Every so often a game comes along and reminds me that medium sized indie games are generally my favourites. Ten hour single player campaigns keenly focused on fun gameplay, in a carefully crafted world, with those flashes of individuality that a small team or passion project can more readily bring to it.
Minishoot’ Adventures is a top down bullet hell shooter with metroidvania like progression. I love the way it handles exploration as a key element. First I need to find a map fragment for the region, then take it to a bot to add items of interest, and later I can buy an upgrade to show completion status. The best bit is that maps are not that easy to find in the first place, which results in a lot of blind exploring and learning the terrain through memory. That may not sound like a plus to some but I’m a little tired of the more typical system of quickly finding a map or watchtower that reveals all the info. There’s more mystery this way.
The overworld can be fully traversed quite quickly and I spent as much, if not more, time searching dungeons, caves and buildings. Hidden switches and openings will create new routes, as will clearing some areas of enemies. Sometimes keys or items are required. The design is a pretty classic format harking back to games like the original Zelda, and the execution here is spot on. Using a more compact world keeps the action moving and keeps any backtracking and objective hunting an enjoyable experience.
So I’m cruising around this cute looking open world of little ships and bots, trying to save it from the latest fantasy calamity by upgrading my skills and weapons, then blasting everything in sight. There are sudden hordes, arenas, and bosses. I’m not the best at bullet hell games but still take a dip occasionally. Despite that I found normal difficulty very manageable. In fact, I’d say some of the big bosses were on the easy side due to more basic firing patterns. That said there were tougher arena sections and the final boss took a bit of mastering. The ‘post game’ true ending bits were also a good challenge. If I play through again I think I’ll choose hard and see if it’s doable for me. For anyone wanting a more relaxing game there are lots of adjustable difficulty settings to appeal to most people.
My least favourite bit was the races, especially when having to jump ramps. Basically because I found it harder to get the hang of and like a child if it’s harder to master then I don’t like it as much. Even so I warmed up to them as I improved. The very last race was extra satisfying to beat because at first I wasn’t sure I’d manage it. Part of the reason for that is I forgot to reallocate my upgrades to max out my speed. It’s a nice touch that you can change your setup at anytime. Another trick I hadn’t considered but apparently works is using the time-slow-down skill.
In my eyes, there’s really not many downsides in Minishoot’ Adventures. One or two technical points like needing to change the controller setting to PS5 for every session (all that seems to do is put the correct prompts on screen). Achievements need fixing for macOS and the devs are on it. Some higher difficulty settings for the experts would be nice. I’m really just nitpicking for balance.
I did a 100% completion in about 11 hours. Could have finished the game off at around 8 or 9 hours but was having so much fun ticking off every last piece of it. The ending had one particularly unusual final request that fit perfectly with the modest story and gave me a chuckle. It’s impressive to see such a polished game from a dev team of essentially two people and I’ll be keeping an eye out for more of their stuff.
Available from Steam.
mishmash 