Review: Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is a whirlwind of hot and cold elements. The game is filled to the brim with self aware humor and charming characters. Clearly the designers of this game knew what they were looking for and created a game with a level of polish that we don't normally see in indie development. The user interface look and feel comes off as extremely purposeful complete with perfect sound effects and bouncy animations that add to the charm. Turnup boy is an adventure game that executes much like a Legend of Zelda game with the singular town acting as the central hub for all activities. The Mayor Onion has unfairly threatened to confiscate Turnip Boy's home unless Turnip Boy completes a series of quests and fetches a number of items. These quests take Turnip boy to the outer reaches of the lands connecting to the town and an unexpectedly strange and decent story unfolds throughout the game. Unfortunately the story ends more like a missed opportunity to say something profound about the nature of existence or the meaning of life (It was clearly headed in that direction), but just to have it get interesting towards the end was a pleasant enough surprise for me.

What unfortunately dulled the overall experience for me were the absolutely deficient combat and enemies and the overall length of the game. The combat gives the player a standard attack and a dash (which is a stumble and characteristic of our protagonist). The primary issues here are that the sword play is meh, the enemies are overly predictable, and the i-frames after being hit don't give the player a chance to move away from enemies. This leads to a combat system that feels very unsatisfying and at time unfair as enemies will bounce you back and forth until your health has depleted and you die. The games is also only a few hours long. I completed my first boss kill at about 3 hours, but there is a number of completionist tasks to do before seeing the true ending once you are done. All said and done I can't see the game lasting more than 5 hours total.


All said and done Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is a very polished game that has some very specific deficiencies. This developer has a promising future in creation, but this game is unlikely to have mass appeal. Anyone interested in a short whimsical adventure/puzzler that can accept some flawed combat shouldn't hesitate, but those players looking for perfection should probably keep looking.


Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/12...


A copy of this game was distributed to pixel. free of charge for the purpose of this video.