Review: TINY TURBO CARS Is A Little Lost In Its Frantic Fun
When it comes to board games, the racing genre is extremely difficult to make fun, engaging, and thrilling without becoming silly and random. Almost every other genre of game or activity has great board game counterparts except for racing games. Tiny Turbo Cars introduces some very unique mechanics into the board game world and feels as chaotic as a race with RC cars would be, but it doesn’t quite hit the mark of either high-level complexity or easy-to-engage mechanics.
The game is quite simple, line up a series of commands in your gamepad and let your car run its programmed course. This is done by the players literally shifting around a puzzle of movement command tiles until they are happy with the order of movements and actions. The player who takes the shortest amount of time to choose their series of commands gets to move their car first while the other players follow. There are various actions that help players get farther ahead, move side to side, attack other players, and repair cars.
Each player is given a car that has a unique ability. These abilities can vary from better movement options to not being affected by certain negative effects of the game and many other things. The base game comes with only five different cars, which feels pretty slim for having a maximum of four players. There are plenty of small expansion packs that have loads of other car options, but it is surprising to see so few options in the base box. The different cars, different track sections, and movement options culminate into a fine and fairly quick game that takes players through an entertaining race with friends.
However, I do wish that there was a bit more finesse and strategy in the overall racing and course programming. Sometimes things get really frantic and you can be given a bad gamepad where the sliding tiles can get physically stuck, making it time-consuming and difficult to move the tiles around. I understand that this is definitely a party-type game and meant for fun and silliness. But dealing with so many rules and rough game pieces for the lack of depth in the game can end up with an unrewarding gameplay experience.
If you want a unique game with mostly good racing mechanics, this game can really throw a group of friends into fun, frantic chaos. But the complexity of the rules and physical issues of shifting the puzzle on the gamepads in order to program your car feels a little more frustrating than fun. I would highly recommend checking out the video link above that shows a full game session. It is quite easy to determine whether the game would be for you and your group of board gamers by just seeing how the game works and its pacing.
