[Editor’s Note: Minishoot’ Adventures was first released on PC in 2024, but we did not review it at that time, so we have taken its recent port to Nintendo Switch 2 as an opportunity to do so now.]
Minishoot’ Adventures answers a question I never would have thought to ask in a thousand years: What if you mixed classic Zelda with a twin-stick shooter? Developer SoulGame Studio’s take on that combination is an absolute delight. Between the silky smooth controls, your spaceship-shaped hero’s growing repertoire of abilities, and a top-down world that opens up at a satisfying pace, I loved all 10 hours it took me to roll credits. That felt like a perfect length, even though I would’ve gladly kept playing if it had offered more.
SoulGame Studio makes absolutely no effort to hide Minishoot’ Adventures’ Hyrulean inspiration. Just like Zelda, the overworld is populated with enemies, caves, trees, waterways, and areas you can see but can’t reach until you unlock a new ability. Your health is displayed as a row of hearts in the upper corner of the screen, and you can add more by finding heart pieces hidden around the world. If that’s not proof enough, just travel one screen down from your home base and you’ll find an exact replica of the starting screen from The Legend of Zelda on NES. While an uncharitable interpretation might consider this stealing from Nintendo, it all comes off as a loving homage. The developers have used familiar ingredients to create a new, twin-stick shooting-infused dish that’s different enough to stand on its own.
Instead of an elfin boy, you play as Minishoot’, a small beige ship that exhibits a surprising amount of personality thanks to the cartoonish art and animation. That odd apostrophe in the ship’s name is actually to abbreviate “Minimalist Shooter Adventure,” and that minimalism extends to the story, which gets maybe a minute of total screen time. Basically, you and your fellow sentient ships are enjoying your lives together when an invading force comes in with guns blazing to break up the party, flinging ships to all corners of the map and encasing them in crystals. Your job, once you break free of your own gemstone prison, is to find your Shipling friends and “restore balance to the Great Crystal,” whatever that means. It’s not Shakespeare, but it sets you off on a fun adventure.
If you’ve played top-down Zelda games before, then you know exactly what to expect here: You’ll poke around the overworld, delving into caves, fighting enemies, and solving light puzzles. This is all extremely pleasant, thanks in no small part to the controls. Minishoot’ glides along so smoothly that simply moving across the screen feels satisfying.
