Short but sweet can sound like a back-handed compliment. Even when the gags are funny, and most of the time they are, the rapid-fire can still feel a little exhausting. Or just some random non sequitur that feels like it might be an in-joke for the development team. Everyone’s got a snappy one-liner to share. There are hits and misses when it comes to the humor, too. Fortunately, combat is rare enough-and the only penalty for death is respawning outside the room in which you died-that this remains only a minor irritation rather than any more serious flaw. A slight delay on performing the attack, coupled with a strange thrusting motion rather than a more conventional swing, leads to frequent mistimed hits. borrows and parodies familiar elements with an affection and exuberance that sweeps you along in a giddy rush for the entirety of its short but sweet duration Conveying a certain carefree attitude is all well and good-and I admit that Turnip Boy’s momentum, the way he feels like he’s rolling around, expresses a restless excitability that encapsulates his character-but it can easily tip over into carelessness. The breezy tone carries over into the way Turnip Boy controls, in the sense that there’s a looseness and imprecision in how he moves and interacts with the world. Turnip Boy’s playful effervescence remains thankfully unspoiled by any ponderous timeouts for head-scratching. They hit just the right note, introducing a new wrinkle but letting you straighten things out pretty quickly and move on to the next challenge. And every dungeon has a satisfying moment where you need to rethink your approach up to that point and try a new angle.ĭon’t worry, I’m not talking about puzzles verging into The Witness territory-nor indeed on the level of some of the trickier shrines in Breath of the Wild-but I was pleasantly surprised by the mileage Turnip Boy gets out of a small collection of puzzle mechanics. While one dungeon has you exploring the many uses of your watering can, the next will add bombs to the mix before asking you to combine both items to progress. Working in tandem with the key items you unlock, each puzzle type builds on the previous one as the scope of your acquired abilities expands, so does the complexity of the puzzles. The puzzles are the highlight of each dungeon. Turnip Boy’s questing takes place across a small overworld composed of barely a handful of regions, each of which culminates in a compact Zelda-style dungeon where you solve a new type of puzzle before facing off against a boss. You don’t want too many obstacles weighing down the whimsy. These sidequests are mostly simple affairs, requiring little more than the ability to remember where to find the particular character who needed that thing, but the lightness here works to their benefit. Every vegetable or fruit character Turnip Boy meets is caught in the midst of one comical mishap or another, and eager to reward you with some nonsensical item for helping them out. Mayor Onion is not alone in his penchant for silliness, though. Really? That’s why you needed a laser pointer? You’ve got to be kidding me. But rather than leaving you annoyed at having to run some pointless errands, each new task only compounds the absurdity in amusing new ways. His demands are ludicrous from the get-go and seemingly untethered from your ultimate goal. With Turnip Boy’s fiscal failure exposed in the opening scene, the town mayor channels Tom Nook by setting a quest that will allow you to pay off your debt and eventually inherit the family home.

Turnip boy commits tax evasion plot