Time is not often a resource that you need to think about when going on an adventure. Zelda patiently waits in Hyrule Castle while Link finishes up shrines in Breath of the Wild, the religious zealots in Far Cry 5 let you fish in peace, and even the merry band of travelling friends in Final Fantasy XV find downtime during crisis. Minit doesn’t subscribe to such design, and instead puts emphasis on the need to hurry. Its strict 60-second time limit is an ever-present threat as you dig up the world’s secrets around you, dispel a cruel curse, and attempt to bring peace to the land.
Minit begins with your unnamed hero happening upon a cursed sword, plunging you into a cycle of infinite minute-long sessions that always end with your death. Each time you respawn, the counter restarts, and you’re transported back to your last resting place. New resting places can be unlocked by walking into them throughout the map, but simply finding them in time is a task. You’ll need to uncover routes with your sword, chopping down shrubs to find new pathways to new areas on the edges of your 4:3 screen. Building a mental map of the world around you is paramount next to your ability to both avoid threats and find the shortest path to an objective, and it can feel like a punishing exercise at first.
But it doesn’t take long for Minit to find a rhythm that’s intoxicating. Each new character you meet bears a personality that can be equally inviting or aggressive, some wanting to help you along your journey and others just wanting to be left alone. Shopkeepers offer bite-sized quests for you to try and complete in the limited time you have, tempting you with rewards on completion. Clearing out an area of crabs or gathering a certain number of hidden coins can reward you with seemingly non-descript items like gardening gloves and watering cans. But these tools open the rest of Minit’s world to you, letting you move large blocks obscuring paths or chopping down trees that would otherwise act as a dead-end.
Just like The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (which also worked around the idea of limited time runs), certain objects and effects you’ve made on Minit’s world persist between run-throughs. For example, obtaining an item will store it permanently in your inventory or make it available to pick up at your last resting place. While some objects will return to their default position and block paths you may have already traversed, more story-centric events will remain in the state you left them in. A wandering spirit in the endless desert will stay dead after you’ve defeated it, and the lost guests of a strange hotel won’t wander off again after you’ve found them. These act as milestones to your progress through Minit, always giving you something on the horizon to chase down.
Chasing these leads requires both experimentation and exploration. Very often you’ll come across a perplexing area with new objects that seem static and immune to any of your efforts. Sometimes all an area’s mysteries seem obvious in hindsight, and yet Minit’s minimalistic yet emotive art does well to hide secrets in plain sight. It was nearly an hour into my first run until I realized I should be looking for coins in pots scattered around the world, or that my attacks on nearby characters could trigger new dialogue options. Poking and prodding Minit’s world is intrinsic to your progress, and it’s easy to find yourself lost in loops of deaths simply trying to figure out the next step forward. These instances might be frustrating, but they never go unrewarded. Minit is bursting at the seams with secrecy and mystery, so much so that it’s hard to soak in all at once. A generous New Game+ mode ups the ante with a shorter lifespan and new challenges but entices you to dive back in as soon as the credits roll to lap up any remaining secrets.
Movement and some incredibly simplistic combat are your only other concerns, both of which see slight enhancements near the end of the two-or-so-hour adventure. Minit is clearly designed to be easy to pick up and play, allowing its world and riddles to provide the challenge. It’s easy to avoid combat entirely unless specified by a task, for example. Movement, in turn, is more focused on puzzle-solving than dexterity and skill. A maze in a mysterious tomb in the desert requires you to run faster than you might envision possible, while another experiments with your perception of how you’re able to move boxes around a series of conveyor belts to disrupt a production line. Minit never feels unforgiving, instead giving you reason to give pause and think about how you’re moving around its world.
It’s almost unbelievable how much character Minit packs into its monochromatic world, too. Despite adapting the style of old Game Boy titles, Minit’s range of animations and neat pixel-based touches root it firmly in modern design. Little dust trails that kick off your boots in a sprint and the blinding flashes of white and black streaks when you find a new item offer contrasting senses of style; Minit is delicate when it needs to be and bombastic elsewhere, but it uses all these elements to deliver important feedback to you. It’s perhaps why it’s hard to get entirely lost at any point, because there’s always a cleverly placed marker sitting in plain sight just edging you towards the next solution. Design like that is hard to come by, so it’s refreshing to see Minit pull it off so effortlessly.
Minit’s soundtrack is also rousingly enthralling, instilling each of its distinct regions with a sense of place and sound. There’s catchy chiptunes for a seaside town that makes up most of the game’s opening and appropriate silence in the ominous, depressing tunnels of a dangerous mine. Sound effects are used sparingly but to equal effect. The chimes build with a delightful track when you acquire a new item and come crashing down with a thud every time you miss an objective with a second to spare. It’s delightful, and just wraps the entire presentation of Minit up with a neat little bow.
Minit’s lives might only last 60 seconds, but its extremely well-thought-out world design and engrossing loop of progress make it a curse-filled adventure that is worth dying the world over for. Its throwback to classic visuals aren’t done for aesthetic alone, as none of its gameplay systems scream antiquity. It’s a slickly presented adventure that continually manages to surprise you with every new area you uncover or item you procure, pushing you to pick away at its seams to uncover every drop of what it has to offer. With a delightful ending and more promised after its first run of credits, Minit is far more than just a collection of seconds.
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