Minton Review

We talk about Flappy Bird a lot here, and not just as an excuse to link to this post over and over again. Its popularity continues to influence recent games so much we need to just decide an official name for this new genre. After all, no one still goes around calling endless runners “Canabalt clones.” Minton makes a strong case for how well Flappy Bird concepts can work when expanded into a fully realized game, but it’s grounded by freemium flaws.

As soon as players start flapping the little pacifist fruit bat Minton, they’ll be struck by the production values of his game. The illustrated backgrounds and characters ooze loving storybook detail and spookily impressive lighting. The soundtrack is even better. It sounds like some kind of funky techno "Monster Mash" remix and it’s awesome enough to listen to on its own.

Fortunately, Minton is fair enough that players will be able to soak up the atmosphere instead of just dying constantly. Obstacles are oddly shaped but their hitboxes are forgiving. Minton himself moves at a moderate pace, making him easier to maneuver. And the multiple stages allow players to choose how difficult they want the game to be.

All the ingredients are here to make Minton the smoothed-out, mainstream, Hollywood remake of Flappy Bird's smaller, rougher cult hit. But a handful of freemium-focused design choices leave a bad aftertaste. The main currency to collect during each run is tomatoes. Being a fruit bat, Minton loves tomatoes. Batchup is the game’s primary pun (making Minton the bat a play on badminton?) When Minton gets hurt, he might just take damage instead of dying, and eating a tomato heals him. However, players will want to collect tomatoes while at full strength to store full tomatoes. Full tomatoes do everything from powering aerial dashes, to buying stat-boosting gear, to unlocking new stages. But significantly increasing your tomato reserves requires so much grinding the game hopes you’ll just give in a pay. It makes the initial download feel like a glorified demo compared the wealth of content and abilities locked away behind de facto paywalls.

Minton's got some other little issues here and there like stiff animation and cluttered visuals blurring the line between obstacle and decoration, but really the only thing keeping this very good game from being a great one are these far too common freemium elements gating everything it has to offer for no good reason.