Tiny Turnip

This game about a tiny turnip is anything but. Going from just a handful of gifs and screenshots, I imagined it’d be almost an action-puzzle game, where you navigate levels to reach something at the end, then you get to do that again on another stage with a different gimmick. In reality, it’s not nearly so simple. It’s a full-blown Metroidvania, with power-ups, hidden secrets, little things to collect, a big ol’ world map, and ways to interact with the world that you can do from the start of the game but are never told, so you never tried. Like in Tunic! I love any game that reminds me of Tunic or lets me talk about Tunic.

First off, the controls take some getting used to. You’re a little turnip with arms, and you climb walls hand-over-hand, one at a time, a bit like Grow Home, but you use the crank to sort of swing your arm around before grabbing onto whatever it’s hovering over by pressing B. Navigating the whole game like that would be a little slow, so you soon discover ways to speed up a bit, learning rolling or swimming or ways to keep your momentum held through swings. You must find four magical items to beat the game, and each is hidden in its own section of the large world map. Like any good Metroidvania (speaking of which, have you ever played Yoku’s Island Express?), you unlock additional parts of the world by learning new abilities. It’s pretty open from the start, though, and it doesn’t feel like it shoehorns you into going one way or the other right off the bat. The map that fills in as you explore helps keep you on track, like in Echo: The Oracle’s Scroll.

There aren’t really enemies, but there are plenty of spike traps and sawblades and the like that will kill you instantly. Luckily, there are numerous checkpoints, and you really feel yourself getting better as you play through the game. At first you’re like, “Wow I kind of get it by why am I so slow and bad at this?” but within an hour or so you’ll be swinging through the world with your own two hands like you’re George of the Jungle.

There are a ton of secrets to collect, it’s a sturdy “real game” length, and the controls are really catered specifically to the Playdate. Tiny Turnip, more than most games, is a true showcase for what the Playdate is and can do, and it fits right in with the other gems in Season Two. Yes, it’s a little weird both in concept and execution, but give it an hour to come to grips with the controls and you’ll find a buried treasure just beneath the surface.

(Released June 26, 2025, as part of Season Two. Turnip Mountain, by the same developer but a completely different game despite having similar vibes and mechanics, has a free demo on Steam.)