The Turnip Boy devs just announced a sudden left turn into horny territory: A dungeon crawler where you 'rizz up' monster girls

A demon in silhouette peers ominously at the protagonist of Rizz Dungeon against a fiery background. — (Image credit: Snoozy Kazoo)

Romance is a perennial hot topic of RPGs. It was back when Mass Effect's steamy fade-to-black romances made the headlines on conservative news outlets, and it still is now that we've seen hair and hide of straight-up animal sex in Baldur's Gate 3, for better or worse. If you're looking for more virtual action in a decidedly high fantasy-themed package, you might have an unlikely savior on the way: Snoozy Kazoo, the team behind the Turnip Boy games.

Enter Rizz Dungeon: Skeleton Key to My Heart, a first-person dungeon crawler announced today. While it is not, to my eye, a sex game, and Turnip Boy was always irreverent at its heart, Rizz Dungeon is still a sheer enough left turn into hornyville to give this writer whiplash.

Rizz Dungeon: Skeleton Key to My Heart Announcement Trailer - YouTube

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Not unlike The Legend of Grimrock or Etrian Odyssey, you trawl around a maze's worth of corridors evading monsters and snagging loot. Unlike those games, you're not much of an adventurer—instead, you're a "hopeless weakling flirt" there to romance monster girls by "rizzing them up," according to the Steam page. Once they're head over heels for you, they'll fight by your side so long as you properly take care of them, giving the whole setup a startling resemblance to Pokémon.

It's another silly bout of genre-hopping from the Turnip Boy team, which seemed to go over pretty well last time. In her review of Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, features producer Mollie Taylor said it was "chock-full of eccentric humour and enjoyable if not simple gameplay."

The meme-y humor might not be for everyone, but if that's you, you probably tuned out after the words "Rizz Dungeon." If you like all your games to remain bound by a vow of chastity, there's still another Turnip Boy game in the works (which I assume but cannot promise won't feature "sleepovers" with monster girls).

If Snoozy Kazoo has found the skeleton key to your heart, you can wishlist the game on Steam.

Justin first became enamored with PC gaming when World of Warcraft and Neverwinter Nights 2 rewired his brain as a wide-eyed kid. As time has passed, he's amassed a hefty backlog of retro shooters, CRPGs, and janky '90s esoterica. Whether he's extolling the virtues of Shenmue or troubleshooting some fiddly old MMO, it's hard to get his mind off games with more ambition than scruples. When he's not at his keyboard, he's probably birdwatching or daydreaming about a glorious comeback for real-time with pause combat. Any day now...

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