In Minit, you play as a Q*Berty-Tamagotchi-lookin’ walking-duck-face person-character-thing who finds a cursed sword. The curse of this sword is such that you will die every minute. Despite this, the game manages to be many hours long. How does it do this? Well, it’s clever. I made a video about how clever it is.
In my video, I describe Minit as “The rawest essence of Zelda, sung with enthusiasm.” I’m sure if you asked 10 game designers what “the rawest essence of Zelda” is, you’d get 10 different answers.
For me, that raw essence of Zelda is the “when” statement—those moments where you say to yourself, half-aloud, “I’ve gotta come back here when I can swim.” You don’t present this to yourself as an “if” statement. You see a body of water and you know there is no other way forward than to swim. You know that you can’t currently swim. Now you decide that, at some point, you will become able to swim.
Minit gradually builds into a stampeding avalanche of such “when” statements. It comes together as a beautiful holistic work of game design. It’s also adorably cute, and aggressively in black and white.
It’s out April 3 for PlayStation 4, Xbox, and Steam. No, it’s not out on Switch. I don’t know why, either. I’m sure the developers know you want to play it on the Switch, though maybe you’d better say so a lot in the comments on this post, just in case.
Also, feel free to exclaim enthusiastically that this game should be on the Switch in the comments on the YouTube version of this video. That’s on our YouTube channel, by the way! Actually, all our videos are on there, just for you!