split into 3 acts.

The prologue where you have to collect your main gear that you'll use throughout the game including Turbo Glove's charge upgrade (projectile weapon), Machete (melee weapon) and BMX (the game's main selling point). After that, you have to find 4 weapon chips which have spread out to 4 different regions, then act 3 is the big...or little finale depending on the player's choice right after the end of act 2.

Turbo Kid does a good job showing what the new power-up can do by adding a video clip moments after obtaining a new item, so for weapon chips they show how they're used in utility/puzzle solving and then a clip on how they're used in combat.

Act 2 which covers around 70% of the playthrough feels like the 4 main areas can be done at any order although some stages are best done later. I noticed that each area has their own mobility upgrade which becomes a vital tool to navigate through the rest of the region (a bit like pre-2013 Zeldas where the item in the dungeon becomes the main tool to solve puzzles/boss fights).  I originally did Junkyard first but got stuck so I went to the Lightning Dome instead. I was hooked on trying to get the fastest time which gets all of the prizes for each last survivor challenges despite being underpowered on weaponary, mobility and health. Despite this, I managed to clear for the first trial with the fastest time to earn all 3 prizes.

Having 3-4 HP wasn't really ideal for the tougher trials so I went to the sewers instead, this is where things got challenging with a difficulty spike in one room as it was filled with a lot of flies, toxic soul orbs and dead bodies getting resurrected thanks to those toxic soul orbs, oh there's a toxic water down below with barrels that sink when stood on for too long AND chemical droplets, this sounds very much like a Kaizo Mario romhack but really it's not too bad if you play slowly rather going all guns blazing, after that painful segment you're rewarded a mobility power-up, this one is actually really good, not only it improves Kid's speed when going through crawl spaces and bypassing strong winds that would've pushed him back, it gives him invincibility which does trivialise some of the more challenging enemy encounters, eventually I took on a green slime boss that has 2 phases, with the first being straightforward. Phase 2 on the other hand took 7 minutes longer this was mainly due to 2 factors, their HP was pretty high and the only way to get in a good position and constantly fire is the to use the half pipe and perform BMX stunts for a speed boost, by the end of the battle I get the first weapon chip.

That's just the first main section.

The length of the other sections varies with the Lightning Dome being really short IF you don't die way too many times, Junkyard can be lengthy if you're struggling to find the 4 Jimmy robots and the Skatepark which is just as lengthy as Junkyard gives the BMX a bit more screen time thanks to its sport theme.

Gameplay mechanics

The Kid's main gear for mobility is his BMX which can teleport directly towards the player and ride it immediately thanks to the help from Naomi's teleport gizmo, it's easy to use but tough to master when it comes to slopes and hills, there is a trick system too to give him a speed boost after pulling off a successful stunt. Speaking of mobility, the movement controls were set to left stick by default which seems odd as the aiming was still limited to 8 directions so I swapped left stick with D-pad and it felt better.

While the mobility power-ups are great thanks to their amazing usage, the weapon chips are a little disappointing.

For starters they feel more like tools to be used for solving puzzles/breaking barriers rather than combat as the default ammo count can be very low. The only way to refill turbo energy is to attack the enemies with either turbo blasting, bike ramming or machete slashing. There are turbo energy refill stations but are very rare to encounter and are mostly reserved in places used to solve puzzles. I mean the combat feels Mega Man with a charge shot mechanic but instead of being restricted to two directions, you have eight and you unlock new weapons by defeating bosses, the other weapons should have at least 10-15 shots minimum before having to refill it again. Saying that, the gear you obtain from one area can make things a lot easier to deal with in another area as some puzzles can be skipped thanks to the kid's recent tools.

The Ooze Splitter can generate platforms at certain parts but the max ammo count before getting turbo energy upgrades is a measly 4, which became a bit annoying as I had a bit of difficulty completing a short sidequest to fix the antenna where missing a shot or 2 will require killing animals to refill turbo energy.

The Lightning Gun weapon is a little better, its charged shot spits out an energy ball and can hit any target that's nearby, the rate of fire from the electric sphere is pretty slow though.

The next weapon is Rocket Pistol, now let's be honest, unlike the ooze and lightning chips, this one has no utility for puzzle solving and I only used it at one part of the game that's mandatory to progress further into the adventure by destroying a breakable wall.

Lastly, the Saw Launcher are used to destroy an unique type of barrier but in terms of combat, they can pierce through enemies and ricochet off from walls, hopefully hitting the same enemy the second time, using the entire turbo energy just to spam sawblades is a valid strategy and easily one of the better unlockable weapons for combat.

The other "weapon" is a body part which is an uncommon drop from a dead enemy, this cheeky mechanic allows you to toss a dead body part towards another enemy for massive damage, as the game is pretty gory, it's cool to see this used as an ultimate "up yours" approach.  

During your journey, there's secret items to find but unlike most Metroidvanias, power-up based upgrades are fairly rare as most of them are locked behind a store or by achieving a top rank in the BMX races/BMX high score mini-games, so most of the time the hidden items are usually missing comic book pages, audio cassettes which allows the kid to change current background music and verses. The HP upgrades are odd as you only get an extra half of heart but nearly every enemy in the game takes away 1 full heart so there's times that every second HP upgrade doesn't seem to impact the player's survivability as much. There is also the cartridge system which function like perks to aid the player. You can have the healing perk where food items restore an extra 50% which pays off big time during tougher combat segments, magnetism which attracts money/health drops towards the player if they're close by, also a very good perk for boss fights.

Scraps as a currency feels just right for difficulty balancing, in the year 1997 at a post apocalyptic wasteland, upgrades can be bought by giving the shopkeeper lots of junk, the main upgrades are worth over 1000-2000 scraps depending on the item the player is trying to buy, scraps can be found by killing enemies & breaking common objects. There's semi-rare white boxes that have a lot of scraps inside worth around 200.

Sound

For starters, there's no voice acting other than grunts from both the player and enemies which is fine for the direction it's going for.

The music consists a mixture of old tracks from the film including 88mph (Bagu’s Bar Mix) and brand new tracks made for this game, composed by Le Matos who also worked on the film's soundtrack. You can tell his DNA is there for the new tracks with my personal favourite being the Junkyard theme as it's not only a lengthy track but it rearranges itself into another variant when entering the mall as the new instruments take over to make it sound like a fast paced level from a modern Sonic game. 

Value

There's a fair amount of stuff to do besides collecting all of the items for 100%, you could try mixing up the order where you get your weapon chips, as after I've beaten the game, I tried to start a new game and managed to clear Junkyard before obtaining my character's BMX thanks to a tricky deep slope jump.

Apple is a skin swap with a few text alterations and graphic tweaks to her melee weapon and blue "blood" which bonus points if you have seen the film. Shoutouts for allowing non-canon options to make the game more fun by allowing Apple to kick some ass.

There were plans for both speedrun and boss rush modes to be available but weren't in the final product as the respective milestones were not reached via Kickstarter. The latter is the bigger loss simply because it's a fresher experience to fight all bosses back to back and every speedrunner can agree the main story is still a valid option to speedrun the game, even with the unskippable but relatively short cutscenes.

Conclusion

Overall, the first two hours can be the hardest to navigate due to low HP and available tools but after clearing a section and getting the first weapon chip, there's a good sense of progression as the other sections become more managable. Be sure to save often whenever you approach a cyan couch as all of the checkpoints are not automatic as seen in many other modern Metroidvanias. If you want high octane 2D platformer with 80s vibes, this game is bodacious when it hits all of the right notes.

Radical

+ Neat mobility options after obtaining upgrades.

+ BMX at high speed with the spike wheel upgrade very slick.

+ Multiple choices of routes and story outcome depending on how you finish off the bosses.

+ You can throw parts from dead enemies to hit other enemies even harder.

+ Catchy OST with some tracks taken from the prequel film.

+ You DON'T need to watch the film to fully understand the game.
+ If you did watch the film, you'll know how much respect it has done with the source material.

Radifool

- Controls can feel overwhelming at times as I did mix up my dodge roll with BMX button. Same with some of the menu controls when selecting/browsing through upgrades/cartridge perks.

- Turbo energy at the start feels too low, should've been at least double/triple the amount.

- A lack of easy mode toggle to reduce damage output and longer damage invinciblity frames would've been nice as a form of accesibility, the boss fights do mitigate this with occasional health drops though.

- Not being able to instantly skip dialogue before boss battles can be annoying, especially after dying.

Rating: B+

Key provided by Overload PR
#AD mentioned as saying "Key provided", "Gifted" isn't valid terms according to the ASA rulings in the UK.