After committing tax fraud, everyone’s favorite bad veggie is back for another round of no-good deeds with Turnip Boy Robs a Bank. An intentionally silly old-school roguelite, this game ramps up on the action and gives it a heist twist with a great excuse for the grind, Groundhog Day-like but definitely with a lot more shooting and hostage shakedowns. This follow-up to Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is a charming and addictive little game that comes short of brilliance due to a few design decisions that aren’t entirely understandable, mainly the aspect ratio.
Turnip’s Eleven
Clearly not happy with the felonies from the previous game, Turnip Boy is now teaming up with the Pickled Gang for a heist that is going down in history as the most healthy one, or something like that – he is going to rob the Botanical Bank. Far from a small and simple location with a few hallways and a safe room, there are outdoor places and entire communities living there, as you will find out without getting deep into any additional spoilers.
The first thing that jumps at you when you launch the game is one of those design choices that are hard to comprehend. Unlike the previous game that shines in all its widescreen glory, Robs a Bank is locked into 4:3 paired with a few sidebars with customizable patterns as the option to occupy the empty space. Whatever the reasoning behind this move may be, and it surely wasn’t a technical one, it doesn’t seem to give the game any edge over a 16:9 aspect ratio. It’s a bit of a letdown to be forced into this and it feels like a step-back from the original game, concealing part of the gameplay area; furthermore, since this is a lot more action-based than before, it’s not uncommon to be hit by enemies shooting outside of the visible screen area, something that could have been minimized with the wide display.
The warehouse is where the gang reunites before each heist attempt, and there will be many. Each run into the bank is limited to an initial three minutes before vegetable police and swat start dropping in from the roof in larger numbers, a clear sign that it’s time to escape with the loot you already amassed. But it’s not hard to resist to this wave of enemies, earning some extra cash in the process, until you reach five starts of wanted status, like in GTA games, and the bank owner decides to gas the place, turning things into a run or die situation. Die and you lose part of your loot; succeed in escaping and you have plenty of money to upgrade your abilities and gadgets.
Some of the most important things can be found in Robo-Rafael’s store. Things like adding an extra minute to your run or increasing the amount of loot you can carry around are crucial, not to mention the obvious extra damage and fire rate, among others. You can only upgrade these up to a certain standard, with increasing costs – the timer, for example, is limited to six minutes maximum.
Then you have the Dark Web, another place to spend your loot in diverse tools of the trade. C4 is crucial to blow up the safe door, and a laser pointer cuts through smaller safes like a warm knife through butter. But things get interesting when you go for the odd items such as goop boots to walk over spilled toxic waste, or the lantern to see farther in darker areas. Despite seemingly optional, they are crucial to your progress, especially due to the amount of enemies that you get to face in though locations.
Bring weapons back – you can only carry two at a time – and you can recycle them in your own weapon research area. This helps unlock an arsenal to use on the heist, from uzis to grenade launchers. One of my favorites is the bow, a good compromise between damage and fire rate, with the added perk of trespassing enemies and hitting everyone in a row.
Bad Beets
That should cover the warehouse part, and now for the bank heist component. Playing pretty much in a loop due to the limited time you have to get in, loot, and get out, you unlock new areas once in a while due to sheer persistence and quest completion. It’s not always about shooting everyone and doing shakedowns to innocent bystanders, it also depends on helping citizens with their wacky quests, something that carries across runs. Getting divorce papers, defiling paintings, bringing this illegal item called wood to someone, returning a food certificate, or force someone into paying their debt are just some of the options among many others – this roguelite shooter doesn’t lack in the quest department.
The bank is larger than expected and the map isn’t very helpful to begin with, especially because some areas beyond the elevator may vary between runs, so pay close attention to where you’re stepping into. Same goes to finding room exits, as the layouts are a bit all over the place – in a good way – and not all doors are easy to spot.
Shooting feels good, with mouse and keyboard control offering nice accuracy, naturally hindered for rapid fire weapons. There is some creativity at work with the secondary weapons, melee or ranged, with some designs that defy description but are effective in their own ways, from musical note projectiles to exploding flowers, among many others. However, these come with limited ammo, something that ponders on your decision to drop one of your main weapons for the rest of the run.
One of the issues you may struggle with is noticing where the aiming crosshair is at times. A quick trip to the options is advised as there are alternate crosshairs to select from, some of them much more intuitive than the mere tiny dot that the game begins with.
Boss battles are part of the deal, some of them chaotic as they should be, and with creatures that have some kind of affinity and identity to the vegetable theme of the game. While not hard on the default mode, you can switch to the alternate playstyle to get a much harder challenge.
Rogue Veggies Are Good For You
Featuring an interesting gameplay loop neatly balancing shooter and exploration, Turnip Boy Robs a Bank is the best game ever made featuring a rotten, outlaw turnip. It’s occasionally funny, quests aren’t entirely straightforward or quick to achieve (including some “kill X enemies of this type” ones), and it feels rewarding to unlock a new area and fight a new boss. The choice to lock the aspect ratio to 4:3 is baffling, doesn’t benefit the gameplay at all, but that’s a quirk worth living with since most of the game is sheer roguelite goodness with veggies on top.
Score: 8.5/10
Pros:
- A good mix of roguelike shooter and exploration
- Solid shooter mechanics
- Some silly humor
- Fun quests and plenty of them
Cons:
- Aspect ratio incomprehensibly locked to 4:3
- Map is close to useless
Turnip Boy Robs a Bank review code was provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.