Minishoot’ Adventures [Review]
SoulGame’s Zelda-style adventure SHMUP is one of the best games of the year.
Minishoot’ Adventures. Credit: SoulGame
Do you love classic Zelda? Are you a SHMUP fan? Then this is the game for you. Minishoot’ Adventures is a top-down adventure game in the tradition of classics like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, melded with SHMUP bullet hell game mechanics. We’re only in April, but I already know this game by French indie studio SoulGame is going to be part of my top ten of 2024.
Minishoot’ has you play as a little ship, the Chosen, tasked with restoring balance to the world after a calamity brought on by the previous Chosen when it refused to relinquish its powers and became the Unchosen. The lush but now corrupted world is inhabited by other little ships just like you, and over the course of your adventure you’ll rescue many others to restore your little ship village. The whole premise of a planet inhabited by cute little SHMUP ships is ridiculous, but just roll with it.
Minishoot’ Adventures. Credit: SoulGame
The game’s level design should be immediately familiar to any Zelda fan. There’s an overworld dotted with dungeons and caves. When you start, most areas will be inaccessible, but as you delve down you’ll find new powers that will open things up. Dungeons (and many of the caves) are mazes that’ll test your skills, cumulating in a boss fight. The whole world and its dungeons are one giant, thoughtfully designed puzzle box that’s very satisfying to open up. When visiting each region, you’ll find a map fragment, which you can take to one of your rescued friends to label with landmarks. It took me a while to get my bearings sometimes and the map is very helpful. Unfortunately, the game has no dungeon maps, an oversight in my opinion.
The combat is where Minishoot’ diverges from Zelda and its SHMUP DNA kicks in. You play the game like you would a twin-stick shooter, with optional Survivors-style auto-aim. Every enemy is gunning for you, and as you play they’ll appear in increased density to shower you with bullets, run at you, or both. Bosses are usually large and each has multiple phases with unique bullet hell patterns. There’s something very surreal about being in a level that looks like it’s plucked straight from a Zelda game but while flying around in something like the Vic Viper and dodging a hail of bullets.
Minishoot’ Adventures. Credit: SoulGame
You’ll find extra abilities such as boost, dash, bomb, super-shots, and more that’ll give you more versatility in combat; each of them is upgradable when you get enough experience to level, as are standard stats like power, bullet speed, rate of fire, and others. You can reassign stat level points at any time. Movement and combat are tight and feel fantastic; they get even better once you get some extra abilities.
Like in Zelda, your life is represented by hearts, and you’ll gain another each time you collect four heart containers. Finding batteries will expand your energy capacity, the fuel for all your specials. There is also a wide variety of extra items to complement abilities or do things like add extra features to the map or increase energy efficiency.
Minishoot’ Adventures. Credit: SoulGame
Minishoot’ has three difficulty settings to accommodate different skill levels. They affect things like the speed of enemies and bullets. You can change between modes any time; I alternated between medium and hard. Hard gets especially challenging near the end of the game when bullet density gets really thick and enemies are also able to fire bullets that do double damage. None of the bullet patters in the game are unfair, but when stuff moves at high speed you’ve got to be really good at recognizing them and be able to react nimbly.
The game’s art is very colorful and friendly. Everything is outlined and mostly rendered with flat shading. The clean style makes the action very easy to parse, though sprites are a bit plain. While I wish the player, NPCs, and enemies were more colorful and detailed, I respect the choice of designing for readability instead. The soundtrack is all old-school synth and melds perfectly with the action; it does a great job of shifting emotional gears when it needs to set different tones in the game. If SoulGame releases the soundtrack, I’ll be buying it.
I spent around 12 hours playing the game. I found every item and completed the post-game arena challenges, earning every achievement except the one tied to hard difficulty. You can finish the game more quickly, but if you’re like me you’ll love the game so much that you’ll want to finish everything so the game lasts a little longer. The arena challenges are really fun and I wish there were more of them!
SoulGame has done a fantastic job with this title. I hope they decide to make some DLC or a sequel, because I want more. Minishoot’ Adventures is a truly excellent spin on the action adventure genre and it was a joy to play on my Steam Deck.
Minishoot’ Adventures is available now on Steam for PC.
Overall Score: 10/10
Played on: Steam Deck
