If you’ve ever healed a party in an MMO, you know the drill: the tank forgets their defense moves, the DPS wander into every well-telegraphed attack, the party rushes ahead while you’re still frantically trying to get mana back for the next encounter. Everyone else in the party is prone to random, unexpected suicidal thoughts and actions and it’s up to you, the cleric, druid, priest or whatever your official title, to see them safely through to the other side of the dungeon. Of course, the party is grateful… to the tank…
Mini Healer swivels the focus back in the correct decision, putting you in command of the true heart of the party, the healer. Watch health bars fall, but fill them with the perfect heal at the right time. Here comes an AE. You got the AE heal in answer and you’re already clearing the negative status conditions. The deeps are about to eat another ultimate — you’re shielding them in advance. The boss has tossed up some buffs — you’re dispelling them.
I needed (and still need) a nice, casual, drop-in RPG to play now that I’m done with Chocobo’s Mystery Dungeon. Mini Healer was on sale on Steam and seemed fun; I’ve played healers in many MMOs and know very well the frantic pace of the healing life.
In Mini Healer, you play a generic sort of healer to start, but as your level and experience grow, you begin to specialize in heals over time as a druid, direct healing as a priest, or combat healing as an occultist. You can change your specialization at any time in order to better prepare yourself for specific upcoming battles, as each boss fight is quite different. Some may require fast DPS to beat an enrage timer; some may require a lot of party healing but little direct tank healing, and so on. A hint book teaches you about the encounter, and since each encounter typically takes less than a minute to complete, there’s no reason not to just jump in and get a feel for it before changing your spell and gear loadouts, of which you can have several.
As the focus is, rightly, on you, the healer, you get all the loot that drops, and you can either equip it or sell it as you please. Gear that you equip typically also increases the stats of the rest of the party members (tank, berzerker and ranger), but its you who gets the final say whether or not the tank gets that epic sword, or you get that mysteriously glowing staff.
The game play is simple: Wander into “The Vault”, choose an encounter (winning one unlocks the next), choose a difficulty level (that can be boosted to insane levels with chaos gems), and start fighting. One to two minutes later, you’re done and either counting your gold or licking your wounds.
Each boss has special moves, and while you’re trying to keep your party upright, you’re also watching for the boss buffing, summoning healing companions, or preparing tankbusters to whittle you down. The pace is frantic, but thankfully, it doesn’t last long enough to get bothersome.
You can also take on special challenges in the “dining hall”, where you can test your DPS and HPS (heals per second), keep an NPC alive, kill a boss within a certain amount of time, or keep your party alive for a certain amount of time. It’s where you go to test and tune builds before you head into the deeper levels of the Vault.
Mini Healer also has plenty of ways to enhance and customize your gear, but gear is plentiful enough that you’re soon replacing it with new gear anyway.
Mini Healer is not as deep a game as your typical RPG; there’s no real storyline or plot, you’re just taking on a series of boss fights where your main activity is trying to keep health bars filled. As a game to play for a couple minutes here and there, though, it’s amazing. Get your healer on here, and toss an extra coin to your cleric next time you’re playing your favorite MMO 🙂
