Who likes to do taxes amiright? Well, except the weird few outliers that actually do look forward to doing their taxes. Well, if you’ve read the title of this game, you can already tell where this is going. It turns out that out Turnip Boy, who we’ll be playing as throughout the game, has been avoiding doing his taxes… or well paying for anything. I guess it also doesn’t help that he has a tendency to rip anything that’s paper, and it seems he has quite the muscle from doing it. No matter if it’s something as small as a receipt or as big as a book or as valuable as a signature, his instinct to rip it will win out. Which probably played into him not paying anything.
When the game starts, Turnip Boy needed to pay his taxes like yesterday, but of course, he rips it up and goes about his normal day. Well, he would have. Assumedly right after he rips up the late taxes notice, Mayor Onion comes in to kick Turnip Boy out of his Greenhouse and, due to Turnip Boy obviously having no money, he decides to let Turnip Boy pay off his debt in another way. Turnip Boy doesn’t need to get money, which thank goodness for that, but will need run errands for Mayor Onion instead if he wants his Greenhouse back.
So, it’s time to get the few items Mayor Onion wants, which will require Turnip Boy to fend off dangerous animals and go into dungeons. Which is where he’ll learn the sad truth of what’s been going on in the background as well as meeting other cute fruit characters. It’s not long until you grab a watering can and a sword, which will turn out useful all throughout your journey. Running into any animals that just love vegetables? Sword time! And if you need to dodge out of the way, Turnip Boy can trip on nothing to boost himself forward and (hopefully) out of the way. There are also various plants that you’ll use the watering can on to help you out, though you do need to find an accessory to make the most out of it first (which you’ll find as you continue on). There are bombs, or Boomblooms, that you can grow and can be used to blow stuff up once you kick it and also cube melons, Movemelons, that you can push to cover a (convenient) square hole or use it to stop Boomblooms so they don’t miss what you want to blow up. Of course, there are a couple more items or aspects which mix things up and make you consider another way to solve the puzzle ahead of you.
To progress through and get the items Mayor Onion wants, you’ll need to fight some bosses which won’t just lay down and let you take what you want or walk past them. You can just use your sword to slowly get their health down or use the Boomblooms to take a huge chunk of health away. Be careful though, they will rush at you to take some of your health away and to destroy the plant you just watered and was about to move/kick. Plus, they might move out of the way like right after.
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is a pretty easy game, especially during the beginning, but it does become difficult as more mechanics are added. Exploring around isn’t too difficult aside from some parts that require you to work with two mechanics to get rid of some obstacles (or when you just forget you had an item that would have helped) and there are some areas that you just can’t access yet (even though it looks like you can). The enemies will also require more than 1 hit to take down as well as being a bit more unpredictable with their moves. The difficulty also get higher during boss battles as it turns to making sure the boss doesn’t ram into you, to getting the battlefield into the perfect situation for you to get your attack in while also trying to not let the boss touch you and hope they don’t run into the Boomblooms or the Movemelons before you can move/kick them where you want. While also hoping that you don’t cause your own death. I even had some difficulties with the later half while I was trying to set up a big hit or not dodging at all or in time.
But, if you are having troubles, there is an option in the menus to make the game even easier. You can increase your strength and/or turn on god mode. There’s also a speedrunning timer for anyone that wants to hold that record as well.
Other than doing the main quest where you collect items to pay off your debt to Mayor Onion, there is some side stuff that you’ll be able to do. If you talk to other characters hanging around, you might come across someone that is in need of help. Well, they don’t outright say it as they just casually mention it. What they need may not be available at that moment, and may require you to progress through the story, but it’s pretty easy to find everything as long as you’re talking to everyone. Turnip boy doesn’t really keep a list of what people need, so you’ll have to remember who asked for what so you can travel in the right direction. Though, with the short length making it easy to complete in one sitting, I’m sure it’ll be easy for others to remember. There was really only one time I got annoyed and that was when one side quest required you to go back and forth between two areas that you had to travel to the end of. So why complete these side quests? Well, you do get some rewards. You’ll get hats that you’ll be able to put Turnip Boy in so he can be even cuter, more documents to rip up, and more heart fruits.
Granted, there is a hat that isn’t tied to a quest, there are more documents laying around that you can pick up, read, and then rip up, and of course more heart fruits. There is already a handy guide for anyone that finds themselves missing any, which I personally was just missing 1 hat and 1 heart fruit, but Turnip Boy does keep a bucket list of how many documents he wants to rip up. You won’t know what they are until you do, but you’ll know if you missed any in that moment (probably not so much if you already finished and don’t remember where the documents before and after a missing one was at). I didn’t know this before, as I found all of the documents while I was going through the game, but there may be another phase for the last boss if you rip up all of the documents you can find or be given in the game. While ripping up all documents and finding all the hats will give you the last heart fruit After you defeat the final boss, reloading will put you right before you would be encountering it so there’s no need to worry about finding and completing everything beforehand.
Though, even if you 100% this game, this game will take a little bit over 2 hours to complete. So this is something to consider if you’re someone that wants to get the most play time out of what you’re paying.
There’s a lot of humor that’s filled in everyone’s lines, which is going to be a hit or a miss for a lot of people. A good chunk is internet humor and pop culture references that’s going to be pretty dated in the future and is going to annoy some people that already had too much of it. Some of them are great, like Turnip-chan, as they don’t rely too much on it and can easily stand on its own (or it’s more of a reference). The best humor this has is Turnip Boy ripping every thing that gets in his hands that is paper in any way though, which who isn’t coming into this game just for this. The reactions some of the characters will have is even funnier. Luckily, even if it’s a joke that doesn’t land, each character only has one or two lines so it doesn’t drag it out.
There is content planned for down the road though! There’s no release date yet, other than it’ll be coming sometime in the coming months, but a free update is planned to bring in some more replayability. The plan is to make a replayable, roguelite-esque dungeon that will have it’s own little story and unique items. So for anyone that wants more Turnip Boy, or reluctant to pick it up due to the play time being low, this something to look forward to. It’ll be interesting to see what this new dungeon will end up being!
Verdict
I realize I say this a lot, but sometimes you just need a break from hard games and you just want something that’s relaxing or just easy or maybe you just recently played a game that managed to disappoint you. Well, Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is just that game. It has such a cute art style, the premise of the main character ripping up documents and being pulled into this because he didn’t pay taxes is pretty funny, it was interesting to see that there’s this whole background lore going on, and the dungeons and bosses do get interesting and difficult over time. However, the humor is a hit or a miss, the game will be easy for some, those that don’t like only fetch quests won’t like the quests here, and the game is short.
To be honest, I was already sold on this game based on the title alone, as well as the art style once I clicked to check out the game more, and while it was shorter than I thought, I don’t regret my time with it.
Originally published at https://witchsreviewcorner.com on May 5, 2021.
