Turbo Sloths review

Wild and wooly, Turbo Sloths envisions the lethargic creatures driving Mad Max-style vehicles. Somehow, it manages to get even weirder.

Once a thriving sub-genre thanks to titles like MotorStorm, Burnout, and Split/Second, the extreme racer has tragically waned in popularity. Save for Wreckfest, the modern marketplace offers few fusions of gratuitous horsepower, explosive crashes, and a thundering metal soundtrack. But undoubtedly, Cyprus-based developer RainStyle Games still appreciates the appeal of spirited vehicular mayhem. While their inaugural debut is filled with quirkiness, Turbo Sloths’ concept of trucks outfitted with jet turbines is a throwback to the kind of over-the-top thrills of the seventh console generation.

One distinguishing quality of Turbo Sloths is the game’s erratic tone. The opening cinematic feels like game trailer cliché, with its wistful narrative, montage of establishing shots, and an exquisite orchestral-driven melody that recalls Clint Mansell’s theme from Requiem for a Dream. You’d be forgiven for not expecting Sloth’s violent wipeouts, explosions, and a soundtrack filled with screams and scorching guitar solos after a tranquil pre-rendered sequence like that.

An additional surprise is found in the game’s moniker. Turbo Sloths doesn’t refer to the hulking asphalt rollers that race across the game’s dystopian wastelands. Instead, the title alludes to the game’s cast of anthropomorphic creatures. With dialog dispensed through visual novel-like windows, there are some unexpected personalities, from Joe, a friendly sloth that runs the local racing shop to Sue, a sexy three-toe with an ombre dye job and leather jacket. Yes, it resembles someone turning the Otter Pops into a dating sim.

But Turbo Sloths’ weirdness is part of the fun. It almost feels like RainStyle Games didn’t want to throw out any of the ideas that emerged during brainstorming sessions. If I listed every peculiarity about Turbo Sloths, like the exploding robotic deer-dogs that decide to dart in front of your vehicle, you’d probably think I was making shit up. But the game is filled with all kinds of oddities. Some, like the Lakitu Bros-like drone that flies around during a race feel like satire, especially when its camera flash momentarily blinds you.

Turbojunk is the offbeat name given to the game’s massive rollers. Enter the main campaign and you’ll drive your junk across a succession of events that range from quick circuit sprints to point-to-point races, not unlike the Dirt series. Similarly, Turbo Sloths’ monstrosities don’t handle all that differently from the trophy truck races in Codemasters’ franchise. Both are excessively weighty but outrageously powered, making spin-outs from an excessively tight-turn a persistent possibility. Like most racers, you’ll spend your winnings upgrading your junk’s chassis, tires, brakes, turbine, roller, and turbo. But don’t expect your Junk to ever offer the responsiveness or handling of a Formula One car. The game’s vehicles are outrageously hefty and prone to sliding, so upgrades do little to tame their turbulent performance.

Given the game’s fondness for speed and destruction, it’s not much of a spoiler to state that you’ll soon unlock things such as a Jarvis-like AI assistant, weapons, and even a perk that turns your junk into a chariot that’s as fast as a fighter jet. And you’ll want to gather every single advantage that can be gleaned. CPU drivers tend to follow a pre-determined path, but they can bump into you causing a wicked spin-out. However, it’s the hazards liberally strewn across each course that are the real danger.

With the recent holiday patch in place, gift-wrapped presents, Christmas trees, and snowmen are scattered all over each track, each slowing you down a bit as you collide into them. Much like the FlatOut racing series, you’ll barrel through a lot of obstructions like track barriers and automated turrets, adding to the sense of chaos. Often, skyships soar in front of the race leader dropping explosive barrels while volatile bugs scamper about on the surface. While most of these hindrances ebb away at your endurance meter, some deathtraps like a giant battering ram will destroy your vehicle on the spot.

But don’t worry too much about blowing up your junk. Turbo Sloths employs some obvious rubber-banding to ensure you’re usually capable of winning the race. Occasionally, the system works against you, though. Initiate your chariot ability while you’re in second place and you’ll watch the race leader pick up nearly as much speed. Apparently, sloths don’t care about balance and fairness. But that also means you can turn a blooper reel of crashes into a first-place finish if you can avoid choking on the final lap.

At present, there’s a certain amount of jank that accompanies junk racing. Pop-in is perceptible on even higher-end GPUs like an RTX 3080, with ground geometry unmistakably loading in during race countdowns and some distant environmental details appearing as you careen around the game’s tracks. Although the game was fairly stable, there were intermittent moments where the controller polling rate seemed to take a severe nosedive. At launch, Turbo Sloths wasn’t working on Steam Deck. Fortunately, it is functional now with a DX 11 build option (make sure to select Proton GE compatibility under properties). But even with a few graphical options turned down, achieving a solid 30 frame-per-second output is improbable.

For those with more robust desktops and laptops, paying twenty dollars for the base game of Turbo Sloths isn’t unreasonable. But the presence of both a paid expansion pack and year one season pass feels less justified. For indie efforts like Sloths, there is a common trade-off, where a lack of polish is often accompanied by a lower price point. As much as I like to recommend this enjoyable and eccentric extreme racer, I’d hold off until all the content is bundled together. Perhaps some of the game’s rough edges will be smoothed out at that point.

Turbo Sloths was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.