P8-Sweeper by Christian Zommerfelds
Avoid mines and keep digging your way down! A PICO-8 cartridge with a Minesweeper inspired game.
Manual
A number on the grid means how many mines are around that field. Diagonal mines count as half.
Notation: a
:symbol is used in the game to mean "and a half" (+0.5)
| In game | Value |
| -------- | ------- |
| (no symbol) | 0 |
| : | 0.50 |
| 1 | 1 |
| 1: | 1.5 |
| 2 | 2 |
| 2: | 2.5 |
| 3 | 3 |
| 3: | 3.5 |
| 4 | 4 |
| 4: | 4.5 |
| 5 | 5 |
- Solving examples:
Here you can see that all of the marked fields must be empty because they touch fields with a "zero". The rightmost arrow is also empty because the : can only have diagonal mines close to it (otherwise it would be 1 or more).
Now in the next step you can see that the only field left for the : must be a mine.
Here you see that the corner 1 already has a diagonal mine, so it can't have any horizontally or vertically adjacent mines, otherwise it would be 1.5. The arrow to the right is showing how the only way to solve the 1: is to place a mine there.
Dev notes
- Unfortunately the board generation sometimes forces you to guess. But that makes the game more high stakes ;) But you can very often deduct things indirectly, so try to use logic!
- I made this in 48h with the Compo rules, but I started on Sunday, so couldn't submit for the Compo on time.
- It was nice to try out a new platform, I recommend giving PICO-8 a try!
- Thank you for playing! Happy to hear your feedback.
| Link | https://zommerfelds.github.io/ldjam57-p8sweeper/ |
| Link | https://github.com/zommerfelds/ldjam57-p8sweeper |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/p8-sweeper |
Ratings
| Overall | 182th | 3.875⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 78th | 4.016⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 240th | 3.594⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 316th | 3.875⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 519th | 3.484⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 405th | 3.267⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 566th | 2.464⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 627th | 3.258⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 21🗳️ | 39🗨️ |
I'll definitely have to come back to this one to try and reach Depth 10 ^^
Seemed easy at first, but it actually require more thinking than it appears (for example, I sometimes forget that a one could be two diagonals). I only got to depth 5. You really need to forget your common minesweeper patterns and treat this game like its own puzzle, more challenging and fun than minesweeper.
I feel it would be easier if players are allowed to reveal connected corner tiles because you can deduce those but sometimes not allowed to reveal them.
I wanted to make a note that I think the game came out a bit too hard. If anyone here makes it to the end I'd love to know ;)
If anyone is playing on mobile, I'd be happy to add a long press.
I did run into some counters that felt wrong. E.g. in this case both the counters showed 1 rather than 1.5
```
---------
| * | 1 |
---------
| * | 1 |
---------
```
Excelent job!
And just like original minesweeper, this game relies alot on luck so it would take lots of tries to get deeper than 4 for me.
I did have trouble getting started, might just be getting old lol but I actually found the text hard to read and understand what the rules are, and the idea that I was looking at a side view of digging a hole. I spent a while clicking on the lighter colored tiles and wondering what the inputs where since nothing was happening lol.
Once I learned the game rules though that was very well put together and a great design choice to add the diagonals, nicely done!
The "half" count for diagonals is a nice touch that definitely gives more info than in the original minesweeper and thus, eliminates some reliance on luck (even though sometimes, it is inevitable).
Maybe a kind of limited consumable ability/effect that you could use to pass those situations where you're forced to make a guess could make it less unfair ?
As I've had to restart multiple times, I would've enjoyed the automatic spread on empty tiles (like in minesweeper) to speed up the grind!
Would've also enjoyed a bit of music while thinking =)
I liked realizing progressively all the implications of the half point tweak!! Especially the moment I realized 0.5 + 0.5 = 1 :joy:
Also loved the narrative snippets!