Grade: A-
2D Retro Metroidvania with mini everything
Spoilers Below!
Mini Ghost was a hidden gem! It’s a pretty short game, and it took just mini 2 hours, but it’s a high-quality 2 hours.
The story started when an IT support mogul paid someone to hack a computer, and then that same evil business guy was paid millions to fix the issue he created (dastardly!). The bad business guy hired Ghost to do the fixing. Ghost, the main character, travels to a space station to disconnect a computer AI that’s gone rampant.
Smart level design
The game is just run and jump and shoot, but the level design is top-notch, with areas unlocking after you get new abilities which reminded me of the best parts of Ori and the Blind Forest. For instance, once you find the “mine detector” ability, you can get past the landmine-filled room to the next big area. Or, if you get the night vision goggles, you can get past the dark room.
There’s a nifty map feature, so in the 2d sidescrolling world, you can quickly get back to the shops, see connections between areas, and generally keep tabs on where you are. Having that straightforward navigation made the game much more manageable. In addition, the save feature is convenient, so you can save on any cleared screen and avoid backtracking.
Monsters/Bosses were varied and exciting.
The monsters/bosses were a grabbag of different things, including a fire-belching dinosaur, a teleporting killer bee, a rocket shooting superbot, pop-up surprise turrets, and a bunch of minions. The final boss has a bunch of things happening at once, rockets, lasers, shields, minion spawns, and it’s quite the scene. Ghost needed every last upgrade they found along the way to get past the boss battle.
I recorded the first vs. last boss in the game in the little short videos below. It escalates exponentially.
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