Minishoot' Adventures was a game I wasn't sure I wanted to play. With a high Metracritic score and an intriguing concept of Zelda meets twin-stick shooter, it sure sounded like a neat game. Something about it almost made me skip it though. Maybe it was my aversion to twin-stick shooters or maybe the artstyle just wasn't doing it for me. Regardless, I'm glad I ignored those hesitations as Minishoot' Adventures is truly a unique gem.
You play as a little spaceship who lives in a crystal world with their spaceship friends. Just go with it. One day, a mysterious dark power traps you and your friends, and it looks like you're the only one capable of breaking out and rescuing everyone. You need to go out and beat the 4 bosses guarding the big baddie if you want to have any chance of saving the world.
As mentioned with its core concept, Minishoot' Adventures provides a Zelda-like adventure, overworld and dungeons included, while challenging you at the same time with twin-stick shooter combat. It's a real bullet hell out there with projectiles flying and fast foes zooming in to strike. I found this mix to work excellently. The combat itself is silky smooth and super fun to play. It takes the simple, traditional core of twin-stick shooting and adds onto it with the upgrades and new powers you'd expect from a Zelda-like adventure. You'll upgrade your stats, power up your gun, and gain powerful new abilities and artifacts, all by exploring the world.
Exploration really is key here. The game always gives you a marker of where you need to go next, but even on Normal difficulty (called "Original" here), the foes and especially the bosses pose quite the challenge. Exploring though is how you power yourself up to overcome them. All enemies drop red shards, which you can also find in the wild. Get enough shards and you Level Up with a crystal point. These can be spent to power up your damage, range, shooting speed, and more! You'll also find new abilities and upgrades like Heart Pieces out in the mini dungeons. Exploring mini dungeons is key to get all these added bonuses and make the main journey more achievable. It's an addicting gameplay loop that sucked me in pretty quickly. All these mini dungeons are so fun on their own too that I was happy to go out of my way to complete all of them, 100%-ing the overworld map.
If you like games that emphasize exploration and challenging combat, this is definitely for you! It's a really simple formula that the developers did a great job extending to a full game, and I had a blast almost every minute I played. Special shoutout goes out to the bosses too, which provided epic showdowns worthy of their stature even if some of them had phases that were surprisingly easy.
All of this is wrapped up in a solid presentation package. You don't really get much of a story, though there is some lore if you go looking for it. The artstyle is a bit plain as I alluded to earlier, but it did start to charm me as I continued. It's simple but clean and well animated, adding cute character to all the little spaceships. It's also really effective for gameplay as the clean art and snappy animations made reading the sometimes chaotic battlefields much more approachable. I was never really confused on what bullets were coming my way or where to maneuver, at least not because of the visuals. Moreso because it could be overwhelming, but that's what made it fun! This is all paired with a really good soundtrack too. I don't know if it's a new favorite, but it had plenty of fun tunes that really matched the cartoony vibe in both bright and dark ways as appropriate as I played. The boss themes especially had some awesome moments.
Overall, this is exactly what I look for in an indie game. Take a bunch of known elements and mash them together unlike anything before to provide a unique gameplay experience I won't forget. It has a couple dents in its armor sure, but in the end I had a great time!
You play as a little spaceship who lives in a crystal world with their spaceship friends. Just go with it. One day, a mysterious dark power traps you and your friends, and it looks like you're the only one capable of breaking out and rescuing everyone. You need to go out and beat the 4 bosses guarding the big baddie if you want to have any chance of saving the world.
As mentioned with its core concept, Minishoot' Adventures provides a Zelda-like adventure, overworld and dungeons included, while challenging you at the same time with twin-stick shooter combat. It's a real bullet hell out there with projectiles flying and fast foes zooming in to strike. I found this mix to work excellently. The combat itself is silky smooth and super fun to play. It takes the simple, traditional core of twin-stick shooting and adds onto it with the upgrades and new powers you'd expect from a Zelda-like adventure. You'll upgrade your stats, power up your gun, and gain powerful new abilities and artifacts, all by exploring the world.
Exploration really is key here. The game always gives you a marker of where you need to go next, but even on Normal difficulty (called "Original" here), the foes and especially the bosses pose quite the challenge. Exploring though is how you power yourself up to overcome them. All enemies drop red shards, which you can also find in the wild. Get enough shards and you Level Up with a crystal point. These can be spent to power up your damage, range, shooting speed, and more! You'll also find new abilities and upgrades like Heart Pieces out in the mini dungeons. Exploring mini dungeons is key to get all these added bonuses and make the main journey more achievable. It's an addicting gameplay loop that sucked me in pretty quickly. All these mini dungeons are so fun on their own too that I was happy to go out of my way to complete all of them, 100%-ing the overworld map.
If you like games that emphasize exploration and challenging combat, this is definitely for you! It's a really simple formula that the developers did a great job extending to a full game, and I had a blast almost every minute I played. Special shoutout goes out to the bosses too, which provided epic showdowns worthy of their stature even if some of them had phases that were surprisingly easy.
All of this is wrapped up in a solid presentation package. You don't really get much of a story, though there is some lore if you go looking for it. The artstyle is a bit plain as I alluded to earlier, but it did start to charm me as I continued. It's simple but clean and well animated, adding cute character to all the little spaceships. It's also really effective for gameplay as the clean art and snappy animations made reading the sometimes chaotic battlefields much more approachable. I was never really confused on what bullets were coming my way or where to maneuver, at least not because of the visuals. Moreso because it could be overwhelming, but that's what made it fun! This is all paired with a really good soundtrack too. I don't know if it's a new favorite, but it had plenty of fun tunes that really matched the cartoony vibe in both bright and dark ways as appropriate as I played. The boss themes especially had some awesome moments.
Overall, this is exactly what I look for in an indie game. Take a bunch of known elements and mash them together unlike anything before to provide a unique gameplay experience I won't forget. It has a couple dents in its armor sure, but in the end I had a great time!