MINIT - The Egg Timer Game

The briefest possible lull.

A game as an hourglass ticking itself away. The concept which drives MINIT is simple enough: I am a tiny, tamagotchi-like creature who, due to a nebulous curse, finds themself dying every sixty seconds. The game unfolds to me in these minute-long chunks, then, I die and revive again. The world having more or less reset.

I explore a little, pushing further and further at the edges of the world until the timer hits zero. Then, I die and return to my little house, later trailer, later hotel room, etc. The recursion works well, the rhythm of it feels good. I leave my home, wonder about a cafe and notice I can move some boxes. The timer hits zero while I’m fiddling with them, but now, when I return I know just what to do. I rearrange them in such a way that I can pass a small obstacle. But that takes too long and I die in the attempt. Poof! I’m home and I am rushing back. This time the boxes are perfect and I’m rewarded with a bit of treasure and about four seconds to bask in my own cleverness before- Poof! I’m home again, my wallet slightly heavier.

The game emphasizes making incremental progress until I experience inspiration. Never is there a moment of so called “adventure game logic” to force me to go sullenly Googling solutions to totally obtuse dead ends, but also, it never patronizes me with the usual discernible Zelda dance steps. Sword to monster to chest to key to door. Every item a key fit for every agonizingly obvious lock. And this is Zelda, don’t get it twisted. But it’s smarter than your average Hyrule (or Termina…) adventure. MINIT knows what it’s doing with the limited landscape and playground it offers. This game masters its own economy ways games with larger budgets should be drooling over. Every obstacle and point of interest perfectly spaced so that you can travel to it and learn it’s rules in less than sixty seconds. All the while consummating a coherent series of locations and events in a larger world.

I can nearly feel the designers at work during play. There’s legible intention to the arrangement of the world. The conductor’s baton swishes through the air placing NPCs, push-able blocks, and twisty passages just so. The map of this world feels like it was created to fully serve the concept of the game. I go underground, I cut down trees, I sprint through the desert, I water a plant. MINIT makes me feel like a brilliant speed-runner. Rushing here, there, behind and though learning the microsequence for entering a certain building or the solution to a teleporter puzzle straight out of an old Pokemon gym. I burst through limits, burning dozens of cycles to journey across the world only to end up in my own basement. But then, Ha! Another shortcut opened. Another time saving strategy discovered. And then, I’m off to a new area.

Sure thing bub.

That is why the moments when I find a solution laid totally bare are so jarring. A weird dead space where there should be an obstacle, a puzzle, something but instead I find a funny little creature with a big old voice bubble telling me in absolute terms what I should do to proceed. This happens more than once in a game ostensibly about winnowing out solutions through expeditious trial and error. In my head I called him “Focus Group Guy.” As if, the people testing the game just couldn’t reliably find the solution with what they had at hand so the designers, lacking the time or resources, decided to throw in a little helper. Or rather, a little director to just tell you what to do so we can move this all along. This is made more astonishing by optional in game hints. Within the world there’s a way to summon up these little hint ghosts who will float around in certain locations dropping cryptic couplets about what to do next. I found them helpful but mostly I kept them around because I liked the rhyme.

You just don’t have time. This is the tension of MINIT. When you take time to compose dense and perfect little clockwork worlds you lose time you might have spent elsewhere, or even on other parts of the world. Why do you think this game is black and white? In the planning and execution of the moving parts of the game I feel the designer’s eye at work, but I know they’re rushing along with me. Usually they’re composing a perfect little slice of a mechanical riddle, other times they’re looking over my shoulder, wringing their hands. Hoping against hope that I’ll get it.

Home.

But I do get it, and I do like it. The story, such as it is, is a tick more engaging and curious than I expected. The feel of running around the world and swinging your big heavy time consuming sword is delightful. It feels good enough to play that exploring and failing don’t discourage me they way they do in other Learn-From-Your-Many-Deaths-Um-Ups. I want to be clear about what playing this game is like: it really is as easy as I make it sound to get lost in a preponderance on authorship and time as a resource. This is… a good thing, I think. The simplicity of the game sincerely feels brave and honest. It posits itself such that you couldn’t really ask it to do more. I was charmed by this game; and occasionally charmed is enough.

-joshua.