Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom (PC) Review

We've had a lot of racing games over the summer here on SuperPhillip Central, and that was genuinely, entirely unplanned. I guess I was in a racing game mood, to be fair. Fortunately, we're definitely entering new territory here with a 3D platformer! ...Of course, it just HAD to be one on wheels where you RACE around at times, right? Either way, this one is a serious winner. Here's my review of 2024's Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom. 

All's "fare" in a 3D platformer when you're controlling a crazy taxi.

The collect-a-thon-style 3D platformer was once well-trodden territory in gaming. Between Mario, Banjo-Kazooie, the original Jak & Daxter, among countless others, the late '90s and early '00s were inundated with them. For someone like myself, a massive fan of the genre, it seldom got old, so when the genre took a bit of a hiatus come the PS3 and 360 era, to say I felt left out in the cold would have been an understatement.

Now, Nintendo never really left the genre for the most part, but it does seem every other major publisher did. Enter indies, the home to some of the most imaginative and creative titles to come out of gaming this past decade and some change. Released last year by developer Panik Arcade and published by Those Awesome Guys is none other than Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom, an indie title priding itself as collect-a-thon 3D platformer. However, this taxi's got tricks to it to separate it greatly from the pack and past 3D platformers of days old.

Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom immediately casts aside one's notions of what a 3D platformer could and should be by getting rid of one of the genre's most seemingly--until now, that is--necessary mechanics: jumping. Yes, our yellow taxi in Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom has no traditional jump button. Instead, the aim is to launch it from ramps to access higher areas and perform platforming through flips and other mobile maneuvers. 

Race along rooftops, reach dizzying heights, and more as your windup taxi!

One of the greatest delights in my time with Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom was the discovery that there was so much more to the move-set of my little taxi than just the sole major move that its learns near the beginning of the adventure--the Flip-o-Will. The Flip-o-Will itself adds an immense amount of kit to the yellow taxi's repertoire; you just won't know it immediately. Through stumbling across miniature robots throughout the hub world of the game, you learn various tips and literal tricks through the numerous NPCs' dialogues. 

Rather than outright spoil the surprise for you by mentioning everything that your little-taxi-that-could can do, let's just say that with the tips, tools, and tricks that you pick up through the game imparting you with its knowledge, you'll be able to reach areas that you thought were practically impossible to access and reach. 

I played through so much of Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom not comprehending how the heck I was supposed to access high-up platforms, collectibles taunting me just out of reach, and areas that looked promising but were too complex for my current level of skill and knowledge. However, by the time I reached the game's ending, I was boosting off ramps, literally having a flipping fun time, and making complex and otherwise challenging feats of platforming prowess on my taxi's four wheels and doing it like a pro! 

My taxi didn't NEED a hat to look stylish--it was the bomb already without one.

There's definitely a high skill ceiling in Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom, and if you don't have all of the knowledge required to reach it, you'll easily miss more than half of the game's content. That's not to say you won't be able to reach the game's satisfying conclusion or even have a great time at first. You most likely will. It's more that learning the ins and outs of your taxi's true potential only adds to the fun and allows you to better appreciate the game's mechanics fully.

I mentioned that Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom is a 3D collect-a-thon platformer at heart, even if you aren't utilizing a traditional jump to leap all over the game's expansive, colorful levels. So, the question presents itself: What are you collecting? The main collectible--the Super Mario 64 Power Star equivalent or Banjo-Kazooie Jiggy equal--is that of Green Gears. They're everywhere in Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom, and collecting specific amounts of these opens up new transporters to even more new levels. While some levels can house a handful of Green Gears, others can easily run to numbers in the twenty-somethings.

Green Gears are your Power Star equivalent here in Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom.
So... get in GEAR and go get them to unlock more levels!

Apart from the Green Gears, there are myriad coins to collect, which can be used to cash in at various hat shops to purchase new cosmetics and headgear (...roof-gear?) for your windup taxi (these are also sprinkled throughout levels to purchase, too), well-hidden, difficult-to-acquire Golden Bunnies which serve a post-game purpose, and other various doodads as well. 

While most levels allow pure exploration, some have a timer ticking down on them. These specific levels require you to engage in some Crazy Taxi-like shenanigans, picking up passengers and delivering them to their desired destinations in order to add precious seconds to your overall timer (and in some cases, reward you with a Green Gear). This is all the while exploring these particular Crazy Taxi-style stages for Green Gears and all of the other collectibles mentioned previously. They're traditional exploration-based levels, they just put you in a modest crunch for time. 

The characters in Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom are just as wild and wacky as the game premise itself.

Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom does not feature a typical lives system. Instead, it utilizes something akin to Super Mario Odyssey, where deaths (falling off the level, running out of time, slamming into spikes, or otherwise being obliterated) cause you to lose a certain amount of coins. This adds up a bit, especially when you're gunning for more expensive taxi-wear (hats and gear), but plentiful checkpoints means that the frustration is usually rather limited. 

Speaking of, be ready to lose lots of lives to those lasers!

I will say, though, that in later challenges and levels that losing lives becomes quite commonplace. Some of these platforming prospects the game tasks you with are downright diabolical and require having all of the aforementioned knowledge of your taxi's full repertoire at your disposal--AND doing it perfectly. That said, these are essentially all optional for 100%, but if you're like me--and as always, God help you if you're anything like me in general--you'll have so much fun with this game that you'll have a blast aiming and possibly achieving full game completion.

Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom has humor that stretches from east to west and north to south in the sense that it goes all over the dang place, and some jokes and references will hit, while others that rely on memes may not so much. At least that was my experience with the game. The story is more of a comedic vehicle to give some meaning to your yellow taxi's adventure, though it does hit with its satire. After all, what else can you say about tackling the evil scientist named Alien Mosk behind an equally evil megacorp named Tosla? It sorta hits too close to home for a lot of us here in the States... Either way, whether or not the comedy and humor hits for you will vary depending on the player.

Does your taxi even LIFT, bro?!

Turning our taxi and attention onto Presentation Street, Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom has a highly stylized, three-dimensionally pixelated look to it. It's super pleasant, a bit chunky in all the right ways, and is fantastically fluid in motion without any hints of slowdown to speak of or notice. Meanwhile, the sound design rocks with appropriately chiptuned tracks at times, while others like at the Tosla Corporation building itself sound suitably overly dramatic with intense orchestrations. No doubt the composer had fun with this one, especially a level that quite literally flat-out goes to the dogs with synth puppy and doggo woofs and barks taking on the main melody throughout.

I expected to find a fair amount to like about Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom--it's a 3D platformer of the collect-a-thon variety, it's innovative, it's creative, it's wacky and wild (sometimes to a fault), and it's teeming with secrets throughout its well-designed levels and worlds. I did NOT expect to just absolutely LOVE what I discovered with the game instead in my 10+ hours of playtime with an innocuous, little windup taxi. This is a fabulous game, and it certainly put the developer Panik Arcade on my radar for whatever they cook up next. 

[SPC Says: A-]