I kinda miss being able to hit diagonal tiles and being able to zoom out would be pretty nice too.

Although I havent progressed much because I had to place a flag on almost every tile in my starting area - I really dig that you chose minesweeper to modernize - that earns you a <3

Saw your post during the weekend and had to bookmark the idea of a roguelike minesweeper :P
The game doesn't offer much for explanation of mechanics, really, and it took me a bit too long to understand how the numbering works, since normally the number represents the absolute mine number around. But in this case I guess it was just for potential mines, including any pickups...

I loved the mood and gameplay, usability-wise the Cancel button was not in the right place when you had to dismiss it every time. I think the start should be much easier, though, and the density of mines should increase later, this felt like expert density or higher. I liked the terrain objects too, but damn that dog was getting annoying after a bit!

The visuals reminded me a lot of Neo Scavenger, which is a good thing :)

thanks guys. unfortunately, I did not have everything I wanted, since my partner left right after the start. But in any case, I will continue after the competition, including more intuitive controls. If you want a release notification, you can send me your email via in-game feedback, or catch posts here

I had a good time playing your minesweeper-roguelike. I happens to also work on a game using this mix. I think the control are well explained but a bit unintuitive, when you get used to it the game start to be fun. I'm also unsure about the need for damage location it add some depth but cost a lot of readibilty. Maybe some red for injured/torn off member would help, ( fractured and functional almost read the same ).

Really interesting idea! I really like the different roles with different abilities. The graphics are lovely I really enjoy this type of pixel art. The game itself is pretty difficult to understand, how to play is not very clear initially, but as soon as I understood I enjoyed it a lot. I'd suggest having some initial resources though because in one run I had very little resources and nowhere to go (almost full of mines).

Once a happy way to pass carefree time, now a grim reality. My friend the solider is dead. What good is a gun against such a hidden menace? I set my mind to work and ran around putting up flags, thinking I could solve this with reason. Those were the days before I made a mistake and blew my right leg off. Now I hobble around slowly, trying to convince my wary colleague the medic to take calculated risks. He stares at me blankly over the crackle of the fire.

Only my dog seems unaffected by the grim realization of a casual game. He runs about, and as if to taunt leaps onto a square I agonized over revealing.

All this would be a challenge, but one I could muster my will and human intuition against to overcome. But what truly saps me is the insanity of it. I carefully construct towers of logic based on the numbers I find on the ground, but then I see this: https://imgur.com/G027JNb

Using a precious disarming unit, I clear a mine I was sure was there. I recall the progress meter vividly. Then I remove the flag. Hopefully this will unblock some progress. I step into the newly cleared space - an explosion erupts against my weak flesh, in total disregard of my efforts.

Have I lost my mind from the horrors? I must escape this madness.

...

Great entry! Really transported me.

Really cool artstyle and fun gameplay! It reminds me so much of the hours I spent on minesweeper.

This might be one of my favorite games I've played for Ludum Dare 40 thus far. Solid concept, solid gameplay, nice graphics. What more is there to say? It's pretty much a modernized Minesweeper. :)

Cool concept, I've always wanted to make a game based on minesweeper mechanics. I dig the fire cracking sound a lot. I'm not sure I understood how to differentiate between mine types (there are 2 types, right?), both soldier and miner show the same icon in instructions and at least once I've blown up on a tile I defused right before it. Very nice game, I will definitely play it more in the future. The dog is annoying though, is there really a reason it must always block you?

Ok guys, thanks a lot for your words, it really inspires me)

So, about dog. Do you remember that mechanic in classic minesweeper, when you click in zero cell and it unlocks all the nearby zero cells? Dog is realizes thic mechanic. It walk by random gueranteed-not-mine cells. Yep it can block you. Dogs sometimes behave irritatingly. That is life. :)

And yes, I must put it in the headline. Two types of mines. The one that is smaller is an ordinary mine, and only miner can defuse it.
A second mine looks stretched - is a mole-mine. The sapper can not approach her, it can only be shot from afar. And yes, sometimes it can creep from place to place (only on closed cells). May be it is reason why @pkenney s miner was blowed up.

@pkenney, I hope you do not mind that I published your comment in the project's feed :)

@Poroh not at all! Glad you liked it. :)

It's awesome! Really pretty graphics, as for programmer you have very good art skills! The game is very innovatiwe and creative. It's nicely polished! Nice job!

really like the estetics. It has such specific feel which i cant explain. The same as some hardcore turn-based strategies have.

Fantastic art! Love the idea and the mechanics. I'm bad at minesweeper so I was bad at this too :D but nonetheless it was fun! Very detailed and thought out.

I was very bad at this game, but the effort is really visible. :)
Well done!
Very nice atmosphere.

I love me some good minesweeper-esqu games and this is a really cool take on it. I am definitely going to play some more of this after rating is done.

Good art style and good game. Was quite confusing at the start, and I had to come back to the this page a couple times to reread the description. A menu for descriptions would help.

Really like the game. I think the concept for it is great! The instructions do need to be more clear. I think the dog does not need a hitbox, unless you can utilize him somehow but I haven't figured that out. Plus some starting resources for the soldier and the sweeper would be nice for us players. Also, is the goal of the game to flag each mine like in the regular version, or is it diffuse/shoot each mine?

@gizmolo, goal is leave minefield. and starting resources.. hmm.. it will be a bit contradictory to the spirit of the roguelike "only you and the ruthless Random", but i can make difficulty levels in release. yep, will do it

Okay, so I've replayed the game after reading the explanation in the post. I didn't realize that other objects also change the numbers in cells before. The game becomes more fun and much easier now with that knowledge. I didn't manage to get out of the minefield yet, still playing though. Is it big?

Some ideas I have about expanded game:
- skewed view looks cool, but makes it harder to tell which cells are adjanced with a fast look;
- different coloured flags would be great to mark locations with resources or with no mines, also to mark specific types of mines;
- healing mechanic could be improved, maybe let player select which body part to heal? Definitely would help to let player choose how many medkits to use so you can only heal most dangerous damage and keep some spare medkits.

Good luck with the full version!

EDIT:
Finished my playthrough. It was quite easy (but not fast), only made 1 mistake and spent 2 medkits - medic felt as the most useless character of the 3. At the end I realized that I only have 4 squares to the exit and can probably just tank through the mines with soldier, healing him every time with medic. But I ended up using disarming tools blindly on each next square. Made one suicidal blind step in the very end with soldier but was lucky and there was no mine on that spot.

Awesome idea! I feel like the medic is very weak compared to the other characters, though. I feel like the healing is too weak and random.

@mortus, thank you for the detailed response. I'll open a little secret - first I drew the characters, and then I figured out what game to do with them. And so it turned out that the characters looked badly on an even field - they seemed to be turned by ~20 degrees. I did not redraw them, but made a rotated field. I liked the result and left it as it is. :)

Color flags are a great idea! I'll figure out how to do this without complicating the interface.

Thanks again, these detailed posts have a very inspiring effect on me :)

Yep. Medic is not needed, if you do not make a mistake. I plan to add a day-night cycle, fatigue, food and hunger. And in front of the player, there really can be a choice, whether to drag a medician behind the main team, or take his food and throw him to starvation. Or maybe, eat him :)

Just beat the game. This has got to be my favourite so far of LD40. Nice work!

Having multiple items really adds an extra layer to minesweeper. I didn't realise at first how I could make extra deductions based on this information. Even after figuring that out, it still felt a little luck based though. I took a fair few 50/50 risks but it seems I was playing far too conservatively with my items as I finished with plenty to spare. I lost my medic to a single bomb which felt a bit unfair.

I think it'd be nice if there was some way to tell how close to the edge you were. It would have let me make more educated decisions about when to use items and when to take a risk.

A little bit more work on the mechanics and you've got a wonderful game here. Loving the art style too! Well done :smiley:

I haven't played minesweeper in over a decade so I was a little baffled at first. I had no understanding of what the flags were for.
So on my third try I cheesed my way to victory by marching the soldier into mines and then immediately healing him. That got me within 3 tiles of the exit and the miner was able to eat the last 2 mines. I may have had a bit of luck here.
After that I read a couple of Wikipedia entries and the rules gradually sank in. I made a couple of more serious attempts, dropping flags everywhere, making deductions. Of course these ended in failure. But it was fun.
Anyway, I really dig this entry! I always hated the blandness of original minesweeper's graphics, so the addition of some scenery and characters really improves it. I can imagine this with an even larger cast of characters, with maybe a subset selectable for each playthrough.
Good stuff.

Cool idea for updating Minesweeper. The inclusion of different characters was interesting. If you're continuing with development then maybe introduce some additional classes and allow the player to select their preferred team.
I really enjoyed this and would love to see where you take it. Great work.

Some of the mechanics and controls confused me, but I like the art style and concept.

There were a lot of mines! I was able to determine that a few directions were solid walls of mines, and I didn't have enough mine-kits to defuse them. I couldn't figure out how to flag known mines.

@mase, @gwolf86, Wow! It's a great idea to make more characters and give the player a choice of several at the start, or maybe give them out randomly.

And yes, I'm going to continue after the LD.

@almost, Unfortunately, I did not have time to work out the controls, and mouse control. Aboout solid walls of mines - weeeeeeell, it's roguelike, random matters. You can hope for luck and try to just go through a couple of mines. If you are lucky - injuries will not be strong. :)

Haha! I was never very good at minesweeper and I wasn't good at this, but I had a lot of fun and it's a fantastic concept! Very nice graphics also. Well done! :grin: