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Reviewed On: PC (Steam)
Also Available On: Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and Gamepass
Price: $14.99 USD
Developer: Snoozy Kazoo
Publisher: Graffiti Games
Release Date: January 18, 2024
Please Note: A review code was provided by Graffiti Games but does not influence the opinions in this review.
Roguelike adventure titles have started to take a hold on me and have slowly become one of my favorite genres to play. Some of my favorites in the genre include Hades, Returnal, and Moonlighter. I loved playing Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (shortened henceforth to TBCTE) and when I saw that there was a sequel coming out, I knew I had to play it. TBCTE is not a roguelike, but the sequel that Snoozy Kazoo made is. TBCTE was a terrific first outing for Turnip Boy and they follow up with a sequel that takes what you know and changes it around a bit. Does it leave a strong mark, or are there changes that might not be so terrific? Well, that’s what this review will discuss.
In case it is not clear, this is actually a direct sequel to TBCTE. The story does follow right up with what happens at the end of the game where you defeat a certain entity. Without understanding the first game, you are absolutely good to jump into this one, but there are opportunities to get a refresher on it if need be. In the first game, you were committing tax evasion by doing some certain sneaky things for the Mayor. This time, your job is to infiltrate a bank and rob it with the Pickle Gang. Seems simple, right? Well… it’s not as simple as you would think.
Mr. Stinky is the one who owns the bank and doesn’t want you robbing the place. Well, that makes logical sense for a premise, but all of the intricacies of who else is in the bank might be a surprise. Characters from the first game come back, but besides you and the Pickle Gang at the base, the rest of the returning and new characters are side activities that are entirely optional. Honestly, the story of the first game was definitely better and less predictable compared to the likes of this one. However, it still had a nice overall premise that wasn’t just considered an afterthought, and I think that is always appreciated.
The gameplay has many parts, but one of them is the fact you only have a small amount of time on each run before you have to deal with endless amounts of police coming to hunt you down and then a gas that will eventually kill you if you dont leave the bank ASAP. Thankfully before each run in the bank, you are in the safe room that provides many different aspects to help you on the heist. One thing you can do is get items from the dark web to help with your progress such as a laser, lantern, C4 Bomb, and many other things. The second thing is if you find temporary weapons on your run and make it out in time, you can recycle them to make more powerful permanent weapons such as grenade launchers, rifles, and more. The third and final key thing you can do is get permanent upgrades like a bigger money bag, more health, stronger guns or melee, and in my opinion that is one of the best tools… more time.
More time, what do I mean by that? Well, you don’t get an infinite amount of time in each bank heist since you have to keep coming in and out of the bank and this is where the roguelike elements come into play. Every time, the opening and main areas are the same layout for the actual style, but the rooms that hold more treasure will vary and change locations each time you come back. The layouts aren’t different so once you do it a couple of times, you can get a muscle memory of the layout of the room to make it easier to explore. Enemies will somewhat vary each time you go in the bank, the items that they drop will change, weapons you find, objects that give you money if you escape successfully, and more will change each time in the bank with the main hub areas a constant.
You are trying to find the sweet motherload of treasure that is somewhere in the bank. Getting permanent upgrades is important, but you need a good setup of weapons to take down the four big bosses in order to unlock further rooms in the bank. Besides the main activities and rooms to explore, there are side missions that can be completed to net you little things like cosmetics, or other items for other missions. Nothing super crazy but definitely adds to the amount of content in the game which is great. Stay too long or get too greedy and end up dying, you lose all stolen items you picked up and a sizeable amount of money collected in the run. There are other things in the game, but I think that should sum up most of it without too many spoilers. The gameplay was solid all around.
Music and audio design are two things that cannot be overlooked for games in my opinion. They need to have something that will both keep you involved in the game and also moving along with the adventure. Well thankfully the soundtrack has lots to like in it from funky beats to quick tempo songs, to slower more relaxing selections to give a nice balance. You also can find a special room with a DJ that will provide you more songs if you can bring him souls from individuals slain with a reaper scythe. I find this to be one of the best weapons in the game, not just for when you are collecting souls but in general! The audio design also is well crafted with different weapons providing a bit of a different effect on the screen and sound, the audio from the characters, and everything else in-between.
Honestly, graphics will make or break if a game is fun to play. The first game was absolutely beautiful to play, and the art style appears to be updated but pretty much similar to the first one. I love the fact that they made this game on the GameMaker engine and I thought the game was stunning throughout with the different areas, weapon designs, visuals, and characters. The team even mentioned something in the credits that I won’t spoil that made me go… “holy crap they really did that”. There isn’t any real voice acting, but the expressions on the characters in talking with them show a lot of detail which provides a nice connection to them. The game is an indie adventure so I don’t expect perfection, but honestly there was very little I could fault about the graphics and art in the game.
I don’t normally play lots of games on PC, although that is changing this year. I had no crashes, lag, slowdown, framerate issues, or any weird graphical phenomenon throughout my five hour adventure which unfortunately isn’t super common these days. Even the final boss which had massive amounts of things going on at once was solid as a rock for the performance. I did have a few gripes with the game though, but they are not deal breakers by any chance. One of them is the aspect ratio you see in the images, is not by choice and not something I love seeing. If there was an option to change it to make it not have boarders, I couldn’t find it. Another one was a picture you could take somewhere that produces a stupid jump scare that killed me instantly which I didn’t think would happen which got me pretty mad. A few other small nitpicks, but overall I had very few complaints in the game.
I don’t normally discuss this part, but I need to mention it here as it is some of the best I have seen in a while. Snoozy Kazoo’s accessibility features also makes it so every player can play and beat this game. I chose the harder difficulty but there is an easier mode too. You can even make it harder than standard hard mode if you crave the challenge. Then there is GOD mode which basically is invincibility mode so you can just focus on the story or if there is a part that you are stuck on. Honestly, both the solid performance and the accessibility options for players are both very strong pluses for this game, with only a few nitpicks that I can fault.
Its still early enough in the year where there are tons of games coming out, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this title. I loved the art and visual style for the game, the music was great, and the sound design was good too. The gameplay was fun and never overstayed its welcome with its reasonable game length of five hours. The story, while a tad predictable, was fun to witness how everything played out. The side optional objects also added story for certain things which was terrific to witness some of them. I enjoyed this one a bit more than the first one, even with the weaker story, because the timer made me consider what my objective of said run was going to be. If you are unsure, you could always check out the game on GamePass as it is part of the service, but if you like roguelikes and fun short games, you will probably like this one!
Review Score: 8/10
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