Also really liking this one. As a huge fan of both minesweeper and sudoku, I thought I’d be a pro at this but it actually took some time during the opening levels to get the gist. Was really happy when the flagging was introduced. Now I’m 3 starring level after level (there are a ton of levels!). I finished the secret World C earlier. The art and all other production values are very high. I always wish for competitive leaderboards, but I can see how that might be tricky to implement (maybe a leaderboard for amount of stars collected?). Really nice list of achievements though and can’t recommend it enough.
Feature request: The ability to tap on one of the lightbulbs around the edges to "dim" it when you feel you've flagged all the mines in that particular row/column. I find it kind of annoying having to check/re-check if I've accounted for all the mines in a row or column, and having the dimming capability would make it easier to just ignore those ones I've already sorted out and focus on the "active" rows/columns. VERY minor suggestion to an otherwise incredible game. I've been stupidly obsessed with it all weekend, the Advanced levels are brutal!
Id like this too but Im not sure how it would work with the way the board shuffles when you step on a special square.
Yeah I think the suggested idea sounds great for more control, but the pointed out problem would impair its use indeed - a little bit in some levels, a lot in some others (the more special tiles, the worse). I think every time the board was shuffled, we'd need to check if any blocks of a dimmed row/column changed position, and light it back automatically. I can't think of any ways of keeping the dim without spoiling the new positions of the bombs after the shuffle. But then it could get confusing: "Did the game disable my dimmed row because there are now bombs in it, or just because this is the after-shuffle rule no matter what?". At one point we had a similar idea (which was eventually dropped): to be able to manually highlight any rows and columns just to help you focus on what you're trying to read at the moment. But I don't know, it may be worth a try. We've been receiving lots of suggestions, it'd be interesting to try some of them and see how they feel. Every one of them seem to have some pros and cons hehe.
By the way, most of the suggestions/requests we've been receiving involve giving the player tools to have more "control" over the board, being able to mark it with all the information he has and "dominate the grid". Flags for safe tiles is a very popular one, there are tons of people asking for that in the store comments as well! I can see how that can be quite satisfying (like when you can flag an entire 5 x 10 grid and just rush to the end!), but as I've mentioned before, the game could get very easy... so easy that it would get boring and cancel the benefits of the extra gratification you'd be getting from your new powerful tools. I do agree with what everyone is asking, though, if we ignore that issue for a moment: the more power and control your have in your hands, while keeping the challenge the same... the better! - but I think we need some smart design change to be able to do that. Just adding the features to the game as it is could ruin the experience.
I agree with the developer's opinion. Users' opinions are important, but sometimes they can distort the developer's intended game experience. It's difficult, but I am satisfied with the experience that is currently available in this game. I would like to thank the developer who rebuilt this amazing logic game.
Good points about that specific request, would be tricky to implement for sure. But ultimately I think I'm in that same camp of people just wanting more tools and control to help us through the puzzles, so I'm always open to whatever ideas you guys can come up with. Regarding the difficulty, after playing through the first couple of sections of the main campaign, you sort of get comfortable with everything and can "see the Matrix" so to speak whenever you start a new puzzle. Thus, the main campaign was overall very easy for me and I only ever died if I was just really not paying attention or made a bonehead move. That said, just because it was on the easy side does not mean I didn't enjoy the heck out of it the whole way. Even though it wasn't very hard to figure out what to do and where to go, you still get a great "aha!" moment from seeing how each puzzle was intended to come together. Very satisfying. This brings me to the Advanced Levels in the game, which I feel are the real meat and potatoes of Minesweeper Genius. As the game boards grow larger I feel like those additional tools mentioned in previous comments would do less "harm" in terms of making the game too easy. I'm not sure what the long term plans are for this game, but I'm not far from finishing all the Advanced Levels and have only a couple more of the achievements to get before I 100% the whole game. And at that point I'll be thinking "Now what?" As the levels are randomly generated, I guess I could just go back and replay whatever levels I wanted on whatever level of difficulty I felt like, but something about that feels off. Basically, in my mind, those levels are already three-starred, so going back to replay them again, despite being new levels that were randomly generated, still loses that sense of accomplishment of beating them the first time. So I'd love a mode where you can simply choose the size of puzzle you want to play and the game will generate it for you. You could add some meat to it by having some great stat tracking, like the amount of times you died or any time you restarted a puzzle before finishing, and maybe even have some sort of streak functionality to encourage people to not just quit and restart a level if they screw up. Of course you could also just add in more campaign levels all the way from M-Z and I wouldn't be mad at that at all, but a mode like the one I'm imagining would make this endlessly replayable and likely find a permanent spot on my phone forever (tbh it probably already will anyway, but still I'd love a mode like that). Ok, thanks for listening, sorry for being so wordy
I agree 100% about the Advanced levels. For me, the main levels are just a means to get to the real game. I think it would be nice to have an entire set of easy, medium, hard, and extreme levels. Pro Tip: This might have been explained in the beginning of the game but I just figured out that you can tap, hold and drag to plant multiple flags. Helps a lot with larger boards.
Felipe MGaia, Can you explain a bit more in depth about the game's mechanics and rules with respect to the following? 1. Must the solution for every level use ALL of the unassigned tiles? In other words, every non-special (unassigned) tile must be flagged as a bomb tile or designated as a safe tile to be crossed over by the player character, so that there are NO unused tiles left over (including tiles that are deemed safe but are never crossed over). I don't recall this explained explicitly as a rule in the game, though I suspect that this was the case given the levels I had played so far. However, I can easily imagine that a level may be solvable (unless the algorithm explicitly checks against this) without using up all of the tiles. 2. Is the solution UNIQUE to each generated level? That is, is there only ONE working arrangement of bomb tiles and safe tiles? Is the SOLUTION PATH UNIQUE also? By this, I mean that the actual path from tile to tile taken by the player character from starting position to exiting position is unique (note that even if the locations of bomb tiles and safe tiles are fixed on a grid, different paths can be taken to transverse these tiles unless the game guards against multiple possible paths). 3. The developer claims that the next "safe" step is ALWAYS deterministic so there is no guessing involved. I like more clarification on the exact meaning of this claim. This is because in path-finding puzzles (such as this game) path ambiguity (in this case, tile ambiguity) almost always arises. This is best illustrated by an example level (see attached). At a given tile that the player character is currently located, an adjacent previously unassigned tile can be classified as 1) sure-bomb tile 2) sure-safe tile 3) still-unknown tile. For a claim to be made that the next "safe" step can ALWAYS be determined, it is NOT sufficient to only say that there is ONE sure safe tile, it is NECESSARY to determine that ALL other adjacent previously unassigned tiles are bomb tiles or safe tiles that are to be traversed later (with no guessing) with NO remaining unclassified tile. In the following example, examining solely from the level's initial layout, one can flag certain tiles to be bomb tiles and certain tiles to be safe tiles (marked as S). When the player character reaches the tile marked by a green O, there are two choices: move to the left tile or move to the top tile (marked by ?). Surely, one can make the easy decision of going to the left and continuing on for 3 tiles and then down 1 tile to trigger the special double-arrow tile, which reorganizes the board to allow the player to recalculate and resolve previously ambiguous tiles. However, at the forked location marked by the green O, there is NO easy way (especially if the player has to do this mentally) to determine exactly if the tile to the top (marked by ?) is a bomb or a safe tile. Further, if it is a safe tile, one cannot easily exclude the possibility that a different solution leading from this tile will be viable. It is possible sometimes to figure out ALL of the branch possibilities to check each one to see if it is valid, but this is too taxing to do this mentally (it is taxing even if paper is used). So when the player encounters such a situation (at the green O tile), does the game expect the player to simply "take" the "sure" safe path? Or is the game's algorithm somehow able to test out ALL possible configurations to make sure that the tile to the top (marked by ?) is either a bomb tile or a safe tile to be crossed over later (rather than immediately)? Even if the game checks for the latter, is it fair to expect the player to do the same mentally? For example,
I’m not sure if this is what you’re looking for but there is only one safe path to solve each puzzle. Every tile will either be safe and part of that path or a mine. Using this logic, if you can determine that a tile is safe, all other possible options are mines. In your example, standing at the green circle, the left square is definitely safe. Therefore, the question mark must be a mine. These rules are not defined in the game. I’ve just determined them through trial and errror. Correct me if I’m wrong Felipe.
You hit the nail on the head on the central issue I am questioning. Your observation that "the left square is definitely safe. Therefore, the question mark must be a mine." is actually why I asked the developer this question. I am unsure if we can use that rule of thumb you cited to determine which tile is safe and which tile is mine. One can easily imagine that, on a large board, a path can wind its way back to be near its earlier part before reaching the exit. In this scenario, it is then possible for two "safe" tiles to lie adjacent to a tile currently being crossed. In other words, the mere presence of one safe tile adjacent to the tile where the player character is currently located is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the claim that each safe step is uniquely deducible by logic. Whether or not this scenario is at work in this game depends on how rigorous the developer's algorithm checks for uniqueness of viable path at EACH step of the solution. Path finding algorithms, in general, are computationally intensive, so even relatively small sized maps can be too much for an algorithm to work out all of the possibilities. That was why I was particularly impressed that the developer was able to program such an algorithm to check for the solutions.
Looks great, but is the iPad version portrait only? If so, can we get landscape like the Apple TV version?
I wonder if the grids are generated so there's only one possible space to go to on the next move. This is easier to see replaying the L puzzles as there's no special squares there. It's going to be harder to prove where the tiles shift around. Edit: I realize that observation doesn't prove uniqueness. But I do wonder about the hidden rules that aren't disclosed. I know that special squares should be the next move, if possible. Also if there's one space between where I'm at and the end *and* not all the safe squares were touched, it's a mine.
*cough* possible to disable the snoring only (as an additional option)? It’s disturbing the ambiance, for me. *cough* Because i do like/wanna keep the rest of the bgm sounds. Thanks for thinking about that a bit silly request.
Just a new note on this idea: someone else suggested we could automatically dim the lines/columns whenever the max number of flags is placed on it, whether they've been correctly placed or not. I think it could work well like that. I still think it could be a bit confusing at first: players could misunderstand its effect, thinking the dim happens only when you correctly place the flags. But maybe it's a minor caveat and everyone would eventually notice how it really works. It could use some help from a new tutorial step as well. Yeah, I agree with you on this. For some people (maybe for most?), it feels kinda pointeless to finish the game again when you don't have a goal, unless your goal is really to finish the game again. The random generator still has its use of keeping players from memorizing a level and easily 3-starring them, so it still makes a lot of sense to have it in the game even if its effect on the replayability factor isn't that strong. Safe flags and a new mode are the features we'd most likely include in a bigger update - the most popular one and the one that'd add the most to the game, respectively. Since I've mentioned an update: we're very busy around here lately and haven't got the chance to make plans or set dates for one yet. The whole team is focusing on Skyfish 2 at the moment - besides some other stuff - and I generally have to spend my free time taking care of boring company stuff. I'll keep you all posted when we finally find some time to sit down and discuss it. I REALLY want to have at least the sandbox mode in the game. Oh no worries, I enjoy these detailed discussions about our games. Loved your 'Game of the Week' text, btw!
Hi y2kmp3, All of our levels have only one possible path, without any forks. At any given moment during your progress through a board, of all the veiled tiles adjacent to the character, there is always 1 and only 1 safe tile, and the other 0 to 3 adjacent ones are bombs. When the algorithm finds a path in the board, it makes sure that there is only 1 unique path you can follow to reach the end, and that path must use all of the safe tiles. That guarantees that what I said in the first sentence always holds true. The path finding algorithm is intensive indeed... IF you are scanning for all the possibilities, which we aren't. In the game we just randomly look for a path and, as soon as we find it, we use it as the level. As the search is random, the first valid path it finds is never the same. On my tests I tried to run the algorithm on grids of different sizes until it exhausted all possibilities, valid and invalid. It takes some seconds on the small ones, then as the grid gets bigger it starts to take several seconds, then minutes, then several more minutes, until it eventually never stopped after 15min and I just force-closed everything and programmed an iteration cap. This was just a test and it didn't matter for the game, anyway: finding 1 solution at a time is all that's needed for Minesweeper Genius, and that takes only a fraction or a couple of seconds. When the Loading Curtain closes, that moment you wait before it opens again is the time it takes for the next scene to load + the algorithm to find the path (and modify it to make sure it's beatable, if necessary). ------ With all that in mind, let me comment on your notes: 1) Yes, you must use all safe tiles to finish a level. No safe tiles are left unused, when you finish the level you can be sure all unused ones are bombs. The algorithm doesn't need to check against this, because it doesn't allows grids with paths like that to be created in the first place. 2) Yes, every generated level has a unique solution, that can be traversed following a unique path. Once again, the algorithm makes sure that's always true. 3) A) Quoting myself: "At any given moment during your progress through a board, of all the veiled tiles adjacent to the character, there is always 1 and only 1 safe tile, and the other 0 to 3 adjacent ones are bombs." B) After creating a valid level following all those rules, a second phase of the algorithm makes sure that you can: i) Read all the adjacent tiles that are bombs; or ii) Read the adjacent tile that is safe; or iii) Both. In cases i) and ii), with the information from A), you can always know where all the bombs and the safe tile are. The one illustrated in your attached screenshot is case ii); you know the left tile is safe, so the top one is a 100% certain bomb. ------ Whew, I hope that answers all your questions! But let me know if something's still unclear.
Yes. iPad and iPhone are portrait only. Believe it or not, I asked myself that question these days ago haha. The Apple TV version was implemented late in the development (it wasn't in our plans) and only then a landscape version of the game started to exist. The idea of having a landscape mode never came to our minds when the game was mobile only, and we didn't even have the time to consider including it in the mobile build after the Apple TV one was implemented. Unfortunately, since that wasn't planned from the start, I'm also quite certain the game is not ready at all to switch between portrait and landscape on the fly. The easy way to do that would be to implement a setting to switch modes, but that feels quite lame; the hard way is to refactor a lot of the code. I've already added this to the to-do list when I asked myself the question, but it won't be as easy/fast as it may seem. It'll have to wait until some other similarly time-consuming but more importat tasks make it to the game.
hehe someone else also asked that. I can understand how some people can get annoyed by it - I tried to make its volume as low as possible nor to interfere with your concentration, but I guess it wasn't enough for everyone. I'm not sure if the solution to that will be an additional option - I'm sure I'll have a hard time convincing the designer to change his interface to make room for this very specific option haha We can't also completely remove it from the game, as we have achievements that involve the sleep. I don't know yet. I'll talk to team about this!
