Graham Smith
I’ve been on a journey. About an hour into Minishoot’ Adventures, I was ready to call this straightforward mix of 2D shmup and 2D Zelda mediocre. My mind had been changed long before I beat the final boss, by which point I thought it was good, but I still felt that all the people praising it at the end of 2024 were singing so loudly only because it was good and short and obscure, three things which in combination are easily mistaken for greatness.
Then I pushed past that final boss, mopping up the remainder of the map, and in that last 25% I think I fell in love. Minishoot’ Adventures is straightforward in concept, but its execution is a masterclass of craftsmanship.
Or perhaps that should be just “craftship”. Minishoot’ Adventures has you controlling a small hovercraft, which from the surprising apostrophe in the title (why not “Minishoot’s”?) I assume to be named Minishoot. There’s very little writing in the game to make its story explicit, but this seems to be a universe populated by similar sentient craft with no humans in sight. As you zoom around, you encounter friendly craft who communicate with you via chirrups, spins and sweat, and who come to your HQ to help you, and enemy craft that wish to shoot you. You do not wish to be shot, so you dodge their bullets and fire back.
Let’s start with my doubts. Minishoot’ Adventures is a Metroidvania and to begin with your world map is mostly blank. You can explore the starting area, which on its own contains many caves or dungeons to venture within, but also move beyond the boundaries of your map into several adjacent zones. The result was that I found myself an hour in and completely overwhelmed.
I didn’t know where to go. When I died in combat I didn’t know whether to persevere or whether I simply wasn’t levelled enough for the area and should come back later. I also didn’t know where to find the shards that would later fill out my map. I couldn’t keep track of which caves I’d already been in and which I couldn’t, because from the outside they often look similar. The map in the bottom left corner would flash occasionally, and I didn’t know what that meant because, as a mostly wordless game, there’s very little tutorialisation.
Some other players might revel in this sort of mystery, but I am not some other players. I am me and I found it stressful and frustrating. Minishoot’ Adventures is not an information game that teases you with glimpsed potential and, when answers come, they arrive not via your own investigation or experimentation but on a platter as unlocked abilities and characters. This is par for the Metroidvania course, but I feel like other genremates – notably Hollow Knight or Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown – do a better job of signalling to the player: not here, not yet.
Ultimately, this moment where I felt lost among the game design was shortlived, and I persevered because there remained fundamental joys even during the anxiety. Zooming around is the most immediate joy of Minishoot, and “zoom” feels like the right verb for the combination of thrilling momentum and direct control. It’s more Geometry Wars than Galak-Z, but there is still some mastery to be eked out from boost and dash moves.
Shooting, too, is easy fun. Your starter weapon is a rapid fire single-bullet machinegun, and the clang and smash of shattering enemies is supremely satisfying. Collect enough of the crystals that enemies drop and you’ll level up, gaining a point that can be invested to make your weapon stronger, your bullets travel faster and further, your craft speedier, and more. You’ll also earn gems by fighting larger enemies that can be spent on upgrading your weapon, turning that single-bullet machinegun into a multishot onslaught that tears through early enemies.
Once I had a foothold in the game – although the game has no feet, technically, and is perhaps entirely limbless – a steady rhythm formed. I’d delve into a cave, each one a simple Zelda-style dungeon, and win a series of fights to reach buttons and keys that allowed further progress in the dungeon. Eventually, at the dungeon’s end, I’d find a new ability, such as to slow time, to release a bomb charge or to fly over water. These abilities would further enliven combat and empower me to make yet further progress in the overworld, reaching new areas containing their own dungeons. Rinse and repeat.
By the time I beat its final boss around nine hours into Minishoot’ Adventures, I was pleased. There’s a generosity to the game, the sense that it wants you to have fun and isn’t too interested in standing in your way. It’s not entirely frictionless, to be clear, but take for example the ability to downgrade your abilities and refund the points at any time. There were plenty of fights, including bosses, that I failed five or six times, but progress could often be fairly achieved by restructuring my upgrades to favour damage output over speed or other abilities.
The only knock I had against the game by this point was that I didn’t find it very interesting. There’s nothing technically original about Minishoot’ Adventures; it’s a derivative mashup of two well-trodden genres that, in their meeting, reveal nothing new about each other. I’ll be honest, that makes it a tough game to write an engaging review about while avoiding cliche.
Yet when I beat that final boss, I didn’t want to stop. Minishoot’ Adventures feels so good to play that I continued to explore, heading to the by-then uncovered map markers to mop up. It was in this final run that I think I fell in love, as I gathered remaining abilities, collectibles, and plot beats one after another and in quick succession. I never 100% a game, but I did that and still kept going in Minishoot’ Adventures. I was sad when it was truly over, too.
So let’s not overcomplicate it. Minishoot’ Adventures is an outwardly straightforward game, but its straightforwardness is deceptive. As I was playing, a stupid question formed: given its conceptual obviousness and simple pleasures, why aren’t there more games as good as this? It’s a stupid question because it has an obvious answer: because it’s incredibly difficult to make a good game and because what seems straightforward in retrospect almost never is in creation. Maybe Minishoot’ Adventures isn’t a “great” game, but it sure is a great time, and that’s plenty.
ranzware
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