Minit
Minit is a cute, cruel adventure where your character dies every 60 seconds.
No matter what you’re doing in Minit, no matter where you are, you will drop dead every 60 seconds. Life in this Legend of Zelda- inspired adventure is fleeting, and you only have a minute at a time to solve its puzzles, talk to its characters and complete its quests. A timer at the top of the screen ticks those 60 seconds down relentlessly, and throughout your time with Minit, you are at its mercy.
That all sounds very dramatic, but Minit isn’t completely sadistic. Some of the items you find, such as a sword washed up on a beach, will carry over to your next life, opening up more areas to explore. And as you traverse the world you’ll find houses that will act as respawn points. So with every life you’ll make a little more progress and explore a little further, until you lift the curse and end your temporal torment.
Although it has the look and feel of an early Legend of Zelda game, Minit is really a series of puzzles. The nameless protagonist finds items fairly regularly, granting them a variety of powers. A cup of coffee will give you the energy to push boxes and open up new paths. A glove lets you throw your sword and attack distant enemies. The watering can lets you extinguish fires.
And if you find enough hidden coins, you can buy a pair of sneakers to help you run faster.
With every item found, another obstacle can be bypassed. When the game begins, you’re trapped by a row of bushes, but once you’ve found the sword you can cut them down. Later on, a bridge won’t be fixed until you deal with some bandits on the other side, which is where that swordthrowing ability comes in really handy. You essentially repeat this cycle until every corner of the map is accessible.
You will die in the process, a lot, but not just at the hands of the timer or the enemies roaming the map. You can actually kill yourself at the tap of a button. If you know you won’t be able to complete a task or reach your destination in the time you have left, it’s often easier to just hit the death key, respawn back at your house, and try again. I found myself doing so distressingly often.
The problem with this is that death, rather than some ever-present threat, becomes little more than a minor inconvenience to you. And sometimes, when you’re stuck on a puzzle, it’s annoying, too. Minit has no real stakes, which cheapens the timer system and makes it feel somewhat arbitrary. I left the game thinking the concept was more interesting than the execution.
PIXEL PERFECT
Minit has no real stakes, which cheapens the timer system
These reservations aside, I had a lot of fun. I love the art, which squeezes a lot of personality into just a few black-and-white pixels. The dialogue is endearingly silly, and some of the puzzles were satisfying to solve. The death timer is arguably more of a novelty than anything else, but it does make for a unique, if occasionally frustrating, experience.