CHENNAI : Turnip Boy Robs a Bank is one of the silliest games I have ever played, and it’s a miracle that it works so well.
The story
The game is as simple as its title. A young Turnip teams up with the infamous Pickled Gang. Their leader, Dillitini, needs him to execute a perfect bank heist. He jams the airwaves, and sends Turnip Boy into botanical bank, armed with a gun, and a leaf sword. It’s not all smooth sailing though — Turnip has only three minutes before Stinky, the bank manager who is also a bulb of garlic, sends a swat team after him.
What’s in the bank?
It functions rather oddly, this botanical bank. There are elevators that lead up to different rooms every time. There are other rooms that are sealed shut, requiring key cards or passcodes to enter. And there’s an awful lot of vegetables that seem to almost live there, and constantly want to have a long chat with the Turnip. Eventually Turnip realises that he might have to befriend some of these other vegetables and does the odd jobs for them. There’s a starfruit artist, who needs an employer to pay her. Turnip gives the employer a quick shakedown. He joins a weird mushroom worshipping cult. Some of them promise Turnip boy a reward if he slashes down all the security Snails. Some of them seem to encourage Turnip boy to engage in bank vandalism, promising him a reward for destroying all the furniture. The weirdest one of these veggie requests involved a cranberry insisting I find her grandmother to give her a book of Manhwa. Insignificant though these jobs may seem — they are almost mandatory, and eventually help Turnip boy in raising sufficient finances to upgrade his inventory up for a Boss Battle. You might be wondering now, how we do all of this, if a run lasts just three minutes…
The mechanic
Alright — it’s no surprise. Turnip Boy is a roguelite game. This means that while a single run into the bank lasts three minutes, it can potentially be repeated forever. At the point of writing this article, I estimate having done atleast 200 such runs. It wouldn’t take that many attempts to finish the game, but it’s a lot of fun to challenge yourself to steal more money each time the Turnip runs in, that you would want to play the game as long as you can. Created by a tiny independent studio called Snoozy Kazoo, which by their own definition creates “really, really dumb video games”, Turnip Boy is surprisingly deeper than it appears. The stakes are very clear from the beginning — there are only about 20 rooms in the bank, and satisfying the requests of the vegetable friends he makes along the way are self-contained within these rooms. The catch is, almost no rooms are readily accessible. This means that boss battles provide regular roadblocks, and you must have the ability to fight past them to unlock the other rooms.
Weapons and upgrades
Boss battles are not easy, unless you are a remarkably nimble gamer. To make them more fun, it’s advisable to upgrade your health and weaponry. This is done at the end of each run, at the weapon warehouse. There are shops aplenty, where the Pickled Gang’s more skillful members do weapon upgrades, provide roids, and even shop on the dark web for necessary items. At the end of a successful run, you may accumulate just enough money to purchase an additional health bar, a few seconds more on the clock, or just a fancy hat.
Who can play this?
There’s no gamer too advanced, or too new to games that wouldn’t love Turnip Boy. It’s a breath of fresh air if you’re tired of the usual, super-serious multiplayer games. It’s also easy enough that you could pick it up yourself and play it, even if the only game you’ve ever played is Candy Crush. Turnip Boy Robs a Bank can be played on the Nintendo Switch, Windows PC, and Xbox. It is currently available along with the Xbox game pass.
Anusha Ganapathi
@quofles
(This economics graduate spends her leisure time preparing for the zombie apocalypse)