With Turbo Pug lying around in my steam library for like 10 years, and still not having unlocked all characters and no idea how to unlock them (spoiler: it's not just any number of pug points), I decided to go deep dive. Here is what I found. How do I know? I reverse engineered the game code. As the game is old, and it's homepage is gone, I figured this might possibly be the only way left to obtain information on the game. So yeah, a little late to the party, but enjoy.

Each section will give a short overview of each characters data, specials, etc. and how they perform compared to the default pug. Numeric data is taken from the game files, I don't really know the units (like e.g. pixels per second or whatever), but it's enough to compare them between characters. The names are taken from the game files, I just flipped the word order for readability (e.g. "Pug Xmas" > "Xmas Pug").

The default character. Baseline for all data and nothing special.

• Unlock conditions: Always unlocked
  
• Speed: 7
  
• Gravity: 50
  
• Jump force: 600
  
• Double jump: None

Jingle bells, jingle bells. You don't have to play on christmas, though. He is a little faster than the default Pug, otherwise identical.

• Unlock conditions: Die a grand total of at least 25 times.
  
• Speed: 8 (+1 vs. Pug)
  
• Gravity: 50
  
• Jump force: 600
  
• Double jumps: None

Reskin of the default Pug, identical stats.

• Unlock conditions: Always unlocked
  
• Speed: 7
  
• Gravity: 50
  
• Jump force: 600
  
• Double jumps: None

Meow. A little faster than the default Pug and identical to the Xmas Pug, stat-wise.

• Unlock conditions: Score a grand total of 250 pug points.
  
• Speed: 8 (+1 vs. Pug)
  
• Gravity: 50
  
• Jump force: 600
  
• Double jumps: None

Meow into space. Pretty different to the others, substantially less gravity and has a double jump. She has lower jump force, but she also needs less, because of the gravity.

• Unlock conditions: Score a grand total of 1000 pug points.
  
• Speed: 7
  
• Gravity: 10 (-40 vs. Pug)
  
• Jump force: 250 (-350 vs. Pug)
  
• Double jumps: 1x

The hardest to unlock. Has slightly lower gravity but almost as much jump force as the default Pug, making him the highest jumping character in the game, thus with a slim margin. Comes with a double jump.

• Unlock conditions: Unlock all other characters and have a single round high score of at least 7000.
  
• Speed: 7
  
• Gravity: 30 (-20 vs. Pug)
  
• Jump force: 500 (-100 vs. Pug)
  
• Double jumps: 1x

The default pug, but with a double jump.

• Unlock conditions: Have a single round high score of at least 300.
  
• Speed: 7
  
• Gravity: 50
  
• Jump force: 600
  
• Double jumps: 1x

Nyanpug. Basically Cape Pug, but faster. And with rainbows.

• Unlock conditions: Score a grand total of 2000 pug points and have a single round high score of at least 350.
  
• Speed: 8 (+1 vs. Pug)
  
• Gravity: 50
  
• Jump force: 600
  
• Double jumps: 1x

Trick or treat! As with the Xmas Pug, you don't have to play during Halloween to unlock him. Comes with a double jump, unlike the Xmas Pug. He also has a unique light effect, making him glow during the night. During the night, Pumpkin Pug generates slightly more points by running, totalling in an extra 50 points for every full night survived.

• Unlock conditions: Die a grand total of at least 55 times and score a grand total of 65000 pug points.
  
• Speed: 8 (+1 vs. Pug)
  
• Gravity: 50
  
• Jump force: 600
  
• Double jumps: 1x

Basically a pug, a rodent pug. With a double jump. Stat-wise identical to Cape Pug.

• Unlock conditions: Die a grand total of at least 75 times and have a single round high score of at least 3500.
  
• Speed: 7
  
• Gravity: 50
  
• Jump force: 600
  
• Double jumps: 1x

Cute, but useless. If you hit left mouse button and space at the exact same game frame, the game will add both jump accelerations to the character and you might actually be able to jump over the first gap. This is probably a bug, but actually makes the Penguin playable.

• Unlock conditions: Have a single round high score of at least 5000.
  
• Speed: 2 (-5 vs. Pug)
  
• Gravity: 20 (-30 vs. Pug)
  
• Jump force: 300 (-300 vs. Pug)
  
• Double jumps: None

Unfazed by lightning, otherwise Cape Pug stats. Lightning strikes temporarily boost his speed by 2 (about +28% compared to the default Pug) and also temporarily increase the value of pug coins by 50. He might be difficult to navigate after being struck by lightning. He also radiates a blue'ish glow while buffed and the effect lasts a fixed amount of time.

• Unlock conditions: Be struck by lightning a grand total of 20 times.
  
• Speed: At least 7 (see explanation below)
  
• Gravity: 50
  
• Jump force: 600
  
• Double jumps: 1x

In fact, that is not all there is to Robot Pug's buff: Multiple lightning strikes in quick succession do stack without diminishing returns, increasing both his speed by 2 and coin value by 50 for each stack. When getting hit by an additional lightning strike, the remaining time for all stacks is reset to its initial duration. Additionally - and this makes Robot Pug hilariously broken - when the buff is running out, only one single buff stack is removed, and all others remain applied permanently for the rest of the run. This is likely a bug, but can be quite insane, if you get struck multiple times within one storm on multiple occurences in a run. So basically, there is no limit to his speed, and it's only capped by your skill level and level generator luck (see the next section about weather for details).

Depending on your luck it might take a very long time to unlock Robot Pug. As you can only be struck by lightning during a storm, here is some background information on how lightning and weather works in the game.

Lightning is triggered, when the player enters certain trigger areas in a level while there is an active storm going on. These trigger areas are fixed with each level prefab (repeatable level part), so depending on the prefabs, that the game chooses for you during the thunderstorm, you might get struck once, multiple times, or not at all during one specific storm. The prefabs with lightning triggers are usually the more complicated and dangerous ones with spikes, sawblades, etc.
In total 8 out of the 31 possible prefabs have lightning triggers.

Do your best to survive, while a storm is occuring, as it increases your odds of dashing past a lightning trigger. If you do die, immediately retry, as the game keeps the weather running and it may trigger a lightning strike in your next attempt right away, before the storm fades.

Next, let's look at how likely it is for a storm to occur in the first place. A weather occurence has a fixed time duration, and the game performs a regular check for the next weather. For that purpose it first rolls a D100 dice and then compares its value to some internal weather threshold constants. If its roll is below the respective weather threshold, the corresponding weather is added to a list. Finally the next weather is chosen uniformly at random from the list created in the first step. This is unless the list is empty, then the weather will be clear. The weather thresholds:

• Snow: 20
  
• Rain: 40
  
• Storm: 15
  
• Night: 50 (yes, night is considered a weather in Turbo Pug)

So for example, if the first roll is a 35, the list will contain "night" and "rain", giving either a 50% chance of occurring. If the first roll is a 5, each "snow", "rain", "storm" and "night" each have a 25% chance of occurring. And so on.
Combined and computed the overall weather chances per weather episode are:

• Clear: 50%
  
• Snow: 5.42%
  
• Rain: 15.42%
  
• Storm: 3.75%
  
• Night: 25.42%

Given, that not every storm has a guaranteed lightning stirke, it's pretty rare. So obtaining a total of 20 strikes for the unlock takes time.

For each category there are max / min values throughout the characters.

The max starting speed is 8, or around 14.3% faster than the default Pug. Max starting speed is available to the Xmas Pug, Kitty, Rainbow Pug and Pumpkin Pug.
The fastest pug hands down is Robot Pug, who can - in theory - reach as much speed as you are capable of handling skill-wise. When being struck by lightning in quick succession (second hit, while the buff of the first hit is still active), it will increase the speed by 2 permanently for the current run. Realistically you can reach speeds of 13-15 before he becomes too hard to play (at least for me, lol).

The most double jumps available is just 1. Double-jump enabled characters are: Space Kitty, Mexican Pug, Cape Pug, Rainbow Pug, Pumpkin Pug, Hamster and Robot Pug.

This directly relates to the gravity, and the character with the top value is Space Kitty, followed by the Mexican Pug (and Penguin).

On paper, the default Pug has the strongest jump force, but being airborne immediately subjects the player to gravity, so it needs to be taken into account. Overall the jump heights are almost identical to the Pug, with the Mexican Pug having a slight edge over all other characters.

The Robot Pug has the unique ability to be immune to the floating through lightning strikes. When getting hit, the buff also increases coin value by 50 and increases his speed by 2. It's not simple to navigate in this condition, so the Robot Pug is very much only suitable for experienced players, especially so, when being subjected to multiple lightning strikes within the same storm. Robot Pug also radiates a blue light after being struck.

Pumpkin Pug radiates the same light as a lightning-struck Robot Pug, but at night and with a yellow'ish hue instead of the blue one. The nightly glow of Pumpkin Pug gives a tiny bit of extra score for running. Running an entire night with Pumpkin Pug yields a total of 50 extra points.

The game does not keep track of unlocked characters, it infers it from the game stats everytime, the character selection screen is opened. Grand total score and single run high score can be found within the game, but overall deaths and number of times struck by lightning are not so easily found.

The game keeps track of this number through the Windows Registry (on Windows), I'm not sure whether the game is available on other platforms as well and where it's saved there.

Run "regedit" (hit the windows key and just type it in, it should show Registry Editor or something similar) and navigate to "Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Space Cat Studios\Turbo Pug", there you will find the values "ScoreBest", "ScoreDead", "ScoreStruck" and "ScoreSumm", corresponding to high score, times died, times struck by lightning and overall score. So you can check how many more lightning strikes and deaths you need to unlock everything.


Or, if you feel cheesy, just edit the values in the registry to unlock everything (close the game before). Minimum values required to unlock everything:

• ScoreBest: 7000
  
• ScoreDead: 75
  
• ScoreStruck: 20
  
• ScoreSumm: 65000