Turnip Boy Robs a Bank review

What is it? A veggie-filled roguelite full of quirky internet humour.
Release date January 18, 2024
Expect to pay Unknown
Developer Snoozy Kazoo
Publisher Graffiti Games
Reviewed on Nvidia GeForce RTX3070, AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, 32GB RAM
Steam Deck TBA
Link Official site

You know that scene at the end of the Scott Pilgrim movie where he's having to do the whole Chaos Theatre shtick a second time, breezing through security with just a couple of punches and some hurtful words? It was kinda badass, and that's how I felt after a couple of hours into Turnip Boy Robs a Bank. Though instead of a morally questionable 23-year-old Canadian, I'm a morally questionable root vegetable.

It's not my first adventure with this crime-committing turnip—developer Snoozy Kazoo first debuted the bulbous boy back in 2021's Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, an entirely-too-short old school Legend of Zelda-esque adventure. This time, the delinquency has been cranked up to whole-ass bank robbery and its genre swapped out to a roguelite. 

Turnip Boy Robs a Bank's gameplay loop is nice and simple—set up in the hideaway, go to the bank, shake a few hostages down for cash, fire a few bullets at the enemies dotted around and loot whatever I can. Elevators around the map will randomly pull from a pool of predetermined rooms, and I can usually get a feel for where I'm gonna end up based on what the elevator doors look like. One might lead to an office with a couple of safes to laser at, while another puts me in a strange room where I can gamble money for better weapons.

The pool of rooms is, admittedly, quite small. Each individual room's layout is static throughout the game, with the variation coming from better rewards and more difficult enemies standing in my way to get to that loot. Sure, it helped the whole «get in and out as fast as possible» mentality that I'm sure comes with robbing a bank, but I wish there had been more variety and motivation for me to explore rather than immediately beelining for