Minit Review: Minit T'Winit (PC, Mac, PS4, Xbox One) plus some stuff on Anime Boston

Preface

    As many of you probably know by now, there was a shooting yesterday at the YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California. From the sounds of it, there were only three injuries and the death of the shooter, who was angry with YouTube over some issues, including demonetization. While demonetization was a bit of a hot topic a little while ago, I don't want to delve into details. Instead, I want to wish the employees of YouTube a quick recovery, both physically and mentally.

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    So, everyone! How was your Easter Fool's weekend? It's not often we get two holidays on the same day. I mostly spent my weekend at Anime Boston enjoying the sights and buying some stuff. I'm not much of a picture taker, but I had a few choice ones to show off, like the serial killer from that one South Park episode where Cartman gets psychic powers (allegedly.) First off, among the many costumes that were either common choices or were things I didn't recognize, I found these two:

"CAAAARL!! Please tell me you didn't kill that blogger!"

    I also spent a good amount of time in the video game room. It's probably the only place I know where I can find games like Cho Chabudai Gaeshi, a Japanese arcade game about flipping a table to teach the idiots around your character a lesson and cause some destruction (Personal Note: The second of those games seems to have done a crossover with some baseball anime. Anyone know which one? It looks like an older one, judging by it's graphics.) Among the stages, I have to say my favorite one is the funeral stage, simply due to the sheer black comedy of being a ghost who's flipping his own coffin and corpse at the mourners and drunk priest. I also got to play the latest rendition of Konami/Bemani's Pop'n Music series of arcade rhythm games. This one had the lengthy subtitle of  "Usagi to neko to shounen no yume," roughly translated to "the rabbit and cat and boy's dream." I'm not that great at the game, mostly because the positioning of the nine buttons always throws me off when moving from one row to the next:

From left to right: Matt (the robot-thing, new to PnM) and series mainstays/mascots Nyami and Mimi.

    Anime Boston 2018 also marked the first time I checked out some of the special guests. On Friday, I saw Japanese singer/songwriter ASAKA, and she seemed like a pretty cool person. In the panel where I met her, she mentioned that she likes horror games, and I got the opportunity to suggest Lobotomy Corporation to her. I also saw the band FLOW at a fan meet-and-greet. They did some stuff in some animes, including Naruto, but I mostly know them from my favorite DS game, which had one of their songs (Okuru Kotoba, a surprisingly upbeat ska song about sad goodbyes.)

There was no photography allowed with ASAKA, but I could take a picture of FLOW.

    Finally, I spent Sunday at home, had some ribs and cornbread for dinner, and watched the Easter Fool's episode of Arcade Pit (8 PM Eastern on the Twitch channel 'Smight'.) I don't want to spoil much about this episode of the spiritual successor to Nick Arcade, but I will say that when that noir detective in the Mystery Game's intro said "Take me to hell," I don't think he meant it quite in that way. Also, I can show you a bit of art that debuted in that episode of Arcade Pit:

Arcade Pit Snail Devouring Bubsy (Any claims of Bubsy Bobcat being the Arcade Pit Snail's descendant are treason, and punishable by Feelin' Sad.)

    With the busy weekend I had, It might be a bit of a surprise to find that I still have a review. Luckily, I can spare a minute to talk about Minit, published by Devolver Digital and developed by the team of Kitty Calis, Jan Willem Nijman, Jukio Kallio, and Dominik Johann.

(Version: Release version)

    Minit has the player controlling a little unnamed character who looks like one of those old Tamagotchi characters who either had big lips or a duck bill. They find and grab a sword on the beach, but it happens the sword is cursed, and this curse is a lot more creative than the Curse of Clingy Equipment or the Curse of Being Slightly Less Effective Than a Normal Sword. This curse dooms our duck-billed hero's day to end in 60 seconds due to death. The sword seems to have come from a nearby factory, so it's up to our hero to explore the world, get to the factory, and hopefully have some strong words and sharp stabs at the factory's customer service and QA department.

A quiet moment with our hero and their dog.

    If you know how Link's Awakening plays, you should have a very good idea of how to operate in Minit. You move around the world by using the arrow keys and use whatever big item you're holding by using the X key. The main draw is that you have a timer in the upper-left corner of the screen constantly ticking down. When that timer hits zero (or you run out of life or hit the C key,) you die and have to respawn at your home. As you explore the world, you can find a variety of interesting characters, items that can help you progress in the world, or new "homes" for the hero. The homes act as alternate respawn points for the hero, who will respawn at whichever home he visited most recently.

    The simple and quick gameplay loop and the large open world work surprisingly well. Obviously you can't do everything in a minute, so you have to spend the time you have carefully. Some loops will be spent wandering around and gathering information on what to do next, and other loops will have you putting your plans into action. Despite your many inevitable deaths, it never feels like a very big setback, especially since most of the world  it will only take a minute at best to get back and try again.
    The world of Minit is depicted in a minimalist and monochrome style that reminds me of some of those older consoles and computer games. It's actually pretty charming, and a decent amount of effort was put into them. Granted, you'll probably be too focused on running around and worrying about the timer to stop and smell the black and white roses. The characters in the game tend to only have a line or two they spout off when you get near, but they still manage to give off a charming bit of personality. One I remember is a fish "standing" near a bar who really likes the land. I mostly remember it because it reminds me of the Legal Sea Food commercial with the fish sadly singing about how they want to be chosen for food. It's a commercial my Mom finds cute, but I find strangely disturbing since I keep thinking how the fish apparently want to die.

Fish, please. You don't have to hide it. I'm sure there's a psychologist out there who is willing to help a depressed fish.

    There were only two real problems I saw with the game, and both involve screenshots. The first is that Steam wouldn't let me take screenshots with F12, because Minit is made with Game Maker Studio (see also: Undertale, Downwell.) I had to download Fraps and use that in order to get all of my screens. The second is an in-game bug where an item doesn't work. It's a camera, which is primarily used to take pictures. From what I've gathered (from in-game and a forum post I made about the screenshot issue,) this is supposed to create screenshots that go into a folder the game makes, but that function doesn't work right now.

    Minit isn't a very long game (I beat it with 46% completion in 45 minutes,) but I had a good deal of fun during that time. It's the kind of game where I can easily imagine a speedrunning community taking interest due to the nature of the gameplay. I'll definitely go back to it and see if I can fill in that remaining 54%, but I'll be doing that some other time. I have a ticket for PAX East this Sunday, and I'll be checking out all the new stuff there. Next time, I'll likely have some good previews to offer you all.