Game Review: Minit (and how to get it working on Ubuntu Linux)

I'm playing through the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. You can follow along with all my game reviews.

I like puzzle games, and Minit has a unique twist. You only have 60 seconds to complete each action. But, before we get onto the review, here's how to get it running on Linux.

Linux

• Download the minit_linux.zip file to your Downloads directory.
• Download libssl_1.0.0_32-bit.tar.gz and put it in the same directory as the game archive.
• Install play.it
• Once you've installed play.it, use the command line, go to where you cloned the play.it git repo and run ./play.it ~/Downloads/minit_linux.zip
• It will create a game package which you can install by following the on-screen instructions. Usually, that's sudo apt install ~/git/play.it.git/minit_1.0.0-itch1+20200617.7_i386.deb ~/git/play.it.git/minit-data_1.0.0-itch1+20200617.7_all.deb

Gameplay

It's a top-down, one-map-per-screen adventure puzzler. Pick up the thing, take it over there. Find the person, slay the dragon. All rendered in glorious one-bit graphics.

The mechanism of constant death is neat. You know that every mission is time limited. And it means you can't waste too much time battling baddies.

But, after a couple of hours, it does get a bit wearing. The objectives are sufficiently obscure that you end up wandering around aimlessly hoping to find the thing. I resorted to reading a guide, which kinda showed there's no way to understand how to beat the game.

You can probably figure out that you can use a watering can to put out a fire. But the only way to solve other puzzles is to literally click on everything on a screen in the hope it does something. There's no quest log, so you'd better have a good memory for what you're doing.

It's a neat game, and a quirky mechanic, but a little too illogical for my liking.