When it comes to indie games, one of the things that I love the most are when you see two genres or game concepts that are great on their own, come together to make something new. Sort of the Reese’s Peanut Butter cup of gaming, if you will. Given my love for twin-stick shooters, I’ve learned to be down for just about any pairing people could choose, but I’ll admit that seeing that style of play applied to a classic top-down action-adventure wasn’t on my radar until the Indie Direct last week.

Minishoot' Adventures not only takes on the challenge of pairing these two seemingly disparate game concepts together, it actually manages to pull off nothing short of a miracle… by getting them to play together in a way that makes sense and works on the first crack at the formula. Now, to be clear, while the exploration and general stage design are reminiscent of classic top-down adventures (you could make a case for Metroidvanias as well, with the degree of backtracking as you gain new abilities), in terms of the action this is all twin-stick shooting. The good news is that for people who aren’t as addicted to this style of play, the game does give you both difficulty and control options that can make it more accessible to everyone, but there are spots where there’s no getting around the fact that this adventure can be pretty tough in spots.

Outside of the shooting perhaps not making this everyone’s cup of tea, given my very curious and adventurous nature I also ran into some challenges. Let me be clear, I applaud the fact you’re able to discover a ridiculous number of hidden areas that feel like they’re pretty well everywhere. This includes some that when you decide to check them out you’ll almost immediately regret, as you’re clearly not ready for the enemies you’ll face there without significant upgrades. Still not a problem. My issue is more that until you gain the Dash ability as you deal with the first boss, there’s a significant amount of areas you’ll be unable to get to. Even that would be fine, I just wish you weren’t able to get so far down some rabbit holes and lost, only to be stymied by the inability to dash across gaps, that it outright punishes early explorers. If just a little more care and guardrails were put in place to help get the player to that first boss, ensuring that basic traversal tool was in their repertoire before opening things up more, it could avoid a lot of needless potential frustration. 

In the end, this does feel like an experience suited to shooting fans first, as its methods of making things a little easier still may not make the core experience feel fun to people who aren’t steeped in dodging bullets from every angle possible. I have no doubt that while the novelty of the whole adventure, solving puzzles, finding secrets, getting in some periodic races, and more have some broad appeal, there’s no getting away from the core mechanics at constant play. While that really makes it catnip for shooter fans who’d love an excuse to flex those dodging muscles in a new way, vanilla adventure fans may find it to be a tougher sell. Still, I applaud the effort to not only discover a new genre blend I didn’t know I needed in my life, but to execute it so well on the first confident step out the door.