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Turnip Mountain is a new pixel art platform title from developer Luke Sanderson Games and publisher JanduSoft S.L. that’s out now on Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch. While Turnip Mountain looks just like another retro platformer at first glance, it has a unique mechanic that makes getting around its monochrome world challenging yet rewarding. Forget your classic jumping or ladders; to control your little turnip, who is trying to get back to the top of the mountain, you use both analogue sticks.
At first it feels very strange, but once you get used to moving the left hand, then the right and pulling yourself in the direction needed, the game becomes s like nothing else we’ve played in a long time. It took us a few minutes to get used to the controls; it actually felt a little reminiscent of the first time we ran Mario on a circle in Super Mario 64, after being used to tank controls for so long! Turnip Mountain really has successfully made a new way to play a platform game. The closest thing to anything we’ve played before is the part in Astro Bot where you move the controller left and right to scale up walls.
After finishing the first level, we were in the swing of things, no pun intended, and were swaying across the different sections as well as learning how to fling ourselves upwards. As you progress, a few little extra movement abilities are earned, such as rolling on flat ground and pushing things around to open up areas. We loved finding the secrets that are spread throughout, and you can find paint tins that allow you to switch up the colors of the overall game. Some of the best games just keep everything simple, and that is exactly what Turnip Mountain does.
There are no bloated gimmicks here; you just have to get good at timing your arm movements and experimenting with your surroundings to get through the levels. There is also a gradual build-up in things such as springs and doors that keep the difficulty curve small. At no point in our playthrough did we feel overwhelmed; we just knew we had to keep practising and getting better at Turnip Mountain‘s ingenious mechanic. This is a brilliantly designed and well-thought-out platformer from start to finish.
Graphically, Turnip Mountain is quite basic, but has a lot of charm, and we fell in love with our little turnip friend by the end. The music bops along nicely, without being outstanding, but matches the gameplay well. The best part about the presentation is finding the apints, as we mentioned earlier, and mixing up the palette to create some quite gorgeous levels. The menus and little cutscenes between levels are also well made, and there is a certain polish to the whole thing that goes understated throughout. There are also little cosmetic items to uncover, and they can be hard to find, but this just adds a little longevity to having to go back and explore each level thoroughly.
One of the best aspects of this game is how many of the different level sections can be tackled in several ways. We enjoyed trying to throw ourselves around the screen to see if we could reach the next part, or experimenting with the mushroom springs to try and get extra momentum. This feels like a perfect game for speed runners to get stuck into, especially given the unique nature of the controls. We did try to rush through the first level after finishing the main game and clock our time, but we didn’t do that well!
Overall, Turnip Mountain has set out to create a genuinely different platforming experience and succeeded. The arm-moving mechanic feels fresh, and the level design is spot on, providing a tough challenge that gently unravels. It does get difficult towards the end, but stick with it and finishing the game is its own reward. We recommend Turnip Mountain to any retro platformer fan who is tired of the usual anthropomorphic bunnies and badgers. Take on the turnip and swing your way to the top. This is the kind of game that can really stand out, and we wish the developer well as they have crafted something so unique and special with Turnip Mountain.
