Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate comes to PlayStation, bringing this noble attempt at a Turtles roguelike to a new audience. It may borrow from Hades but Super Evil Megacorp has the foundation for a riotous time with friends wanting to beat up the Foot Clan.
How does a roguelike remain engaging after its initial runs? That question becomes the ultimate task a developer must address when dabbling in this busy genre.
But having a gameplay loop with a satisfying draw isn’t the only viable strategy. Yes, the game has to be fun to play. After all, the player is injecting minutes and hours into constantly randomized runs, spreading their skills into potentially diminishing returns as difficulty creates a constant friction.
What keeps the player around? What keeps them pushing deeper and deeper into a darker dungeon or deadlier biome? How will this enemy with a new palette swap challenge prior expectations?
Hades from Supergiant Games defied many standards laid forth by the genre. It had the randomization and the increasing challenge. Gameplay had that special sauce of luck and ability synergy. But perhaps its biggest boon to the genre was that multiple runs weren’t merely different because a room layout or enemy placement wasn’t stagnant. Zagreus would fall or triumph to a boss and they would reference that moment on a return venture. New bits of narrative would be sprinkled throughout, inviting players to persist, less they miss out on the full picture.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate does not hide the influence of Supergiant’s genre touchstone. Simply put, there’s nothing wrong with a licensed game taking familiar property and borrowing ideas. For almost 40 years, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has explored a bevy of possibilities within the gaming space. And for being a roguelike, developer Super Evil Megacorp, did a respectable job weaving the Turtles‘ vibe and mythos into a framework rife with repetition, making it charming enough to sustain a number of shortcomings.
Though Splintered Fate released on Apple Arcade back in 2023, the game has slowly rolled out availability on the Nintendo Switch and PC. Now it is launching on PlayStation 4 and 5 with an Xbox release coming next month. And honestly, I think the game needs to be in more players’ hands. Not because it is a genre triumph but because it is an incredibly fun Turtles game that, despite its flaws, lays the groundwork for a potentially captivating sequel down the line that explores the breadth and depth of all the franchise has offered since its inception.
When Splintered Fate released on Nintendo Switch last year, Will Silberman dived into much of what made the game work and what didn’t. Earlier this year, Splintered Fate‘s DLC, Casey Jones and The Junkyard Jam, provided more content for players to sink their teeth into.
For context, I’m looking at the game as an entire package on PlayStation 5, having played Splintered Fate from the beginning with the DLC included from the jump. Honestly, I share a number of Will’s thoughts on the game, both from its pros and cons, especially how it feels like a more complete experience with the DLC.
Splintered Fate‘s premise is befitting of both a Turtles game and a roguelike. Splinter has seemingly been kidnapped by Shredder, as per usual. But soon enough it’s made apparent that some unknown force is working through mysterious purple portals, not only teleporting in enemies but assistance to Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Casey Jones. The fourth brother and their hockey stick-wielding friend are hoping to rescue Splinter from what is seemingly another plane of existence. When defeated, bosses disappear into the ether. Splinter seems to speak of a grander plan beyond the team’s comprehension.
The idea of another dimension being involved in a Turtles story isn’t anything relatively new. But I have to applaud the writing of Splintered Fate for being not only engaging but genuinely charming, making me laugh on numerous occasions, feeling like I was reading the comic or watching the cartoons. The numerous quips characters have never felt tired, despite them being repeated after a point.
However, Splintered Fate‘s biggest flaw is that it lacks meat on the bone. In total, the game has five playable areas: The Sewers, The Docks, The Streets, The Junkyard, and The Rooftops. Additionally, enemy variety is solely lacking given the amount that could be pulled from Turtles‘ history. Players will fight Mousers, Foot Clan ninjas, robots, rats, Punk Frogs, and a handful of recognizable bosses.
Unfortunately, this means that visual repetition sets in relatively fast. After a couple hours, the Leatherhead boss fight felt like a chore because regardless of how strong the player gets, Leatherhead has two phases where he can’t be damaged and floods the space with area attacks and rat minions. It’s common for roguelikes to have a set path of biomes, moving from one to the next so players know what to expect. With the DLC, players can opt to head to The Streets or The Junkyard after beating The Docks. Other than that, there’s little diverging.
While it’s definitely cool that winning or losing to a boss will trigger dialogue on defeat or when returning to the boss again, those moments lose their luster because the writing does not support the frequent new runs. Had Super Evil Megacorp included at least two other non-DLC areas and more Turtles enemies, there would have been a deeper pool of content. And while it does give the impression that the game had a smaller budget, it gives me hope that a potential sequel and not just more DLC can actually explore this concept to a massively expanded degree.
And while this skimpy content does dull the depth of my enjoyment for Splintered Fate, I can’t deny that the core gameplay loop and upgrade paths kept me engaged for the 10 hours I played.
All five playable characters play relatively similarly but exist with their own stat boosts, unique abilities, and slightly different attack patterns and speed. Each character has a special ability and a tool, both of which are given new charges by using the primary attack. Once a room is cleared, a selection screen will appear offering various currencies or new Turtle Powers. Turtle Powers are the core power boon in the game, granting the team modifications to their dash, special, and basic attacks. Elemental abilities and other special moves felt basic at first but continuing to explore the game, I began to recognize the strength of each grouping. Flame powers increased critical attacks but sets enemies on fire. Ultrom attacks could spread electricity around group while Ooze stacked damage.
As players dive deep into Spintered Fate they will earn Dragon and Dreamer Coins. Dragon Coins are used to invest in numerous attributes to grow power. Base health and damage are essential but the available upgrades expands into dodge chance, elemental damage, special recharge, and more. New tiers of upgrades are locked behind currency earned for defeating Karai–the boss of the second area–and Shredder. Depending on the character used, a specific currency is also rewarded for that character. It feels a little messy on paper but ultimately makes sense because the game admirably explains it.
Once players best Shredder the first time, they are granted the ability to go into portals that apply modifiers to an entire run. Whether it makes enemies harder, reduces the efficiency of healing pizzas, or makes cooldowns longer, portals will make the run harder but also stack a multiplier for Dragon and Dreamer Coins rewarded and new upgrade currencies.
Portals kept me engaged with Splintered Fate for a bit but the game can be relatively difficult on the Normal, non Story difficulty. The number of Dragon Coins needed for what feels like a significant boost could take a full run all the way through Shredder. Numerous times it felt like the game was calculating that I had a strong start and good luck and decided to throw near-impossible configurations of enemies at me. Had there been more levels, I do think this difficulty curve could have been smoother and it would have provided more avenues for rewards, enriching the total package.
And while the game can definitely be hard but rewarding as a solo player, those crushing mobs of enemies are significantly lessened by hopping in with multiple other players. Splintered Fate allows for relatively seamless online and couch co-op. And if the host has the DLC, then everyone else in the lobby can play the DLC content without owning it, just not as Casey Jones. It’s interesting how the Punk Frogs–the main enemy of the new Junkyard area–can be added to all the other levels, but they can be extremely challenging at times.
Though Splintered Fate runs pretty well on PlayStation 5, I experienced some issues that could be specific to the console, or perhaps a problem elsewhere. I noticed that when the room-ending reward screen popped up, button presses and directional movement would still make the character act. Other times, movement felt stilted and bugged or HUD elements and indicators would linger several screens over. I also think permanent upgrades can be slightly confusing in how they are applied because I was never sure if the game was telling me the reward number with or without the boost.
Yes, the lack of content is a distinct issue with Splintered Fate. Yet it is hard for me to entirely reject the game based on that. Personally, I expected the game to be less complicated than it was and found myself directly going into another run whether I found victory or was frustrated. Thorny difficulty aside, a full run can take about 25 minutes to complete and gratification definitely can exist by going through every portal and making the game painfully hard but still persisting because of all the investment in permanent upgrades. I just sincerely hope that this isn’t a one-and-done experiment with the Turtles brand. We’ve had plenty of brawlers, why not at least another big shot at a roguelike?
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate takes a lot of big swings for a franchise that has been incarnated into almost every possible genre in games. Super Evil Megacorp mostly succeeds with a formula that narratively borrows from Hades but excels at providing some satisfying gameplay and upgrade paths. It may be short on content but does promise a lot of entertainment for a group of friends wanting to tackle the Foot Clan as their favorite heroes in a half-shell.
