Minit is a 2D top-down adventure game with a little twist: You only get 60 seconds to explore until you are sent back to your home in order to try again. That may sound ridiculous, but your progress will carry over each time you are sent back. As you pick up a cursed sword (an apparent recurring issue), you’ll need to get to the bottom of the problem and save the world one minute at a time.

Good

First thing you’ll notice is that Minit doesn’t take too long to explain things. You are instantly thrown into the world and you simply learn by doing. The game realizes that you don’t have much time, so it wants to get things started ASAP.

As you interact with the world, your next 60 seconds may differ. The game drops a lot of hints or tells you where to go without giving the exact locations, forcing you to use your memory or take notes (or use the capture mechanic). The game also doesn’t feature a map, which certainly would’ve made it too easy.

You can find new houses as you traverse through the world, allowing you to start over in different areas. Being able to extend your starting points gives you further freedom throughout the overworld and progresses the story along.

There will be moments where you know you’ve gone the wrong way, or you know that you don’t have enough time to complete a task, but it is essential to use this time wisely to explore and find other areas to venture to for future run-throughs. However if you’ve exhausted all of your options, you can simply press the B button to die and be sent back to your selected house.

You will find shortcuts along the way to decrease your travel time. Whilst it may be frustrating to have a selected house at first, you will find ways to quickly travel between them.

Minit’s black and white art style strangely adds an endearing quality to it. It may seem a bit lazy at first, but the striking contrast is clean and makes it easy to distinguish between objects. That being said, You won’t focus on the art style much as the game frantically wants you to act quickly.

The music is calmingly melodic and doesn’t make you feel that you’re in a huge rush. Devolver Digital chose not to steer too heavily into the retro chip-tune theme that would’ve been reminiscent of the games that it’s inspired from, avoiding deliberate nostalgia that’d be a little too on the nose.

There are also two post-game modes called Second Run and Mary’s Mode which increases the difficulty and provides new challenges (and even a secret ending).

Bad

Unsurprisingly, Minit can get quite repetitive. The idea of the game is to repeat areas and learn from your mistakes, but just note that you will be seeing similar areas often.

Minit can become quite tedious at times, but the worst thing is when you put the game down for a few hours and then come back to it. You will forget a lot of little things and can leave you clueless for extended periods of time.

Combat and action commands can often feel awkward as the game is mainly focused around problem solving. There are the occasional random enemies that feel awkward to fight against, making for some annoying deaths.

We frequently experienced a glitch where the music would cut out and wouldn’t return unless we closed the software and reopened it. Hopefully Devolver Digital will patch this up in a future update.

Lastly, the game itself is quite short in its entirety. Whilst this may be a subjective criticism, it may perhaps be something to keep in mind if you’re looking for a longer play experience for your money.

Final Score 76%

Minit is a simplistic game that, with its 60 second mechanic, has been transformed into something wholly unique. Despite its odd shortcomings, Minit encourages thought and problem solving in a game with a surprising amount of character. With the eShop being bombarded by a few too many options week-by-week, Minit contains the hook in order to stand out amongst the crowd.

Will you be picking up Minit on the Nintendo Switch? Let us know in the Comments section below.

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