Thank you SoulGame Studio for sending us a review code!

Minishoot’ Adventures begins with a peaceful community of spaceships suddenly getting attacked by the ‘Unchosen’ compounded with a purple corruption spreading across the land. Any ship that comes in contact with the corruption becomes encapsulated within it. Your ship is enshrined in crystal until it's awoken by a higher power and is granted its freedom. You are then tasked with freeing your friends and removing the corruption.

Upon launching Minishoot’ Adventures, you are given the choice of three difficulties: Explorer, Original, and Advanced. Compared to Original, Explorer has slower enemies and bullets while Advanced has faster enemies and bullets. The bosses spew out lots of projectiles so keep that in mind when making your difficulty choice. You can change the difficulty at any time if you need more or less of a challenge.

Minishoot’ Adventures is a twin-stick shooter where the left joystick moves your ship and the right joystick fires bullets in the desired direction. The enemies often shoot back at you so dodging is equally as important as shooting. There are often firing patterns and it’s wise to figure them out and find openings to make a counterattack without sustaining damage.

In the beginning, your ship starts off with three hearts, but as you explore you’ll uncover fragments that will give you more life when you collect four of them. Energy cells are also scattered throughout the land and finding these will enable your ship to use its powers for longer periods of time.

There are many caves to explore and you’ll often find enemies and bosses within. With the hidden rooms and areas, this title brings back memories of the original Zelda game, except with prettier graphics. The soundtrack is pleasant to listen to as well.

On the overworld view you’ll see the various caves, castles, and boss lairs. There are markers indicating where power-ups and lost comrades are. In town, you can buy a feature that lets you see your overall status and what caves are fully explored and which ones have artifacts waiting to be discovered. There is plenty to do and see and I like how charming this game is. While you're free to explore and go anywhere, you're bound by your ship's limitations and will see more of the game world as you unlock your ship's potential. You can go at your own pace and level up as much as needed to give you an edge over the next boss or mini-boss you come across.

Some of the caves have spirit sprites that will join your town if you can beat them in a race. You’ll need to collect all of the spirit sprites to unlock an after-game tower. I like how there is a theme of family and redemption in this game. Golden scarabs are also present and are used as currency for another shop in town.

As you defeat enemies, they’ll drop red crystals. When the vial of red crystals fills up, you’ll gain a level and earn a blue crystal. Blue crystals are used to upgrade your ship’s stats like damage, speed, firing rate etc. Subsequent upgrades will be more expensive. If you need to reconfigure your ship, you can downgrade and re-allocate crystals as needed. You’ll get a Steam achievement for downgrading!

Minishoot’ Adventures runs well on the Steam Deck with the occasional stutter. All in all, I have little to complain about with this game. You can expect about ten hours of gameplay with even more to do after the credits roll. If you enjoy the classic Zelda games or shoot ‘em ups, Minishoot’ Adventures is worth checking out!