Why I’m worried about the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game

On March 6, we got the first screenshots of the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game. While the images look good, the moment I saw who the developer was, my expectations plummeted.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed serves as a sequel to last year’s animated film. It’s scheduled to release in late 2024, and IGN just shared five screenshots showing the Turtles exploring various colorful locations and fighting. Everything looks good—the graphics are similar to the film, the environments are colorful and vibrant, and at first glance, it seems the game might actually be fun. 

Then I saw Outright Games is the developer of the game, and immediately, flashbacks of its previous games flooded through our minds. To be fair, Outright Games has made a few decent titles, like My Friend Peppa Pig and Transformers Battlegrounds, but most of the time, its games consist of basic and repetitive levels that loop for about eight hours before unceremoniously ending without any fanfare. 

I’ve seen it time and time again in games like Paw Patrol: On a Roll, Trollhunter: Defenders of Arcadia, My Little Pony: Maritime Bay Adventure, and Star Trek Prodigy: Supernova. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much from these games, but I still felt disappointed by the sheer lack of effort.

The general consensus seems to be they’re all games for kids, so there’s no reason to put much effort into developing them—because the parents buying them simply don’t know any better. While it’s true there’s no need to use state-of-the-art graphics or incorporate cutting-edge gameplay elements, would it be so bad if Outright Games actually put a bit of effort in? 

The Paw Patrol games only had a single voice-acted character, and the pups can’t even bark—let alone talk like they do in the show. Is it so hard to give characters their own voices? Or to play the show’s theme song? Outright Games is usually as basic as it can get, and all signs point to Mutants Unleashed being a turtle disaster (I’ll let myself out).

But don’t take my word for it. Young children don’t need much to have fun with a video game featuring their favorite characters, but they still get bored when games are too repetitive. My daughter and a friend’s son quit Paw Patrol games less than halfway through because they just “weren’t fun.” Meanwhile, they’re happily replaying Nintendo games for the 10th time simply because they have more substance. Of course, I’m aware budget plays a huge role when developing licensed games, but that never stops publishers from asking parents to fork over $50 or more.

For this reason, I’m worried many TMNT fans, young and old alike, might be disappointed by the upcoming game. I’d love to be wrong, but Outright Games’ history suggests otherwise.