written by David Steffen
Minit is a puzzle adventure game with a very short time limit published by Devolver Digital in April 2018.
The story begins as the duckbilled protagonist finds a sword lying on a beach. But it turns out to be a cursed sword that will kill the holder one minute after finding it, only to be spawned back at his house only to repeat again and again and again! Apparently these cursed swords are being produced at a local factory, so you need to go find the factory and complain. Which wouldn’t be so hard, if you didn’t respawn every minute. Minit is an incremental problem solver, where for each incarnation you have a minute to try to make some kind of progress, find a new item, find a new friend who might give you a clue, open a new shortcut to save you time next time. Where the trend is always bigger bigger bigger, bigger world to explore, larger and larger map, it’s an interesting take to head in the other direction. The game is fun, has a good sense of humor and the minute limit keeps everything pretty fast-paced.
Visuals
Very minimalist, down to being strictly black and white (not even gray). Cute graphics, but not complex at all.
Audio
Likewise, extremely simple.
Challenge
Low to medium level of challenge. Persistent players should be able to make their way through just by relentless exploring. There are a couple parts where you have to fight against multiple enemies–you can make it easier if you can find some heart containers first, but it shouldn’t be too hard for most gamers.
Story
Quite light on story, just enough to justify the scenario (with the cursed sword) and the quest (to resolve the issue at the sword factory).
Session Time
Very short! A maximum of a minute, in fact, as you will die at a minute anyway and restart from a house. This does make it a very easy game to pick up even if your time is scattered.
Playability
Very simple controls, generally just arrow keys and attack, so very easy to pick up, and to understand the scenario.
Replayability
There are various collectibles, like coins and hearts and other items. I finished the game only finding about half of them, so you could keep playing if you wanted to find them all.
Originality
The overall story and style is similar to other games, but the interesting tweak here of the 1 minute time limit is an interesting twist on the concept, and was the main thing that made me pick it up.
Playtime
I finished the main quest of the game in about three hours. I haven’t tried to find all the collectibles, so I don’t know how long that would take.
Overall
It’s a fun and simple idea for a game that doesn’t take a lot of skill or attention, and has wonderfully short play sessions to make it easy for people who game in scattered spare time. Worth the time to play through it, but don’t expect it to last you a long time. $10 on Steam.