Just curious as to what miniature refers to in chess.

Miniatures are very short games... usually ended by a blunder or sharp tactics early.  They are very good to analyse to learn opening traps as well.

I believe a game is a miniature when it is won in under 20/30 moves.

I usually consider a chess miniature as 25 moves or less.

Great. Thank you for you replies!

Yeah, I've always understood it to be a short game where the win is achieved dramatically through sharp tactical play by one side.  Usually some sort of novelty is played.  Kenytiger's blog has a lot of really cool examples.

^Cool, i'll check it out.

I say Green Laser's article a little bit earlier and although I kind of had the idea, I wasn't exactly sure.