I’m in it to win it with Minit

Minit was one of my top 10 games that I didn’t get to play in 2018. I have actually had a copy of the game installed in my Steam library since getting it via the Humble Day of the Devs 2018 Bundle, and yet, the irony here is that, for a game where each session of actually playing the game only lasts for sixty seconds, I never found the time to play it. Sure, I’m to blame there, but it’s not like I have anything super serious going on in my life currently. Well, the good news is that, according to this very post on Grinding Down, I have now finally played a bit of Minit. Not enough yet to win it, but I’m in it…still.

For those unaware, Minit is an action, puzzle-driven adventure thing developed by Jan Willem Nijman, co-founder and one-half of Vlambeer, Kitty Calis, who contributed to Horizon Zero Dawn, Jukio Kallio, a freelance composer, and Dominik Johann, the art director of Crows Crows Crows. It is based around time. Basically, the premise is that each of the player’s lives only lasts for one minute, resulting in tiny sessions of exploring the world over sixty seconds at a time. With each interval, the player will learn more about the environment and gain new items to help progress further and further. Inching forward slowly but surely is the name of the game.

It’s a pretty novel idea, executed extremely well. Other games that have done something similar to this, such as Half-Minute Hero, surely exist, but I haven’t played them. So, for me, Minit has been a truly exciting game to play. One, it’s a ton of fun to play, and the time limit never feels restrictive; in fact, as my little hero’s time winds down, I find myself getting excited to try exploring a different path on the next go. It is quite freeing. Two, I absolutely love Minit‘s look, which is clean and unobtrusive and does not end up distracting you too much when searching for something to do to make progress. Third, the usage of various home bases makes exploring new areas pain-free and getting around much easier.

Minit has you playing as a small bird-like pixel character–he kind of reminds me of a duck, but, y’know, a pixel duck with nothing more than a bill to go off of–who lives in a black and white world and is cursed with only ever living for a single minute. Despite all that, it’s an action adventure game just like The Legend of Zelda, with puzzles to solve too. The good news is that various actions do have permanence in the world, so dying doesn’t mean it was all for naught. For instance, finding key items to open up more progress stay in your inventory when you are reborn, and if you previously helped someone with a task, they remain helped. Thank goodness. This would be a much more cruel and nearly impossible game to play if you were forced to accomplish all this over again in your short-as-heck life.

According to How Long to Beat, Minit is a short game, roughly three or four hours long. I’ve already put about an hour and a half into it, so I guess I am halfway there. Although it has now been a week or so since I played it, and I fear I might have forgotten where I’m supposed to go next. I’m at the inn, looking to fill it up with patrons. Hmm. Wish me luck, and then, after about sixty seconds, wish me luck once more.

LUFTRAUSERS gives you the power to set the skies aflame

Some of my favorite Peanuts strips revolve around Snoopy’s alter ego of a World War I flying ace battling the likes of the Red Baron or the Austro-Hungarian Empire high up in the sky, his doghouse an adequate stand-in for a time-appropriate biplane capable of intense dogfighting. I even found the Xbox Live arcade title Snoopy Flying Ace to be decent fun. Anyways, I’ve always been a big fan of when comic strips get imaginative, which is why it won’t surprise you to learn I eat up other strips like Calvin and Hobbes, Rose is Rose, and Big Nate. In many ways, Vlambeer’s LUFTRAUSERS feels a lot like these comic strips, where the real and unreal mix in a manner that can only result in bold, sparkling joy.

The premise to LUFTRAUSERS is simple: select a combination of parts to complete your Rauser plane, take off into the sky, and shoot everything that shoots at you. Don’t worry, it’s not confusing–everything shoots at you. Depending on your plane’s build, you’ll have different amounts of HP, but you can recover damage by not shooting anything for a bit. Each part–gun, body, engine–has its own set of missions to complete, such as blowing up submarines or destroying ten enemies while boosting, and you can mix and match your build to create the perfect plane for completing each task. I personally found the Nuke body to be perfect for taking down those nasty submarines post-death. Right now, I’m trying to figure out how to get the blimp to spawn, as many missions are locked until I can take one of those bloated airbags down.

Visually, LUFTRAUSERS has a minimalistic look, but it works extremely well, because once you are up and about flying around like a madman, doing loops over dozens of on-screen enemies, the flat, muted graphics help make each enemy and bullet pop whereas something more detailed might cause these elements to become lost in the action. The sprites get more detailed in the menu options, such as in the bunker or statistics, where an actual member of your team is standing there, watching your every move. There’s also tiny cutscenes as well, which will make you fondly think of your childhood SNES adventures. From the sounds of it, you can collect other color variations for the game, too, so if sepia isn’t your thing, something else might sink your battleship.

The experience of zooming up into the sky, dropping down into the water, and blasting everything in sight would be less of a thrill if the soundtrack wasn’t as killer as it is. For one thing, the soundtrack morphs based on how you construct your plane, so there’s both plenty to hear, plenty to see, but regardless of that, every song exists to pump you up about getting into some intense aerial combat–and it works. I can’t tell you the number of times I caught myself unconsciously bobbing my head as I played, only to realize how into the tunes I was after my plane blew up.

I originally played LUFTRAUSERS on Steam, even streamed it a bit as I figured out my setup for Extra Life, though that video is now gone from my archives, but the game is now a November freebie for PlayStation Plus subscribers on PlayStation 3. No surprise, but it plays the same on both systems, but this arcade-inspired “one more run” style of game is more enjoyable on the couch, so that’s where I’ll continue on with my dogfighting plans. Watch out, blimps–I’m gunning for you!