How to get a high score on Villain-Con Minion Blast at Universal Studios

Minion Land opened in Universal Studios Florida on Aug. 11, 2023, along with the highly-anticipated Villain-Con Minion Blast attraction. If you have ridden this attraction, you may have noticed a leaderboard at the end and wondered “How do I make it on there?” Read on for our best tips, as well as some directly from Universal Orlando.

By Ethan Hershaft

This guide will not only provide tips for getting a high score on Villain-Con Minion Blast, but also go in-depth about how the game mechanics works, both with and without the Universal Orlando app.

Just a warning, this article is long because there is a lot to this attraction. Yes, you can just have fun and blast everything you see, but if you want to make it to the leaderboard, read on. If you just want a quick lowdown on improving your score, here’s a synopsis from Victor Lugo, director of Immersive Experiences at Universal Creative:

Always look out for collectibles as they will yield the most points. Be sure to look all around each scene for them; it can be a 25,000 score increase! Loot is your primary way of earning points. Try to blast those gold, silver and bronze loot coins whenever you see them. They will pop out of almost everything you destroy. This can increase your score by 1,000 to 10,000 points depending on the value of the coins. If you manage to damage a boss’ vehicle, they will drop a special launcher capable of causing massive damage. Grab that launcher and go to town! When all else fails, remember you’re a villain! Break stuff! Take stuff!

Villain-Con Minion Blast Basics

Each player will be given an E-Liminator X blaster before stepping onto a moving platform that take them through the ride. These blasters are how you will try to become the newest member of the Vicious Six villain group. To earn points, it’s important to learn how to use the blaster properly. There are two triggers, one is where any normal blaster trigger would be, and a second trigger is in the front of the blaster. The normal trigger is used to shoot your primary weapon; the second trigger is for more powerful power-ups. The blaster also has a screen that will show your score, your ammo amounts, which power up is equipped, and the charge bar for your ultimate blast.

You will see four different primary firing methods indicated on boxes throughout the attraction. These are called elemental blasts. They are fire balls (red), force blasts (green), freeze rays (blue), and lighting bolts (purple). Every time you shoot one of these colored boxes on the screen (and some physical boxes), it will give you points and change your primary firing method to one of these elements. You can swap them out as many times as you like and you won’t run out of this ammo.

You will also see yellow reload boxes. When you shoot these, you will reload your power-up launcher (the secondary trigger). You only get nine shots with your power-up, but you can keep shooting the yellow boxes to reload them. In the final battle of the attraction, you can’t change your primary fire as there are no power-up boxes to shoot, but there are a bunch of reload boxes on conveyor belts. You can also get an Ultimate Blast! You automatically get it by causing a lot of damage. You can use it by pressing either trigger. Listen for the speaker on your gun to say “ultimate ready”.

There are seven scenes or rooms in the attraction. Every room features a different villain, except the first and the last. In the rooms with villains, you can get ahold of each villains’ power-up and use it to earn bigger points in each scene. To get these power-ups, look for gold boxes. They are similar to the elemental blast boxes, but they will be floating next to, or right above the villain in each scene. They don’t appear until enough players cause damage to the villain. They don’t disappear after one shot, so multiple players can shoot the boxes, but you only need to shoot them once to get the power-up. You can also keep reloading your power up by shooting the gold villain box again if it’s still on-screen.

Make the Leaderboard

Now that you know the basics of the game, let’s learn how to earn enough points to make it onto the Villain-Con Minion Blast leaderboard.

Be sure to set your custom name in the Villain-Con section of the Universal Orlando app and synch the app to your blaster by tapping your phone to the top of the blaster as soon as you get it. There will be a team member nearby who can help you if you need it.

This blaster doesn’t work like the one in the Men in Black: Alien Attack ride. You can’t just hold down the triggers. So keep clicking the triggers as fast as you can. Go back and forth with each shot between the power-up and the primary fire trigger. There’s no need to conserve your power-up ammo as there are lots of reload boxes, and you can keep attacking the villains to borrow their power ups too. Also be sure to stay standing on your dot on the floor to keep earning points. If you step off your dot, your blaster may stop giving you points.

Villain-Con Minion Blast Scene-by-Scene

There is a lot going on in each scene and a lot to shoot at, so we are going to break it down scene by scene (aka room).

Scene 1: The Lab

Scene one looks like a Minion lab. This is where you can locate where your blaster is aiming on the screen and shoot everything you see. When you are walking through the queue with your blaster, you’ll see what your blasting icon will look like on the screen. Different players around you will have different icons onscreen.

In this scene, you’ll see explosives, rockets, minions, coins, shiny collectibles, and tons of primary fire elemental blast boxes. You can shoot everything on screen to gain points, but when you shoot the walls in the background with your power ups, they will break and unveil different rooms like a news station, a vault, etc. The more you shoot these hidden backgrounds, the more points you will get. Shiny collectibles and coins are found in every scene. These will also give you points, but are utilized more for some of the app features (which we will talk about later). Coins give a decent amount of points, but don’t focus on them. The glowing collectibles are sometimes hidden and are harder to shoot. These will give a good amount of points.

Scene 2: The Museum

Scene two takes place in a museum filled with tons of fragile and priceless art just waiting to be destroyed. Guests will battle the villain named Stronghold (voiced by Danny Trejo), with his giant iron hands.

As you enter, on your left, there are two paintings on the wall. Keep shooting these and behind them will be glowing collectibles that will give you points. There’s also a painting on the wall behind you. After shooting those, focus on shooting Stronghold’s giant tank as much as possible until you get his iron fist power up, and then keep shooting him with it. Keep repeating this process and alternating between both triggers while clicking as fast as you can. You should range from 300,000 to 500,000 points in this scene.

Scene 3: The Flying Organ

The third scene is pretty short, but you’ll encounter the villain named Nun-Chuck here (voiced by Lucy Lawless). She is floating in a flying organ towards the top of the screen. Towards the bottom of the screen, you’ll see musical notes with coins and collectibles, as well as Minions that fly in from the sides with collectibles and elemental blast boxes.

In this room, you’ll score a good amount of points by shooting Nun-Chuck’s floating vehicle with both your power up and primary trigger blasts until you see her gold box power up appear. Then keep using her bomb chucks power up to score more points. If you see glowing collectibles on the screen, shoot those and hit a few music notes too, but mostly focus on Nun-Chuck herself in this room.

Scene 4: Underwater Lair

In the fourth room, you’ll will be in an underwater lair and fight Jean Clawed (voiced by Jean-Claude Van Damme). This scene is very big and very tall, so there’s a lot to shoot at and a lot of points to score. If you look high up and on the sides of the main screen, you will see themed pipes with smaller screens. Start by shooting the glowing collectibles flowing through the pipes. After shooting a few of them, focus on the main screen. Attack Jean Clawed’s giant red robot vehicle until you can get his sonic blast power up. There will be two gold boxes in this scene that you can shoot to get it.

Some other things you can shoot in this scene that will give lots of points are the sunken ship on the bottom right, and the castle on the bottom left. Shoot these enough, and they’ll break and then you can either shoot the glowing collectibles behind the castle, or the treasure chest hidden in the ship with collectibles and coins. There is also a clam in the bottom center of the screen, and if you shoot it enough, it will spit out a lot of coins, and sometimes a collectible. If you look on the top left of the pirate ship, you will also see a shark in a cage. Keep shooting it with power ups to break open the cage. He is fast, but if you shoot him while he swims around, you will get a lot of points.

Scene 5: Roller Derby

In the fifth room, you’ll encounter the villain named Svengeance (voiced by Dolph Lundgren). There’s a screen on both the right and the left, but also a physical box on the ceiling with the villain himself. There are two hidden screens in this box and if you shoot through them, you can shoot a bunch of collectibles and earn points. After shooting that, pick whichever side feels the most natural to shoot at, or whichever screen has less players shooting at it. You will see giant jumbo-tron screens floating in the background with spiky borders, and twisty tracks with Minions, robots, and large vehicles going by.

You will get the most points here by shooting at these clusters of speed-skating Minions and robots, especially when using your power ups, as well as the jumbo-trons in the background. When dealing enough damage to Svengeance, you can also earn his weapon, which is the spiked vengeance, but this power up is hard to get, and is not as common as the other power ups in the other rooms.

Scene 6: The Disco

The sixth room will give players the most points in the attraction. The villain in this room is Belle Bottom (voiced by Taraji P. Henson). This scene features a disco stage with Belle Bottom in a large clear disco ball, Minions dancing, speakers and coins on the stage, and bubbles floating up on the sides.

To get a good amount of points, shoot the bubbles. They start off big, and shrink and split up each time you shoot them. By hitting a good amount of them, you will boost your score. Then focus on shooting Belle Bottom until her gold power up box appears in the center of the screen. She kind of blocks it, but you can still shoot it. This will let you use her laser disco ball power-up, which will also give you a lot of points. Keep shooting at Belle Bottom with her weapon and keep reloading it by hitting her gold box. As usual, keep alternating between the power-up and the primary triggers. By this scene, you should have anywhere between 800,000 to a million points.

Scene 7: Universal Orlando

In the seventh room, a bunch of different villains will take turns fighting you, but you can’t get their power-ups here. You will also see some familiar Universal Orlando structures in the background. To earn points, keep shooting the villains, alternating between triggers, and reloading with the reload boxes on the sides of the screen. Some other things you can shoot are the words and signage on the structures. These will reveal hidden glowing collectibles which will give you points. By shooting the letter V in “Universal” on the globe, you’ll also reveal a shiny moon object.

Last Scene: News Desk

There are no points to earn in the last room, just the reporter talking about Villain-Con, with your score moving along the bottom of the screen. Your blaster shoots confetti in this scene, because, why not?

By following all these tips, you should be able to get a good score, but it definitely takes practice, so experiment with different targets and try to figure out where all the bonus items are. Average scores for the attraction are around 300,000 to 600,000 points. Great scores fall in the range of 800,000 to over a million points.

Bonus High Score Tips

• Try holding the blaster up by your head so you can better hear some of the audio cues it makes.
• Some power-up weapons shoot slower than others, making it hard to time your shots. If you find the slower weapons more challenging, use the app to switch your gun to use one of the faster powerful weapons like the pinballs at the start.
• •he leaderboard in the exit gift shop (Evil Stuff) shows the top scores for the day. If you want to make the leaderboard more easily, play earlier in the day, before better sharpshooters have had a chance to play.
• When shooting at coins, boxes, or anything, it doesn’t matter which trigger you use.
• Be sure NFC is turned on in you mobile phone settings to be able to scan your blaster and Villain-Con logos. Many newer phones already have this setting automatically on. Here’s how to check on Android and iPhone.

Customize Your Villain-Con Minion Blast Game

You can also use the Minion Blast section of the Universal Orlando mobile app to improve your gameplay, and earn really high amounts of points, like 1.6 million, two million and more. (Keep in mind that I have also scored 1.5 million both with and without the app, so although the app helps, sometimes you can have good rounds without it).

The glowing collectibles I mentioned earlier are listed in the app and you can see which ones you’ve collected. There are 53 to find and they not only help advance your player level, and give you some points when you shoot them each round, but also act as objects to collect. There are also collectibles in the attraction’s queue and out in Minion Land itself in the form of Villain-Con logos you scan with your phone.

The app has a lot of features, and it can get confusing with all the different options. Once you’ve played a few times and have looked through the app, you’ll better understand it. So reread the below advice after you have looked around the app, and it’ll make more sense.

There are also different Missions in the app, which help advance your player level, and permanently unlock the Villains’ power ups when you complete them. All of the villains’ power ups in the attraction can be unlocked in the app, and you can preset your blaster with them. In addition, there are three default power ups: banana bombs, fart bombs, and pulverizing pinballer. I think the best default power up is the fart bomb. But all of the villain power ups will let you earn a lot of points if you customize your weapon with them after unlocking them. You can also unlock different Ultimate Blasts, which charge up throughout the ride. The default is the UniBlaster, which is pretty good, but the Boom Box and Piranha-sicle are really good, and by using them, you’ll score higher. You have to complete some of the challenges to unlock them.

You can also preset your primary elemental blast (main trigger) and add perks to the blaster. Presetting your blaster allows you to start the game with a specific load out, and use specific weapons throughout the attraction.

Different blaster perks are unlocked at different player levels. There are multiburst perks, supercharge perks, and spread blast perks. There is one of each for all four different elemental blasts. You can also set a launcher supercharge, increase launcher ammo, an ultimate supercharge, and increase ultimate ammo perks. These four perks allow you to do more damage and score more points with your Ultimate Blasts and power ups.

Players can have up to four perks at a time, so you can create a combination of different perks to find out which does the most damage in the game. If you have a favorite elemental blast, you can use all three elemental blast perks that support that element, and have a slot left over for an ultimate power up, or another elemental blast perk. You will earn a lot of points by using perks for only one element, but if you accidentally shoot another element during the game, you’ll have to switch back or you won’t earn as many points. Picking the perfect combination of perks is tricky. After every visit to Villain-Con, play around with the app and customize your blaster to see what gives you the most points.

Within the app, you can also change the skins of some of your power ups when they are eventually released for each holiday. Thanksgiving will have a turkey leg skin that you can unlock, pumpkins for Halloween, etc. Over time, expect to see more additions to the app like more weapons, missions, and customization options. This guide is covering the game mode that is currently playable at the attraction, but at any time, Universal could adjust the game mode in the attraction and have more objects spawn in, increase difficulty, etc.

There are also Trophies you can earn in the app. You get them automatically by doing certain things like shooting certain things multiple times, playing three times in one day, etc. Some are also time based, like riding the attraction in the evening or morning. There will also be special limited time trophies like one for certain months or events like Mardi Gras.

As more tips and tricks are discovered in the attraction, we will add them to this guide, so be sure to check back for updates. If you have any tips of your own, or if you found this guide helpful with improving your score, please leave a comment below to let us know! See you on the leaderboard!