There Will Be No Turkey This Christmas

Genre: Top-Down Stealth

Players: 1

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Review:

There Will Be No Turkey This Christmas is a Top-Down Stealth game released on PC in 2021 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2022. This game puts players in the role of a turkey hiding in a barrel and searching for a way to sneak out of a house before its inhabitants discover it and it becomes Christmas dinner.

This game uses a 2D pixel art visual style that’s cute but nothing particularly special, with appropriately sneaky music for a Stealth game, and decent sound to indicate the footsteps and other activities of nearby residents of the household you need to avoid. Nothing extraordinary here, but sufficient.

Unfortunately, despite the novelty of this game’s premise, “nothing extraordinary, but sufficient” pretty much describes all of the gameplay too. Players can walk around and press X to briefly hide in the barrel – hiding keeps you from being seen (if you haven’t been seen already), but blocks your view of the outside and prevents you from moving. Hiding also draws from a limited air supply, so players will have to use this ability sparingly.

However, in the end I found it far more effective to simply try to evade the residents’ Metal Gear Solid-style cone of sight, and if I did end up getting caught, outrunning them was almost always preferable. Since your speed is slightly faster than the humans, even a dead end can often allow you to outrun them – simply lead them to one corner, run to the other, and then speed past them.

There are keys that occasionally need to be found to unlock doors, and optional bonuses to search for, but none of these are necessary or provide anything more than kudos and unlockable skins.

In the end, that’s pretty much all there is to say here. Despite its cute premise, There Will Be No Turkey This Christmas is a fairly uninspired, run-of-the-mill Stealth game. It’s not bad, but it does absolutely nothing to stand out other than its fun premise. If that’s enough for you, you may enjoy this game. Otherwise, feel free to skip it.

tl;dr – There Will Be No Turkey This Christmas is a Top-Down Stealth game that has players playing a turkey trying to sneak out of a house before it becomes dinner. The premise is delightful, but everything else about this game is a standard by-the-book Stealth game without anything especially interesting going on for it. Unless this game’s premise tickles your fancy, it’s probably not worth your time.

Grade: C

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