Cartoon Crime has grown considerably since we spoke with BuBa Games developer Burhan Doygun back in August, and its latest Early Access update is taking the open-world crime game somewhere rather different.
Update 8, released on 14 October, introduces an entirely new Wild West-inspired desert continent in the northeast of the map, complete with Redstone Canyon, a nuclear power plant, volcanic islands and a second airfield.
It is the latest expansion for Cartoon Crime, which launched into Steam Early Access on 26 August and continues to build around its mix of third-person and top-down perspectives, missions, police chases and open-world wandering.
Welcome to Redstone Canyon
The headline addition is the new desert region, giving players another sizeable area to explore away from Cartoon Crime’s existing urban environments.
Redstone Canyon brings a distinctly Wild West flavour to the game, while the surrounding area includes the new Dustwing Airfield, a small dirt strip where players can take a propeller plane into the skies. Aircraft have also been given a bit more freedom in Update 8, with the maximum flying height doubled.
Offshore, players can explore a collection of new volcanic islands, while a nuclear power plant gives the desert another landmark to investigate.
Naturally, there are also more things to drive around recklessly.
New rally cars and armoured vehicles have joined the vehicle roster alongside drivable desert tanks, providing plenty of new ways to get around the expanded map – or attract the attention of the police.
Beneath the Sand adds a new mission
Cartoon Crime Update 8 also introduces Mission 22, Beneath the Sand, which becomes available after completing Mission 21.
The new mission sends players hunting tunnel spiders and desert scorpions, tying the wildlife directly into the new environment.
Those creatures are not just there for scenery either. Spiders have become faster and stronger as part of the update, while recruited bodyguards will now step in to help defend players when wildlife attacks.
Mounted machine guns have received recoil improvements too, and the revolver now hits harder with updated sound effects.
Police chases get more aggressive – and hopefully smoother
BuBa Games has also spent time improving some of the existing systems alongside all the new content.
Police officers will now spot criminals more quickly and are more likely to leave their vehicles to engage directly, which should make attracting a wanted level slightly more troublesome.
Under the hood, police chases have been optimised to reduce stuttering, particularly while driving through the new desert region. Co-op pursuits have also received fixes alongside improvements to wildlife behaviour and damage synchronisation between players.
Vehicle interactions have been tidied up as well, with fixes targeting entry problems, misplaced scenery and collisions capable of leaving characters stuck.
It is the less glamorous side of an Early Access update, but probably considerably more important when you’re trying to flee the police in a desert tank.
Cartoon Crime keeps expanding in Early Access
When we spoke with Burhan earlier this year, one of the big ideas behind Cartoon Crime was giving players room to wander away from the objectives and simply mess around in its world.
That remains central to the project.
Players can freely switch between third-person and overhead perspectives, tackle missions, recruit bodyguards or ignore all of that and disappear off in search of something else to do. The growing map now gives them quite a bit more space in which to get distracted.
Cartoon Crime Update 8 is available now through Steam Early Access on Windows PC.
Anyone playing in co-op will need to make sure everyone is running the latest version before heading into Redstone Canyon.
And if somebody immediately steals the tank and disappears into the desert?
Well, that sounds fairly on-brand.
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