So out of nowhere a while ago, Nintendo drops an Indie World Showcase presentation, which is basically a Nintendo Direct but without any actual Nintendo games. Usually these spotlight a few cool-looking titles that I never end up buying because who has the time for all these games? This one was different, however.
Enter Minishoot’ Adventures (Nintendo Switch 2 Edition), a game that was announced and released on the very same day, which also happened to be the day I purchased it. Now I don’t know if this game was released on the original Switch or not, but it did come out on Steam at least in 2024. And I find it baffling that I’d never heard of the game at all until then, because it is AMAZING.
Minishoot’ is kinda like a Zelda game; run around a world map, battle enemies, discover power-ups, and journey through dungeons. The twist being that instead of a little adventurer guy, you play as a little spaceship-lookin’ guy. And also the “combat” is that of a bullet-hell shooter. Quite a combination, I know, and it works marvelously.
I was a little put off at the very start by the long loading time and the somewhat early-2000s-Flash-game-looking title screen and menus, but then I started actually playing the game, and discovered where all the effort and money went. It’s all in the gameplay, which is smooth like butter and also occasionally hard as nails. Thankfully, unlike your standard bullet-hell-styled game, this one is not designed to kill you constantly and suck down as many of your quarters as it can. No, Minishoot’ is surprisingly well-balanced, and even the toughest bosses only took me a few tries to conquer.
The game’s world is fairly compact, but very dense. There are secrets and hidden paths packed everywhere, with enemies constantly spawning in to keep you on your toes. At first, it’s a little cumbersome to navigate from place to place, but as you gain more abilities and open up shortcuts, it becomes much more breezy, and the whole experience is very satisfying. My only real complaint in this regard is that you get a world map, but never any dungeon maps. The dungeons aren’t particularly big or complex so it’s not a real issue, but it feels weird since it’s something I’ve become so accustomed to in Zelda-styled games.
One of my favourite parts of the game are the races. Occasionally you’ll find caves that are (typically) free of enemies, but have these little flea guys in them, who will challenge you to a single-lap race. These aren’t particularly difficult to begin with (I think the hardest one took me three tries), and one of the later abilities you get really breaks them, but they’re a lot of fun and I really enjoyed zipping through them. I would have liked if there were more.
And that last sentence sums up my feelings on Minishoot’ adventures perfectly; I wish there were more of it. The game is maybe like 9 hours long if you really strive to do all the things (I collected everything, but did not earn all the awards in the final gauntlet of challenges), which is great in general, because I’m old and appreciate shorter games, but it really left me wanting more. I lost track of how many times I said “This game is so good!” out loud to myself while playing.
So yeah, Minishoot’ Adventures. It’s so good! The simplistic visuals and music may raise some eyebrows, but the underlying gameplay is rock-solid. I could probably go on a bit longer about it, but I feel I’ve made my point clear enough. The last note I want to leave on is that once you’ve beaten the game, done all the things, and cleared the post-game, the game will delete your save file as part of the ending sequence. And it’s not some kind of troll or anything, it actually has a lot of story significance. Which is just like Nier! And you know by this point how much I like Nier and things that remind me of Nier!