The UFO 50 Diaries: Mini & Max
There's a really clever pun in this Dek, it's just too small to see!
One of the talking points in many reviews and initial impressions of UFO 50 back when it came out last September was that these were full titles, not just coquettish minigames. There was a reason that the collection took so long to be developed. Each entry built for substance, refined to pinpoint precision to provide the best possible version of that idea given the constraints of the project as a whole.
As a result, there are many titles found here that would not look out of place as stand alone indie releases. Games that really go out of their way to provide the player with broad, meaningful experiences, ones that do not leave them wanting more.
And then you have Mini & Max, a game staggeringly ambitious to the degree that I’m shocked that Mossmouth didn’t partition it off and sell it as a stand alone. The problem is, its hard to truly talk about the scope of this game and why it is so impressive without spoiling the surprise.
Which I’m going to do right now. So…you’ve been warned.
Mini & Max starts out in a claustrophobic room, the protagonists’ having been locked in by their mean older sister (the host of Party House, no less!). Immediately you learn of this ability to shrink: holding down on the direction pad for a few seconds transports you into a larger arrangement of whatever was around you at the time of the shrinkage.
This in itself is really clever, as your position in the room, what you have access to and, more importantly what you do not, informs the adventure you take. Each object contains within it a navigation puzzle that is almost always engaging and inventive. The simplicity of the controls doesn’t hinder anything either, as a lot of the game’s progression is built around bolstering core skills in order to reach more inaccessable areas, or altering the nature of your relationship with the residents of this micro world.
It sells itself. Alone this would be an exemplary offering in a collection of wall to wall bangers.
But wait! There’s more!
The goal of the game is to collect enough shinies (I’m assuming these are meant to be either glass shards, dust or microplastics) to pay King Mittens to unlock the door for you. The amount needed is more than you will naturally stumble across during normal exploration, but the game world is filled with sidequests, completion of which will reward you not only with this currency, but also upgrades that will help you on your journey.
One such upgrade allows you to shrink. Again. This is where the game’s scale gets even more ambitious, for pretty much every pixel in the game world has within it an even smaller world that contains items to collect, micro-organisms to evade or fight, and even entire civilisations.
Not every square has within it unique assets as the shrunken world does, and I cannot fault them for this because that would be a stupid amount of work for relatively little payoff. But what is there is varied enough that it invites the spirit of discovery.
The only downside to all this is that I think there’s just a little too much to do in these spaces, I’ve sank maybe five hours into this game already and I’m nowhere near close to finishing it, having to resort to a guide to find those critical upgrades that rather foolishly have been hidden, like needles in a haystack, in that microworld.
It is an astonishing effort, however, and I think beyond anything else, there’s a lesson to be learned here about world design. Starting off massive leaves you nowhere else to go. Gently coaxing the wider world over a matter of hours, that’s what makes the journey all the more impactful.
I really like this game a lot.