Minit

While I certainly appreciate when games take on a massive sense of scale and scope and end up making such a thing work, this doesn’t change the fact that I often find myself leaning more towards much shorter, more polished experiences instead. A game with a unique concept that makes it work well often is what ends up being something that sticks with me for a really long time, not only for making a unique playing experience, but as something I can then go and pick apart afterwards and use such experiences to improve my own philosophies towards game design. On paper, Minit seems a whole lot like another game that would do this for me, with its distinctive artstyle combined with an immediately eye-catching premise of having a play the game a minute at a time before dying and spawning at the last place you rested. Despite this however, in execution, I feel like this isn’t that great a game beyond a couple of key areas, and one that’s a bit light on content even for my liking to the point where I don’t know how easily I could recommend it.

For the big positive of the game however, the majority of the main storyline has some really interesting and funny stuff going for it, with the tight time limit constantly applied being able to completely recontextualise what can be seen as a threat. This can turn something as simple as having to wait in a line for a bit from something that could be a mild inconvenience to something that will genuinely kill you if you wait in said line for too long, and this sort of idea is applied to a variety of situations in order to make the most mundane of situations a desperate, intense flurries of just trying to get everything done, and turning even the most simple puzzles into something that can potentially lead to your death a couple of times. The whole top down 2D adventure like the old Zelda games also feels like the perfect sort of game to do this with, balancing that exploration with item discovery leading to further progression and unlocking more areas being a very natural feeling game type to attempt condensing into this sort of style, with a lot of potential for some clever puzzles that revolve around this mechanic to make it feel like more than just a gimmick.

Unfortunately, the game’s execution ends up feeling a bit lacking by the end for a few reasons. As time goes on, the larger scope of the later game areas starts making this timer feel like more of an annoying hindrance as opposed to something to cleverly play around, with a lot of the puzzles taking so long to walk back to that the player will only have like, 15 seconds left to do what they must do. This results in the game actually getting more simplistic by the end, as these puzzles end up having to cater for these much shorter timeframes, rather than actually providing more interesting scenarios. This ends up hitting the point that the “puzzles” feel closer to just “spend most of your time getting to this location and then hit a thing” because of how limiting this timeframe really is. You can really tell that this sort of idea is something that the designers after a certain point stopped really knowing what they could do with it, with a lot of developments feeling less like something to work closely with this idea, instead feeling more as if the way the game progresses wants to introduce more ways to get around having to deal with this time limit instead, further representing the fact that this idea ends up being way more limiting than it’s worth for the most part, at least in this state. Another issue is that while the monochromatic, 8-bit artstyle might look cool at a glance, it ends up being problematic for a couple of reasons. Being completely black and white without and real shading to the art ends up being really hard on the eyes after a while, and ends up almost feeling like a Rorschach test at points, where you’re struggling to even vaguely make out what something is meant to be and just have to guess, leading to some poor visual feedback that’s especially problematic when you’re meant to be doing everything quickly.

There’s also the issue where the game only takes about an hour to beat without thinking of getting all the collectibles, and while I’m all for short games as long as things are done well, this feels a bit too light on content for me to actually be able to recommend in good conscience, overall being not quite enough even for me. Now while you say that the game’s length goes up if you take all the optional collectibles to discover, once you factor these elements of the game in, things take a major nosedive. So many areas of the game feel totally useless, and it’s because of these additional areas having to cater towards a variety of collectibles that largely feel as if they mean nothing. The immediate problem comes back to the fact that you’ve only got a minute per life, as it makes any attempts at exploration feel painfully tedious and being at odds with wanting the player to experiment, leaving the idea of combing through the environment feeling incredibly unappealing in the long run. Most of these collectibles are also placed in such a way that it feels less like you’re actually doing anything beyond having a glorified scavenger hunt, taking away a lot of that intrinsic reward that one can garner from going for 100% in a game. This combined with the lack of any real extrinsic reward for the most part further feels against the idea of having so many things to find as well. It feels as if there’s no point to collect most of these bonuses, as the game is easy enough that after collecting a couple of heart containers, all the additional ones are just purely redundant, and when the vast majority of collectibles are tied to gaining more health, it just feels as if you’re getting nothing out of your exploration. When there’s no reason or actual benefit to go out of your way to collect things, and when the game feels against allowing the player to explore in such a way, what ends up happening is leaving this entire aspect of the game feeling almost totally devoid of any enjoyable qualities.

Overall, while I really like certain qualities of this game and think it’s got a lot of charm, not to mention that I think its idea is a very interesting one, the game itself just feels too flawed in a number of ways for me to really consider recommending it. I feel that rather than populating a lot of the optional areas in this with pointless collectibles, the gameplay loop could have been far more interesting if it was reworked into something where most of these areas gave you tools key to progression, such as sped upgrades or a way to get around certain obstacles (which the game did in its first half before abandoning such stuff). By doing this, not only would the game feel as if it progressed in a far more interesting way, but would have allowed the designers to work around the tight limit in a more natural and clean way, allowing additional complexity to be introduced later on, rather than questionably simplifying by the end. Focusing too much on a fair few aspects of the game that feel fundamentally at odds with the established game loop is a large part of why I didn’t find Minit a particularly enjoyable experience, and I probably would have thought less of it if not for the fact that its brevity stopped it from becoming an excruciating experience. A cool idea that makes me think that if they made a sequel that expanded upon this idea a bit more, I’d be all over it, but as for this game as a whole, there’s too much wrong with it for its more interesting qualities to really appeal to me.

After you find a sword, you become cursed and now only have 1 minute until you die...although you just respawn with any collected item. This means that you have one minute to complete an objective, but first you need to work out what you need to do. At many points of the game, you have a few options where to go. You may come to a location where it seems you cannot progress, so when you respawn, you should venture down a different path.

You don't have to wait until death, you can force it to happen at any time with the B button.

It's part exploration, puzzles and memorisation, and played at a rapid pace. It's almost like the 2D Zelda's but mixed in with the Wario Ware madness. The monochrome style makes it feel very retro, like it could be on the GameBoy.

You find new buildings which act as checkpoints, and you can return to previous houses to set the checkpoint there instead. If you know you need to backtrack, you will first return to the house.

It's quite a cool idea, but will only take 1 to 1.5 hours to get through. You could return to the game for the New Game Plus, or try and improve your times/death count. There are also coins to find, which I presume allows you to venture into the underground temple.

It's quite a cool idea but it's over far too quick.