Minishoot’ Adventures

Here’s a delightful surprise from 2024: a twin-stick shooter that plays like a Zelda game, by way of metroidvania logic. Minishoot’ Adventures brings bullet hell to bullet heaven, with a staunchly fair approach to a usually monstrously hard genre. You play a very nimble little ship, tasked with clearing out the corruption in your village from the invading underworld, all through the magic of twin-stick frantic combat. But, in a twist that I’ve never seen used elsewhere, it offers all this bullet-blasty action with the sense of an exploration RPG, where you gain access to new areas by gaining new abilities, reaching new dungeons, and fighting new bosses.

Beyond being such an original combination ideas, Minishoot’ Adventures further stands out because of its exemplary combat. Ship movement is as close to perfect as a game could deliver, making combat feel sublime as you weave your way through enemy fire and blast everything off the screen. I found the default difficulty perfectly pitched, and never needed to retry the same sequence more than three or four times to master it. However, for those who find this pushes them harder than is enjoyable, there’s an option called Explorer, in which enemies and their bullets are slowed down. Also, for those who will find Original too easy (and given I find it ideal, that’ll be a lot of people who are more skilled) you can switch things up to Advanced.

But in an even more welcoming move, Minishoot’ offers you a way to “cheat” past any section of the game you’re not enjoying. The bosses are well-made and very fair, if often overstaying their welcome, but there were two I found I just couldn’t defeat. Instead of having to stop playing this game I absolutely adore, I was able to go to the Accessibility options and tick on “Invincibility.” Cheese past them, turn it back off (because it’s hardly fun with it on) and carry on! The game doesn’t judge you, there’s no threat to send you to bed without an achievement. And people who find this abhorrent need never know. It’s worth adding that if a boss is too hard at first, you shouldn’t just give up and cheat past it—the game inevitably has somewhere else you could be exploring instead, leveling up as you go, so you’ll then be better equipped when you return. It’s also worth saying that after those two I found impossible, the bosses became more manageable again, so don’t just assume you’ll not be able to beat them.

Minishoot’ Adventures is such a bright and cheerful game, unlike anything else you’ll have played, and incredibly adaptable to your personal level of skill. While it would be a perfect Switch game, so far the game has only appeared on PC, but given it’s created by just the two people at SoulGame Studio, we’ll let them off.