Cartoon Crime Review: A $2.99 Crime Sandbox That Gets the Chaos Right

How we played: I played Cartoon Crime on a Windows 11 PC (Intel Core i9 14th gen, 48GB of RAM, Nvidia RTX 4060) on Nov. 5, 2026, two days after the game left Early Access. Steam logged 46 minutes of play, and I unlocked three of its seven achievements. BuBa Games sent us a free Steam key. For much of the session I had the game’s own cheats switched on, including invincibility and unlimited cash, so this review does not judge how hard the game is. I played alone and did not try online co-op. Every screenshot is from that session, and BuBa Games did not see this review before it was published.

About half an hour into Cartoon Crime, I drove a tank I had spawned up to a parking lot and opened fire. The whole row of cars went up in flames and smoke.

A few minutes earlier, Steam had already handed me the “Most Wanted” achievement for reaching the game’s top wanted level. That was the moment the game clicked for me, because it felt just like the old open-world crime games, where the best part was making a mess.

Cartoon Crime is an open-world crime sandbox from BuBa Games, a two-person studio in Istanbul. It costs $2.99 on Steam for Windows (price checked Nov. 16, 2026) and left Early Access on Nov. 3. For that price, it gets the important thing right: it lets you cause trouble right away and makes it fun. What holds it back is how it looks.

The cheats menu is the fastest way in

Most crime games hide their cheats behind button codes. Cartoon Crime puts them in a menu. There are nine: God Mode, Infinite Money, Super Speed, All Weapons and Infinite Ammo, Complete Current Mission, Spawn Tank, Spawn Helicopter, Recruit Elite Gang and Clear Wanted Level. Most have their own keyboard shortcut, so a tank is one key press away.

I turned on God Mode and unlimited money, then started spawning things. Within minutes I had walked up to a LAZAR 3 armored vehicle, flown a helicopter over the city and jumped out with a parachute.

It is pure sandbox play, and the menu makes no secret that this is what the game wants you to do. Missions are there if you want them, but nothing stops you from ignoring them.

A world you can go into, not just drive through

What surprised me more than the tanks was how much of the world I could actually enter. My character could swim, which the early 3D Grand Theft Auto games did not allow. In GTA III and Vice City, deep water was the end of you. Here I swam out from the beach and even shot at sharks in the water.

Back on land, I found a cave on the island and walked inside. It was furnished like a hideout, with a table, chairs and barrels. I also went into a beach house. Small touches like these make the map feel bigger than it looks from a car.

Before any of that, the game lets you build your character, down to hairstyle, beard and moustache, and choose whether to start with the full map visible or uncover it as you travel.

Missions are there when you want a break from chaos

When I did want something to do, the game had jobs waiting. A character named Mason Reed offered me “Garbage Collection”: drive a staffed garbage truck, clear seven overflowing containers and bring the full truck back to the waste station before City Hall starts asking questions. I took the truck out on the route, but the police destroyed it before I could deliver the load, so I never finished the job.

The graphics are the weak spot

The world is bright and colorful, but up close it looks flat. Buildings, roads and grass are simple shapes with plain textures, and from the helicopter the city looks more like a model kit than a place. That is the main reason I took three points off. The gameplay often reminded me of classic GTA mayhem, but the visuals rarely did.

The good news is that BuBa Games has been updating the game quickly. During about 10 weeks of Early Access, the studio released 10 numbered updates plus smaller ones, adding swimming, caves, a desert continent, trains and street events, as we covered in our look at Update 10. If that pace continues and the graphics get some attention, Cartoon Crime could go a lot further.

Is Cartoon Crime worth $2.99?

Yes, if you want a cheap sandbox where you can spawn a tank, start a five-star police chase and then go for a swim.

It gave me the same feeling I used to get from causing chaos in old GTA games, and the cheats menu makes that easy. If good graphics matter to you, wait and see whether future updates improve them. Cartoon Crime is available on Steam for Windows PC.

How we test: our hardware, the “How we played” box and how we measure PC performance are explained on our How We Test page.