Mini Micro is the neo-retro virtual computer that those of us who grew up in the personal computer era (the 1980s or so) could only dream of. But there's one way in which those Apple IIs, C-64s, and Atari 800s still have Mini Micro beat: there was a lot more software for them.
The Mini Micro software catalog is still regrettably small. It comes with dozens of small demos; and there are 80-ish small games and apps for it, but if we're being honest, most of them are demos, half-finished projects, or weekend game-jam projects. Those are still awesome, and I'm always glad to see them. But on any real computer in the 80s, every year saw dozens of full, deep games you could get lost in for weeks, not to mention productivity software you could use for real work.
Now, for getting real work done in the 21st century, Mini Micro is probably not ideal. You really are better off using Google Sheets and your favorite desktop word processor. But for entertainment, Mini Micro is still a fine environment. And this is where I really wish we had some more fully polished games to choose from. Games like Klondike Solitaire, Galactic Empire, or the several DLC games, but covering other genres. Of particular interest are genres that are hard to find today, because they've been ruined by microtransactions or have simply fallen out of favor.
And so, with no further ado, here is my "top 10" list of games I'd love to see for Mini Micro.
Wizardry/Bard's Tale-Style RPG
Before there were sprawling open worlds, there was the dungeon crawl: a party of adventurers, a first-person view down a stone corridor, and a stack of graph paper next to the keyboard so you could map where you'd been. Wizardry and The Bard's Tale made this one of the biggest genres of the 80s, and a handful of modern games (like Legend of Grimrock or Etrian Odyssey) show it still works. But there are very few of them.
The step-by-step, grid-based view is easy to draw in Mini Micro, which leaves you free to spend your effort where it counts: interesting party building, tactical turn-based combat, clever puzzles and traps, and a dungeon that rewards careful exploration.
Space Combat Game
Few things in 80s gaming felt as cool as sitting in the cockpit of a starfighter. Star Raiders put you there in 1979, with enemy ships swooping across a starfield, a long-range scanner, and damage reports as your systems got shot out one by one. Wing Commander took it further in 1990: its ships were just scaled and rotated bitmaps, not true 3D models, but with a detailed cockpit around them, a wingman on the radio, and a campaign that changed depending on how you flew, it felt like starring in a space movie.
Today's space games tend to be vast 3D simulators, and some of the biggest are now built around selling ships for real money. The tight, arcade-style cockpit dogfight has mostly disappeared. But that faux-3D approach is a great match for Mini Micro, whose sprites can scale and rotate, with the cockpit, radar, and instruments drawn on a display layer in front. It doesn't need realistic physics; it needs the feeling of flying: throttle, afterburners, shields, wingmen, and enemies that bank and weave instead of just flying straight at you.
Pinball Construction Set
Bill Budge's Pinball Construction Set (1983) was a toy as much as a game: drag bumpers, flippers, spinners, and targets onto a blank table, tweak the gravity and elasticity, and then play what you'd built. You could even save your table and give it to your friends.
There are good pinball games today, but almost nothing that makes building your own table this easy and fun. Mini Micro has everything needed: sprites, sound, and a file system for saving and sharing tables. Include a handful of well-designed tables to show what's possible, and then let players go wild.
Lode Runner-ish Puzzle Platformer
Lode Runner (1983) turned the platformer into a puzzle. You can't jump; instead, you collect gold while guards chase you, and your only weapon is digging holes in the brick floor to trap them (or to reach gold below). The holes fill back in a few seconds later, so every level becomes a tense puzzle about timing and route planning. Plenty of puzzle platformers exist today, but the dig-and-trap mechanic has hardly ever been copied.
It shipped with 150 levels and a level editor, and that pairing is worth keeping. Mini Micro's tile display makes both easy. Build a solid set of hand-crafted levels that teach the mechanics and then twist them, and include an editor so players can make and share their own.
Deep Text Adventure/Interactive Fiction
There was a time when text adventures, or "interactive fiction" as it came to be known, was a huge game category. They weren't all fantasy RPGs; there were mysteries, science fiction, and more.
Mini Micro comes with one little mini-adventure among its demos, but you can create your own text adventure using the same core code. Make it deep; make the interactions rich and the characters believable. Give players something they can get lost in.
M.U.L.E.-like Economic Multiplayer Game
There are other economic games today, but none that match the compact, social, board-game-like quality of M.U.L.E. And a big key to its charm was the way it supported up to 4 players around one computer, each with their own game controller.
But don't just copy the original; be inspired by it, but design something new.
Archon-like Strategy/Action Game
Design a game with a Chess-like strategy layer, taking turns moving pieces around on a board; but when two pieces meet, they fight in a real-time arcade battle. The classic example of this is Archon.
This is a weirdly underexplored area, even today.
Deckbuilding Roguelike Game
Modern games like Slay the Spire show how much fun a deck-building game can be, but this is a genre with plenty of room for creativity and innovation. It could be
- a space-combat deckbuilder, where cards are maneuvers, weapons, shields, reactor tricks, crew actions;
- a wizard-duel game, where you assemble a spellbook and spells interact chemically or elementally;
- a heist deckbuilder, where cards represent tools, disguises, contacts, distractions, and escape routes;
- a dungeon crawler where your deck literally represents stamina/memory/equipment availability rather than abstract “cards”;
- a civilization or kingdom deckbuilder, where cards are policies, buildings, military units, discoveries, etc.
This is probably the most nebulous idea on the list, but the basic idea is a game where the inventory, abilities, or actions you acquire become a shuffled deck, and constructing that deck is the main form of character development.
Musical Toy
Rhythm games are a huge genre, but most of them amount to press the button the screen tells you to press at the right time in order to keep the music playing. A much smaller subgenre gives you a virtual instrument you can actually play, like in Trombone Champ.
Mini Micro is a powerful music machine, with both digitized and synthesized sounds and dynamic control over pitch and volume. So, build a game/toy with an instrument you can actually play, but make it guided and easy enough for non-musicians to have fun too. Maybe organize it around several mini-games that do varying amounts of hand-holding. And you should be able to record and share your compositions, too -- maybe on a global map, like Ocarina by Smule.
Rube Goldberg Game
In The Incredible Machine (1993), each puzzle gave you a goal (get the ball into the basket, turn on the light, launch the rocket) and a bin of odd parts: ramps, conveyor belts, balloons, bowling balls, candles, and a cat who chases the mouse who runs the treadmill. Your job was to arrange the parts into a contraption that does the job. There was also a free-play mode where you could build whatever silly machine you could imagine.
Apart from a sequel or two by the original developers, this genre has been left mostly alone. It suits 2D perfectly, but it does take a real physics simulation, which makes it one of the more challenging projects on this list. A game that nails the feel of the physics and the humor of the parts would be a real gem, and shared puzzles and contraptions would make it even better.
Developers Wanted!
Mini Micro is an amazing platform, but it could be so much more amazing with games like these. You (yes, you) can contribute to the community in an important way by taking the lead! Pick an idea that inspires you, discuss it on the discord, roll up your sleeves, and dig in. Who knows -- your game might become the next big hit that people will be talking about for years!
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