Buy it if you have five or six people in one room and one console. Do not buy it if those people are on different consoles
The verdict first: this is the only game on this site where Nintendo's own listing says six people can share one machine. The player information on the Switch store page reads Single system (1-6) and Online (1-6). Six on one console, one copy, six controllers - and the same six can play online instead. Almost nothing else does this. The industry standard is four, which is why a group of five normally has somebody watching.
The thing that cancels it out is equally blunt. Steam's feature list for this game carries Shared/Split Screen Co-op, Online Co-op and Remote Play Together, and does not carry Cross-Platform Multiplayer. There is no crossplay. So the six people either need to be in one room, or they all need to own it on the same platform. A group spread across a PS5, an Xbox and a PC cannot use this game at all, and that is the single most common way this purchase goes wrong.
Is TMNT Shredder's Revenge crossplay? No - and here is what to do instead
No. Nothing on its store listings claims cross-platform play, and the absence is the answer. Steam prints the capability flags a game supports, and Cross-Platform Multiplayer is not among this game's. Nintendo's listing gives an online range without ever saying it reaches another platform. Treat online here as same-platform only.
There is one legitimate route around it, and it is on the Steam listing: Remote Play Together. That is Valve's feature for streaming a local-multiplayer game to friends' machines so one person's copy seats the whole group - the host owns it, the guests join. It only works between Steam accounts, so it does not help a console group, but for a PC group it turns a six-player couch game into a six-player online one on one purchase. Our Remote Play Together page lists the other games that work this way, and one copy, two players covers every other legitimate way to avoid buying six copies.
If your group is genuinely spread across consoles, buy something else and come back to this one when you are in the same room. Games without crossplay - and what to buy instead exists for exactly this decision, and Human: Fall Flat is the direct substitute: eight players, crossplay, and usually cheaper.
Six on one console: what that actually requires
Six controllers, and a console that will pair them. This is the real cost of the six-player headline and nobody mentions it in the store listing. A Switch pairs eight controllers, so six is comfortable - and because Nintendo lists TV, tabletop and handheld modes, the practical setup is a docked Switch and a pile of pads. On a PS5 or an Xbox, check how many controllers you can actually connect and charge before you plan an evening around six players. Our second-controller guide is the honest arithmetic on that, and it is usually the reason a six-player night ends up being a four-player night.
One copy covers everyone local.That is the part that makes this cheap per head: six people playing on one console need one purchase, which is why it beats almost everything else on a cost-per-player basis. For online, everybody needs the game on the same platform, and on Switch the online side needs a Nintendo Switch Online membership - Nintendo's page lists Online Play and Save Data Cloud under that subscription.
What an evening actually looks like
You pick a turtle, you walk right, you hit Foot Soldiers until the level ends. That is the whole game, and it is the reason it works for a room where the skill levels are wildly uneven: nobody has to be good at it, nobody has to read anything, and a person who has never held a controller can contribute in about ten seconds. Tribute Games built it as a 1980s arcade beat 'em up and the fidelity to that is the point - the animation is lavish, the soundtrack is excellent, and the difficulty is forgiving.
A full run is short.That cuts both ways: a group can genuinely start and finish Story mode across an evening or two, which almost no co-op game lets you do, and a group hoping for a hundred hours will be done far sooner than that. The two paid add-ons - Dimension Shellshock from August 2023 and Radical Reptiles from September 2024 - add a survival mode and more playable characters, and both are listed at single-digit regular prices on Nintendo's store, so topping the game up is cheap. We are not quoting those numbers here; the only live price on this site comes from the price layer in the buttons above.
Three honest cons
Six players on one screen is chaos, and not always the good kind. At five or six, the screen fills with effects and it becomes genuinely hard to find your own turtle. The game is at its best at three or four. Six is a feature you can use, not necessarily the way to play it.
It is a beat 'em up, which is a narrow genre. If your group prefers a board game, a quiz or a race, this will be over quickly. Jackbox scales further with no controllers at all, and our game-night page is the broader shortlist.
No crossplay, and that will not change. It is a 2022 game. Buy it for the room you are in.
