Minishoot' Adventures - Switch 2 Review

Hey, do you have a few hours to spare? No, literally, like a few hours – it's crazy that eight hours was once considered the ideal standard length for AAA games and now it’s what we think of as "short", but here we are. Minishoot' Adventures lives up to its name by being entirely digestible in even just a single weekend day, if you’ve got nothing else going on. That’s to its benefit: a short but sweet cute-‘em-up-slash-Zelda-like that doesn’t overstay its welcome and easily tickles a shmup itch.

The Good

First off, the game controls are joyfully smooth from the outset and grow at a satisfying pace as you stack on the upgrades. Nothing feels as though it’s “too much" or “not enough" for each level up. Each one has a noticeable impact while never making you feel like you’ve become immediately overpowered. The same can be said of the various power-ups that you’ll pick up, with their usage being fully incorporated into the world, giving each of them multiple chances to shine. 

The world itself, which is nameless and so I’ll just keep calling it “the world”, is surprisingly memorable for the very simple art style. This is likely helped by the fact it’s not a particularly large game and so you’ll be backtracking through the same areas quite a lot. Again, this isn’t a problem for me since the world changes and unfolds all the time as you explore it and unlock more powers, so it never felt to me like padding or lost time. In fact, I’d say that the pacing of power-ups and upgrades to overall game progression is near-perfect. By the time you start to feel a bit worn out with the experience, it’s over, which is honestly just refreshing for this current era of gaming. 

The overall style of this game, as indicated by me dubbing it a 'cute-em-up' at the start, is downright adorable to me. It’s a lot of little robots making R2D2 sounds while firing bullets that make a range of crystalline “pew pews" in a vaguely post-apocalyptic world, with sprites drawn in a wonderfully bright, colourful style. There really isn’t anything to criticise here; I enjoyed almost every second of this game.

TL;DR

• Great control feel
• Very cute art and sound design
• Excellent gameplay pacing throughout

The Bad

My gripes are few but they are here, so we may as well discuss them. For a start, I would have liked for the map screen to be a little bit clearer, either by letting the player zoom in more or just having the art be larger and more visually distinct. My old man eyes are beginning to fail me, dammit, and a mishmash of varying shades of brown makes it hard to distinguish much, even when fully zoomed in. Given the rest of the game is so colourful, this feels like it was a deliberate choice that didn’t really live up to what they were intending. 

Technically the game is pretty sound, though I have some small beef with the way it does a couple of things. The first is how it respawns you after falling off an edge, often putting you in the most inopportune of places. I managed to softlock myself a few times at the starting area, with the game continuously spawning me over a ledge, keeping me trapped in a perpetual death loop until I restarted the game. 

Likewise, there are a few moments where unlocking something or completing a puzzle will pause your ship and take the camera focus away so it can show you the result. It doesn’t make you invulnerable while it’s happening or give you i-frames after the fact, however. So, there were a couple of desperate moments where I would accomplish something and then immediately die as soon as I regained control because the game felt it was more important to show off its fancy cinematic panning than let me continue to dodge bullets. Death is extremely forgiving in this game so it was never like I was set back in my progress but it was still frustrating that it happened a few times. 

Literally none of this is game-breaking, however, or even really diminishes from the experience a whole lot. But if you give me space to complain, buddy, you’ll get some complainin’.

TL;DR

• Occasional soft-lock death loops
• Map screen could be clearer
• Cinematic camera causing friction with controls

Final Score: 9/10

Minishoot' Adventures is a near-perfect game on its own merits and kind of exposes the way the review score sausage is made. It may not be on the same scale as some other games or as deep, but for what it sets out to do, it does it near perfectly. When a game purports itself only as a literal mini adventure and then delivers on that in a cute little package, how can I respond with anything other than the following: Fix your map screen, and we’ll talk about the missing point.

Thank you for checking out our Minishoot' Adventures Switch review, thank you to Seaven Studio for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:

• Andrew Caluzzi (Inca Studios / Camped Out)
• Bel Cubitt
• Bobby Jack
• Jack Caven
• Nintendo Maniacs
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