Minit: Puzzles in Sixit Second Snippets

Time to Beat: 155 Minutes

Minit is a game developed by a quartet of independent developers overseen by the publisher Devolver Digital. As one can see by the time listed in minutes and not hours, Minit's core game-play gimmick ensures a swift experience. The player control a humanoid with a mouth like a duck's bill. After leaving their house, the protagonist stumbles across a sword and picks it up. Unfortunately it's a cursed sword that kills its bearer every sixty seconds. Fortunately for the game (though not the poor duck man) the wielder revives after each death, still holding the accursed weapon.

Minit is reminiscent of the original 2D Zelda games. The character wanders around a map separated into distinct screens, fighting monsters, solving puzzles, and collecting items. The protagonist swings their sword (or throws it once they find the baseball glove), to defeat enemies, and dodges their attacks. The protagonist's health is displayed as hearts, which can be increased by finding secrets.
In addition to the glove and sword, the player picks up other items. Some are active, like a watering can, while others provide a passive bonus like the flashlight, which illuminates dark areas. There's also coffee, swimming flippers, coins, and multiple keys. 

The main skill of Minit is player memory. Since one only has sixty seconds to move from their home the player needs to remember where things are, and what needs to be completed. After exploring and exhausting the locations within range of their house, the player travels to other bases, like the hotel and the mobile home. Entering either of these sets it as the player's default respawn location. From there the player explores the new area for new and items.
Aside from activating items, the player's only power is the ability to commit suicide. This is useful when the player has only ten seconds left of life, and all nearby objectives completed.

Ultimately the player's quest is to destroy the cursed sword and free themselves from its cycle of death and rebirth. A sinister force in the depths of a factory is producing swords to devour the world in darkness. The final sequence of puzzles involves destroying the machine at the heart of the factory. The puzzles to destroy the machine forces the player stick the sword into it. This causes an explosion which kills the player, but leaves the sword stuck where the player wedged it in. The final puzzle to retrieve it, and deal the killing blow, is both incredibly frustrating but engagingly innovative. If you're stuck I encourage you to keep trying. It is as convoluted as it appears, but remember, it can be done in sixty seconds, so it isn't impossibly difficult. The difficulty lies in that the initial path to the core of the machine required cutting down objects with the sword, which the player no longer has, so they must find a roundabout route.

The final boss is also enjoyable, and is fought in three phases. Fortunately, Minit saves all progress made against the boss, even if the player dies from his attacks or runs out of time. So he is very easy, though one is likely to die a number of times before beating him.
Right before finishing the game, it became apparent how much remained to do. I hadn't purchased the sneakers, or helped the sign builder complete his boat. I'm certain, as the victory screen awarded me a 50% complete score, I could have adventured more. For that, Minit includes a second run with a playthrough plus difficulty, but I wasn't interested.

In conclusion, Minit implements an interesting premise, but in actuality it limits, rather than enhances the experience. Most players don't want simple puzzles made more difficult by adding a rapidly ticking time bomb. Thankfully, the developer at least implemented the idea well, in that every area has a problem to clear, and it can be done with a reasonable amount of time left over. It never felt as if it was difficult to finish a puzzle, or that there wasn't enough time (except for the last puzzle). But it broke up solving puzzles into a frustrating repetition of find puzzle, look at puzzle, die. Return to puzzle, attempt puzzle, die. Go back to puzzle, solve puzzle, die. Look around for new puzzle, find puzzle, die. Go to puzzle, look at puzzle, die... Like any puzzle game, some puzzles were easier to solve, while others required multiple attempts. The saving grace is that no puzzle was difficult enough that I felt compelled to look online for the solution. Yes, the gameplay relies on a gimmick core, which enhances and strangles the experience, but sometimes it performs brilliantly.

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