HomeReviewsTurnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion review: the funniest game I’ve ever playedWould also make a delicious soup
Would also make a delicious soup
Image credit:Graffiti Games
Image credit:Graffiti Games
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion Coming Soon TrailerWatch on YouTube
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion Coming Soon Trailer
I mention this because Turnip Boy does not describe itself as a comedy game, and yet it is possibly the funniest game I have ever played. I can’t remember finding a game this funny sinceTales From The Borderlands, and I think Turnip Boy is actually much funnier. It’s in the bones of the game. Every citizen is a fruit or vegetable, rendered in entertaining style. The travelling biologist is an avocado, for example, with the green bit made to look like it’s a backpack the seed is wearing. Turnip Boy has a bouncy little walk and his feet make suckerytappa tappanoises. The first boss you fight is a giant pig king that explodes into bacon when you beat it. In the icebox of a haunted house, you find a gang of mafioso pickles in snazzy hats.
But the writing is obviously where its funny bones come to the fore. It’s got an extremely online vibe, but with a sense of self-awareness. I suspect this is a very specific brand of humour, but it was one that I really enjoyed. Early on, for example, a streamer blocks your path and demands a sub from you - so you have to go and buy a sandwich. One of the first side quests you can encounter is to retrieve rent from a tenant, but the only action available at that point is to kill him. The other tenant expresses some dismay, until you hand the cash over. And Turnip Boy will gleefully tear up not just his own tax documents, but literally any piece of paper that is handed to him. This is exploited to great effect.
I can haz references?A cranberry who talks in UWU speak gives Turnip Boy this art of him as Turnip-Chan. I enjoyed it a lot. I even got a kick out of the piece of macaroni reciting the Navy Seal copypasta. The jokes aren’t all internet-based, but from this aside you will probably know if you will find Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion funny or excruciating.
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion makes fun of all kinds of pop culture tropes (like zombie movies, and video game quest structures), but not so specifically or consistently that you need to have watched every Marvel film, say, or played everyResident Evilgame, so you can just sit back and enjoy everything. This extends to the puzzles, too, which are mostly little tic-tacs of logic to freshen up exploring an area. Turnip Boy amasses various tools: a watering can to grow bomb plants or portal flowers, boots to kick the bombs in a cardinal direction, gloves to push big watermelon cubes. Using these in concert - say, growing a watermelon block to push into a hole in the floor, so you can roll a bomb plant over it - will let you explode or open barriers to new rooms in a dungeon.
The boss fights can be a big step up in difficulty from the rest of the game, mostly because the combat is a bit inelegant. The game does have weapon quickswapping, but needing to switch between your sword and your watering can for basically every boss fight,andinteract with special items in the arena, becomes stilted. The speed of your movement and actions doesn’t quite build up enough flow with the big telegraphed boss attacks, so you never establish any kind of rhythm. The fights feel off, and can be wildly difficult as a result. It’s frustrating, especially because the bosses are often really fun concepts, as in the giant mutant stag, which I was stuck on for approximately my entire life.
You can tell that someone has thought about how the combat system fits into the game as a whole, though, because Turnip Boy’s dodge is actually him tripping and falling over. It’s funny! The animation is great! But he also gets up about half a second too slowly, and I ended up barely ever using it. It’s perhaps a case where practicality was sacrificed for the greater joke.
