How does this game benefit from its one minute mechanic?

[TreasureCat]

I've been hearing good things about Minut and I just watched the Giant Bomb quick look. The game seems neat. But through all the coverage, I haven't seen how this game's central mechanic really adds anything. Mostly it looks like what the timer does is add a bunch of extra travel time to an otherwise interesting if short Zelda game. It looks like I'd have as much or more fun with Minut just playing it like a normal game.

I assume a bunch of people will now get really defensive and hostile because they think I'm criticizing their game, but I don't mean this as criticism. I just genuinely want to know, as a person who hasn't played this game and is curious about it, what does the one minute timer actually bring to the game?

[Airem]

The timer is just a curse you gain by picking up the cursed sword. You have to destroy it in order to stop the timer. It just adds a little bit of pressure, nothing else. If you don't want to be under pressure, there's a mode, in which there's no timer.

[Frost_Ermine]

Originally posted by Airem:

If you don't want to be under pressure, there's a mode, in which there's no timer.

You can only unlock that mode after 100%ing the game though.

[inappropriately_gendered_fungus]

I think what's most interesting about the game is how it explores this idea of what and how much you can accomplish in a single minute. There's constant pressure, but it's not overwhelming because of how thoughtfully everything is laid out.

[Ryan Dorkoski]

It allows you to make a world with a small amount of content, feel bigger.

[Mewi]

Originally posted by fungusdude4:

I think what's most interesting about the game is how it explores this idea of what and how much you can accomplish in a single minute. There's constant pressure, but it's not overwhelming because of how thoughtfully everything is laid out.

This is how I felt about it too. The game is designed around the timer, which means no one task will take longer than a minute, and the player will never lose more than a minute of progress. After getting used to regular deaths in the first area, I rarely ever felt pressured during my first playthrough. There is also a button to die on command, so when there's extra time left you'll never have to wait around if you don't want to.

As for what the timer directly adds to the game, it adds a few shortcut-building puzzles. By a few, I mean I only remember there being two or three, and the rest of the puzzles in the game are simple and fairly standard. The timer's main role is to alter the player's playstyle.

It really is just a short and silly game, but I enjoyed it a lot. My first run lasted just three and a half hours, goofing off included.

[Tatra]

There are a handful of puzzles where the timer introduces a skill/strategy elements that otherwise wouldn't be there: can you figure out how to get to the place and do the thing in the time you have?

It's also an interesting little way of gating progression, because there are certain things that would be entirely possible to do earlier than intended... Except that, until you get an item/open a path/etc, you literally don't have time.

All that said, while I like this game, it isn't what I expected from the pre-release hype. I thought it was going to be more Groundhog Day-ey, with everything resetting each time and the trick literally being to find out what's important and how to do it in the time limit from scratch, but your actions are pretty much always persistent.

Like, I'm pretty certain one of the claims made before launch was that, with enough practice and planning, you could complete the whole game in 60 seconds, and that seems to be a flat-out lie at this point. I think the claim I was thinking of was just "a lot can be achieved in 60 seconds", which is a far cry from claiming the whole game can be beaten. My bad!

[Ashley]

To be honest, due to the fact that your progress remains persistent between deaths, the timer does little more than encourage you to plan your route. It does prevent you from reaching some areas, but most of them are locked behind an additional item requirement anyway, rendering it more or less moot. It's primarily a gimmick that makes the game feel a little more interesting at first, but you quickly realize that most of the puzzles don't make any use of it whatsoever. It quickly feels like a nuisance with no real purpose.
If you were to remove the timer, you'd end up with a game that plays almost exactly the same, but at your own pace. Almost none of the potential that came with it has been realized, which is a shame.

Take a look at Half-Minute Hero for comparison.
Parts of the map change based on the state of the timer.
Things are available at different times, and both (HMH) games make good use of time as a mechanic and as a resource. Optional unlocks encourage exploration and experimentation, making them very replayable as well.

I don't dislike Minit.
It's fun for what it is, but it is very shallow and very short.
Perfect for family sharing.

[Flap]

So far I have only finished once the game on normal with 46% completion. So i don't have the full experience yet.
I have found that the one minute loop was interresting but appart from the lighthouse, I have never felt that there was out of reach locations due to time constraint, while I would have loved more of this. Maybe would I have prefered less permanent unlocks, and more need for finding the good order to perform actions.
In that sense, Terre Coda [zillix.com] felt much more compeling.