TL;DR

I love this game. It’s super duper good. It’s basically The Legend of Zelda on NES if it was a twin stick shooter instead. A strange combination on the surface of it, but trust me, it works. There’s a ton of fun puzzles, dungeons and enemies to fight, with good upgrades that make the game more fun to play. It runs well, plays well, sounds well, looks well and you’re rewarded for exploring. Everything about this game is so solid and fun. I highly recommend it to pretty much anyone.

Full Review

I had no idea that Minishoot’ Adventures existed. I was listening to the Jeff Gerstmann podcast and heard that he was having a lot of fun with this game, so I decided to look it up and see some videos on it. I thought it looked cool, so I bought it on Steam and gave the game a shot.

Before I knew it, I had like 6 hours on my save file for just one game session, and then beat it in my second session. This game is very good and I’ve had this itch to talk about it ever since. So…yeah, here I go. Let’s begin with the pros, which are many. Then we’ll move on to some criticisms, which there are a decent amount of actually, but not enough to ruin the experience. Let’s begin. 

PROS

#1 – The Art Style

Some people have complained that the visuals aren’t great. That the art style looks like basic placeholder elements that were bought from the Unity Asset Store, or perhaps something that should be running in Flash on Newgrounds. But I’ll be honest, even though the graphics do look fairly basic, I don’t think it looks bad at all. I think it looks quite nice actually. The game shows off really colorful and bright colors that clearly indicate a change in scenery and distinctions between friend or foe. I don’t think the game would improve significantly if it was this hyper-realistic, ray tracing showcase. I like these nice, welcoming cartoon visuals. It ironically feels a lot more unique than other games lately that try to be either too stylish or too realistic. And even with this relatively simple look, they do manage to be creative with tons of different enemies to fight. There’s small ships, big ships, walking bushes that shoot you, and even giant snake ships that you have to fight in the middle of the desert. It might not be the greatest looking game in the world, but it does it’s job well and still manages to exude charm and creativity despite that.

#2 – Barely any text or dialogue

There’s very little text or explicit dialogue present throughout the game. Outside of some basic stuff like going through menus, buying upgrades, and tiny bits of lore here and there, there’s not a lot here in terms of reading. Most of it is a purely visual affair where you figure out how the game works by yourself with very little help, and I love that. If there’s anything in this game that reminds me of Zelda 1 the most, it’s certainly this. Since there’s not a lot to read in this game, it can be played by basically anyone with little to no struggle. 

#3 – Not very punishing

There’s not a lot of punishment for dying, which depending on who you are, this might be good or bad. For me, it’s fine, because it lets me explore more freely without hesitating too much. I feel that for a big world like this one, dying and getting punished harshly for it would annoy me and I probably would’ve put the game down out of frustration. Gladly, that’s not the case here. There’s a few checkpoints here and there, particularly in dungeons, which I think is enough of a punishment for me to just pull me back there and redo the fights after getting killed.

#4 – Lots of stuff to collect

There’s a ton of items and special upgrades to discover, so it’s in your best interest to just explore everything and find as many secrets as you can. Some upgrades require special red gems that you trade in, but you’ll mostly get those from fighting strong enemies. This encourages you to keep on fighting instead of just running away from them. Not engaging in fights will not give you experience points or red gems for buying things, so you’ll need to sharpen your bullet hell skills to get rewards in the long run. Overall, I do think these items are worth getting.

#5 – It’s feels great to play

Controls feel good and responsive with your little ship smoothly turning and zooming around the map. It’s one of those games that just feels good to just move around in and shoot stuff. And it only gets better when you rack up upgrades and start zipping around super fast, dodging bullets everywhere and surviving in the slickest way ever. And if you go through the trouble of collecting everything in this game, then you’ll be rewarded with a super decked out ship that will give you a decent amount of stuff to play with during battles.

The sound of the shooting and hitting certain materials is also very satisfying to hear in an almost ASMR kind of way, which adds to how good it feels to have the game in your hands and play it yourself.

#6 – Exploration is rewarded well

So as I alluded to before, there’s a lot of exploration to be done in this big map, but a ton of it is optional. You could seriously blast your way to the final boss very quickly by ignoring everything, but you’d be doing yourself a disservice. I’d say that most of the fun to be had is through getting lost, fighting whatever you bump into, finding secrets and discovering new items that you can use to your advantage. And sometimes, you’ll find some super essential upgrades that will open up the map to you even more.

I would rather spoil as little of the game as possible, but I do think it bears mentioning that although the game is fairly short, there are more things for you to do after seeing the credits roll. And, even if you do complete 100% of the map, there is still MORE stuff that gets unlocked. Again, I don’t want to spoil anything, but if you’re looking for a game that rewards you for being a completionist, this one won’t disappoint you. All you have to know is that if you play this game and see the credits roll, just know that it’s not over yet. For 15 dollars, I’d that this game is good value.

CONS

#1 – Music is whatever

Music is forgettable and very whatever. Not a big deal for most and definitely not a dealbreaker, but music means a lot to me in games, so the generic feeling of it stuck out to me. Every jingle when you do something good sounds like what you’d expect. Boss battle music sounds like boss battle music. Nothing really stood out to me, which is a shame.

#2 – Boss Battles aren’t great…until the very very end.

The boss battles, although fun, I feel go on for way too long. There are some special enemies out there in the world that aren’t even bosses, but are also super bullet spongey. And this even with me having a ton of upgrades under my belt, it still takes forever for me to take down certain enemies, boss or otherwise. Another point I would give for the bosses specifically is that they feel very same-y toward the end. A lot of the same “bug with shield that you can only shoot from behind” kind of boss. It left me wanting something a little bit more creative and different.

I’ll say this much, I never really felt like I was truly being challenged by the bosses until the post-game, where, as I said before, if you complete the entire map 100% and defeat the true boss, there’s a special area that gets unlocked that will allow you to fight much more challenging bosses, and those were super fun to beat. I just wish that same level of fun was spread out through the regular game instead of just endgame content. Oh, and now that were on the topic of endings.

#3 – Ending’s Not That Important

I also don’t wish to spoil the ending for you, but I do think it’s necessary to mention that if you want to rush all the way to the end, don’t. Without revealing too many details, I found both the final boss and the ending to be super generic and disappointing. It further cemented for me that getting to the end is not the point of the game at all, but rather to explore the world and find everything, which then unlocks more things beyond the regular ending, and all that other stuff is more satisfying. So just keep in mind that if you really want to get the most out of this game, then it’s in your best interest to explore, find everything that you can, and then face the final boss and then the TRUE final boss after that.

#4 – A Bit Difficult to Track Progress

Eventually, you’ll buy an upgrade that shows you your progress on the map, including places you’ve visited before with some things you might have missed. This is all well and good, but sometimes, these places you re-visit with things you missed involve stuff you don’t have access to yet. Or sometimes the caves that are labeled are just tiny areas where you can’t do anything. It’s mainly labeled because it is within the same area of a special item, but you actually need to go through a different entrance to reach it. By having this useless hole be labeled, it just confuses the hell out of me and makes me think that there’s more to do there, but I’ve actually exhausted everything there is to do there in that specific spot, even if it’s in the same room as something special. I think it would’ve been much better and less confusing to just not mark these spots and instead mark the spot that will actually lead you to the special items, as opposed to dead ends that happen to be close to the items I want, but still labeling them like they’re important anyway. It was such a frustrating waste of time to go back to a cave that was marked and realizing, “Oh yeah, I forgot, this place is useless, I gotta go check somewhere else.”

#5 – Races aren’t interesting or challenging

The races aren’t that great and all of them are super easy to win. Not very fun, honestly. I could’ve done without them. If this game ever gets a sequel, this is something I would like to see iterated on a lot more.

#6 – The Most Whatever Who Cares Story Ever

Story’s fairly generic and I never cared for it. Pretty colors world is invaded by the purple and the purple is bad so you explore the world to destroy the purple and save the world. The end. There are some bits of lore that you can discover and read up on, but I’ll be honest, I could never bring myself to care about it. I had significantly more fun just exploring that world and picking up all the pieces with everything the game was showing me visually, as opposed to full on text boxes.

Conclusion

I think it’s really good despite its flaws. It’s simply so much fun to play and has enough stuff going on frequently enough that I was always engaged for its 10 hour runtime. Despite it being so short, I felt that the game was much longer than that, in a good way. As soon as I felt that the game was slowing down and going through the motions, I had already reached the end. It was solid and enjoyable the whole way through before it got anywhere close to outstaying its welcome.

The pure gameplay is what sells Minishoot Adventures, and not necessarily all the lore that I could honestly live without. If this two man developer team ever makes a sequel, I think there’s a lot that they can improve on, and I’ll be there to check it out if they ever do, because I had a great time playing this. For 15 dollars on Steam, I highly recommend that all of you get this game. The developers deserve the support.