Minishoot’ Adventures Is One Of 2024’s Best, Most Surprising RPGs
Who needs a sword when you have a spaceship?
This year, we were lucky enough to get an excellent new top-down Zelda game and a boatload of great indie Metroidvanias. I spent plenty of time in Echoes of Wisdom and a handful of those aforementioned Metroidvanias, but the one I remain the most obsessed with at the end of 2024 perfectly marries its 2D Zelda inspiration to its Metroidvania structure — and throws two distinct varieties of shooter into the mix as well.
The result is Minishoot’ Adventures (before we get into it, the game’s developer says the inexplicably apostrophe in its name is because it’s a contraction of “Minimalist Shooter Adventure.” Do with that what you will.) Plenty of games borrow elements from multiple genres to make something unique. Think Cult of the Lamb blending cozy town builders with action roguelikes or Kunitsu-Gami adding tower defense to its hack-and-slash RPG. What sets Minishoot’ Adventures apart is how thoroughly it commits to the bit. Rather than a shooter with RPG elements, it’s a fully realized RPG, twin-stick shooter, and bullet hell game all at the same time.
If you’ve played a 2D Legend of Zelda game, the structure of Minishoot’ Adventures will feel very familiar. You’ll battle lesser enemies across its sprawling overworld as you explore the countless secrets scattered throughout, while delving into caves to find new powers and upgrades. Eventually, you’ll find your way to the game’s major dungeons, all with their own unique challenges culminating in massive bosses with their own attack patterns.
The difference here is that rather than a traditional sword-wielding fantasy hero, you play as a spaceship. In fact, just about every character in the game is a spaceship, from your opponents to the shopkeepers who congregate in a makeshift town as you rescue them. Rather than swinging a sword, your ship fires its attached blaster, which you can upgrade throughout the adventure as you level up.
Minishoot’ Adventures’ secret-filled world is a joy to explore.
Minishoot’ Adventures controls like a typical twin-stick shooter, with the left joystick on the controller moving the ship and the right joystick controlling the direction of its attacks. And since mixing just two genres evidently wasn’t enough, Minishoot’ Adventures is also a bullet hell shooter that pulls absolutely no punches. The game’s enemies fire volley after volley of laser blasts, and dodging through the sometimes miniscule gaps in their attacks adds a satisfying layer of challenge to its shooter combat. That comes to a head in boss battles, whose screen-filling barrages are part puzzle and part reflex test.
It all comes together surprisingly well. Despite spanning several seemingly conflicting genres, not a single piece of Minishoot’ Adventures feels out of place. Everything from deftly maneuvering your ship and upgrading it to face greater challenges bridges the gap between space shooter and RPG perfectly.
Minishoot’ Adventures doesn’t hold anything back in its boss encounters.
Maybe the most unexpected part of the game is just how deep its world is. Secrets sit behind destructible walls and hidden paths from one corner of the map to the other, and new abilities open the way to discoveries even in rooms you’ve visited time and time again. It may seem at first that its world isn’t that large, but as you uncover new sections of the map and find ways to traverse previously inaccessible terrain, the world slowly starts to feel like it will have no end at all. Add to that layer upon layer of subterranean dungeons and towering spires, and every venture into the unknown has the possibility of yielding a game-changing twist.
Even with all it has to offer, Minishoot’ Adventures isn’t the kind of RPG you’ll need to clear your calendar to complete. The game clocks in at under ten hours, even if you’re putting time into side activities like finding all of your lost mechanical friends and maxing out your stats. Minishoot’ Adventures makes every moment count and doesn’t overstay its welcome by a second. If you think you’ve seen everything the RPG genre has to offer, this game is here to dispel that notion. As a glorious and undersung mash-up of multiple disparate genres, Minishoot’ Adventures is one of the year’s most inventive RPGs and one of its most purely fun games.
