The 2026 bingo card continues to expand with another unexpected surprise: a spiritual successor to Donkey Kong’s King Of Swing. Released on Game Boy Advance in 2005, this beloved puzzle platformer saw DK traversing vertical walls and avoiding hazards along the climb. Luke Sanderson’s Turnip Mountain takes that idea and adds hand-eye coordination mechanics that are simple to explain but hard to master.
Despite the horrifying image of a sentient turnip with giant hands (complete with Mickey Mouse-style gloves) clambering up surfaces, the premise of the game is quite sweet. A turnip rests in the ground, gazing up at the stars and hoping to one day reach those lofty heights. They do what any turnip with ambition would: sprout arms and climb! Your one objective throughout the multi-stage adventure is to ascend, surviving an ever-escalating set of perils and puzzles on your way to the stars.
Clambering up the mountain is a fiddly, infuriating, yet ultimately satisfying act of rhythm. Left and right triggers (or bumpers if you’re so inclined) grip a surface with the corresponding arm, while pushing the directional sticks will control where each arm goes. The sticks can also be used to heave your turnip body in a given direction. This last part is predominantly used to move fluidly while climbing, but it also engages a momentum-based jump that forms some of the game’s trickiest puzzles.
Like the best puzzle platformers, Turnip Mountain’s mechanics make it easy to get into a flow state, but just as easy to short-circuit your brain as a new variation is thrown into the mix. The challenge of the climb is addictive, and there are a lot of stages that will have you coming back to get hard-to-reach collectibles like hats and colour filters.
There’s a local co-op mode that has each player control a different turnip arm, an experience that is just as fun and chaotic as it sounds. I tried this mode in handheld with Joy-Con, and I’d say the ensuing arguments more than justify the game’s meagre price tag.
The Game Boy graphical style and lovely music from Isabelle Chiming suit handheld well, but the difficulty and control scheme fit the comfort of a Pro Controller and a big screen much better. It’s more comfortable grabbing those surfaces when you can wrap your hands around a chunky pad.
Turnip Mountain’s physics-based approach to the climbing puzzler manages to be unique and challenging in a way that rewards perseverance with a genuine feeling of accomplishment. It won’t last long, but you’ll want to see this appendage-gifted vegetable’s odyssey through to the end.
