After finally finishing World of Final Fantasy I decided to try and knock a couple of quick indies out of my backlog. Just like WoFF, both were impulsive buys because… well… they were on sale. I'm only human after all. Unfortunately unlike WoFF, which I enjoyed quite a bit, neither of these two really stuck with me. The two Nindies I'm talking about are Minit and Semblance. There are almost zero similarities between them minus both being in the puzzle genre and they are relatively shorter games. Since I beat them pretty much back to back I thought I'd knock two birds out with one stone and talk about them both.
Minit
Developers: JW, Kitty, Jukio, and Dom
I beat Minit first so why not start there. I really like the look of this game, it's initially what put it on my radar. The simplistic black and white coloring is perfect, and it plays so well with the style of game. So much so that I couldn't imagine this game with more than the two toned color scheme. It’s not just the colors though that give it it’s style, the pixel art and animations also play well into the game's throwback feel.
Minit plays like an open world adventure game in which you move around the map gathering items either by finding them or receiving them for completing quests for other characters. Said items help move you along the story while opening new areas with new tasks. The hook being that you have one minute before your character dies. You respawn at the last place you rested in. Your progress is saved each time you die, so it's a game of attrition as you knock out what you can and get ready to move on to the next task. This is a cool mechanic that is implemented pretty well, as the time pressure constantly presents itself making each run feel important. I think it needs to be a little more fleshed out though, instead of exploring the world, I was forcing myself to do the next thing and so I never felt I was getting to really live in this world. This was a let down for me because I could tell the developers put a lot of love in the details. Interacting with the NPC's were fun and the dialogue for the most part is really well written.
After I had finished Minit, I realized that it didn’t carry much weight with me as I moved on immediately without much thought. All that being said If they decide to make a sequel to Minit down the road, I'd be curious to see what they do to improve upon the base that this entry provided. There is a lot of potential to make something that really sticks the landing more so than this game.
Semblance
Developer: Nyamakop
Semblance is also a puzzle game, but one that plays nothing like Minit. Instead it is a side scroller where you can manipulate the environment to grab orbs and save the world. Not much is known in the story, as you piece it together via cave drawings found throughout the world, but from what I gather at a very high level is that you play as a blob whose forest was invaded by some evil creatures who crystalized trees and residents of the forest. While this is a fine story to tell, the way it presented itself gave me very little reason to keep playing. What did keep me playing, were the puzzles.
The puzzle design in this game is hands down my favorite part. I had to look up a couple solutions, which led to a lot of “oh duh” moments. The puzzles are not stupidly hard but instead have enough of a challenge that you get a satisfied feeling once you solve one. I had fun changing the world around me to help obtain the out of reach orbs, but it had a feel of jank that, at times, would result in me getting stuck in between two platforms and I had to restart the puzzle. Checkpoints are really well placed, seemingly as a response to this. There was at least one time where I had all of the platforms where I needed except one and when I went to fix it, my blob got stuck.
I really wish I liked this game more than I did, but in the end it didn't do a whole lot for me. It's minimalistic art and very colorful world is neat. The puzzles are what stood out the most, however playing lacked reason for me. I know not every game needs a crazy narrative but just wish I had a little more here. If you like good puzzles, though, then there is some fun to be had here.
Conclusion
I'm glad I finally got to play both of these games even if I didn't necessarily love them. They have unique hooks that grabbed me, but I just felt they both needed a little extra something to really captivate me. I'll be on the lookout for second entries (if they are made) to see what the developers come up with.
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