When it comes to video games, people tend to think of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as a beat ‘em up franchise, but the heroes in a half shell have appeared in many other genres as well. A few years ago, a mobile game developer called Super Evil Megacorp had the brilliant idea of making a TMNT roguelike. After first releasing it on Apple Arcade, they wisely recognized the game’s potential on other platforms. TMNT: Splintered Fate has slowly but surely come to all major platforms, finally arriving on Xbox today. Not only is Splintered Fate a fine roguelike and co-op game, but it’s also one of the best TMNT games ever made.
The game opens with an optional single-player tutorial that reveals the basic premise: the Foot Clan has access to mysterious portals, and they have kidnapped the Turtles’ master, Splinter. Throughout the game, further fully voiced cinematics will reveal further details about the Shredder and his unseen benefactor’s evil plan. Tom Waltz, a writer of the IDW Turtles comics, contributes to the writing of the cut scenes, and the voice cast is uniformly excellent (especially Roger Craig Smith as Raphael), making Splintered Fate one of the most authentic on-screen representations of the Turtles, their friends, and their enemies.
Splintered Fate is patterned after Hades, one of the best-known action roguelikes. One big difference, however, is that players can choose to play as any of the four Turtles right from the start. Casey Jones, their human friend, is also playable via DLC. Each character has tons of unique dialog that plays during fights and cinematics, so players really get to enjoy their favorite characters’ personalities. They also have different weapons that affect attack speed and range, two inspirations (perks), and their own special attack and tool, so everyone plays fairly distinctly from one another.
Combat is the main focus of the game, so it helps that Splintered Fate’s combat is fast and fluid. Standard attacks have no cooldowns and make for easy combos, but the other moves take time between uses. Special moves are powerful attacks like nunchuck whirls or Casey’s ranged slapshot, but tools can attack, buff, or debuff. Tools can also be swapped during a run, whereas special moves are permanent. Hitting foes with regular attacks will charge up the player’s special and tool. Finally, players have a dash move that charges over time. Its primary purpose is to dodge threats, but dashing becomes an important attack move when combined with the right Turtle Powers during a run.
Turtle Powers are one of the possible rewards that players can choose from upon clearing a room. They come in six elemental varieties, and each element has numerous powers to choose from. The random nature of which turtle powers, masteries, temporary boosts, health upgrades, and currencies get offered to each player is part of what makes every run unique. I favor flame dash builds, but sometimes I end up relying on a different element since that’s what gets offered to me. You also have to choose between powers and other upgrades that will make the run easier, and currencies that won’t help right away but do go towards upgrades to make future runs easier.
A run consists of four levels: the sewers, docks, city streets (or junkyard via DLC), and rooftops, each of which is made up of a randomized series of rooms filled with enemies. The bad guys come from three factions: Foot ninjas, Mousers and other robots, and Punk Frogs. Levels also have a generic mini-boss (a more powerful rat robot, or ninja), 1-2 visits to the scrap shop, and a boss encounter against canonical foes (Leatherhead, Karai, Bebop and Rocksteady, and Shredder). After defeating Shredder once, future runs will offer optional challenge portals and gauntlet boss battles that mix things up and dramatically increase the challenge. As for the shop, there, an original character called the Collector accepts scrap (currency that doesn’t carry over between runs) in exchange for health refills, upgrades, and boosts.