Dynamine

could you make a way to remove the explosives?

I found every large cavern 360 around the start before I call it quits. I think this is enough gameplay to start having educated opinions.

The core gameplay loop is solid, but the game is trying to be two things at once and it is creating a gameplay focus problem: On one hand the maker seems to want you to invest in building tracks and exploring the world.

On the other hand, the gameplay is optimized for short forays where you only spend maybe 30 minutes per level: the permadeath, expensive upgrades, items kept between death, there is only one biome per world gen within three gameplay hours of the starting position, the general lack of points of interest to keep you invested in exploring, etc.

The way I see the future gameplay working out while keeping the risk of failure as a gameplay mechanic is a mission system where a new floor is generated for each mission that takes 30-45 minutes at most:

• Break through walls and repair X length of track damaged by a cave in / run wire to mining beacons to light up the caves to see numbers

• Find 5 digging drill tanks that have been buried by a cave in and mark all the mines touching them

• Find X lost miners who have to be moved by minecart to the elevator

• Train robbers have laid mines near the tracks. Flag ’em all so the train can pass safely!

• Look for an elevator within x blocks of start

• Rob Mine 30 gold from the smurf village houses

• A meteor crashed. Used environmental clues to find the impact site.

• An archeologist studying the ancient, explosive-worshiping Trinitron culture wants you to uncover several buried buildings. Don’t disturb their artifacts too much!

• The company has broken into a haunted cavern and the local ghosts are turning all the numbers into question marks near their haunted gravestones. Using blessed candles that reveal numbers in a small radius, smash the cursed graves to free the anguished spirits.

Most of these involve trying to mine in particular direction towards some goal marked on the map. That would make the one biome system and permadeath work: you fail, you get kicked back to menu and pick a new mission, keeping certain resources and losing others for rescue and hospital costs or something.

Maybe there is a hub floor to build a base in with lots of points of interest and you can recruit villagers like terraria, mine ores in case you failed a bunch of missions and are short on cash, where dying has minimal meaning and creativity is encouraged.

There is definitely a glitch where if you are digging a rock in front of a wall with a mine, you somehow dig through the rock and hit the mine a tile away. It seems to happen when there is procedural loading. I have died twice in early game to this.

add shields to the game

This has the foundation to be a great game, and I am commenting because I feel like it is worth giving feedback because I want this to succeed, but with the first 90 minutes under my belt, it started to already feel tedious.

Things I appreciated: not dying if I misclicked the dig instead of the flag. I did that a lot.

The numbers were not quite visible enough on certain tiles, especially the grass, when they are the same color. (The menu options help, but I would def change the default 4 color to be unalike 1) It’s mostly the fat font rather than the colors.

The upgrades don’t really feel like they do anything except for the dig out completed numbers one and inventory expansion.

I found maybe 2 jars with the first archeologist upgrade and the contents are worth 10 bucks when you paid hundreds. I then upgraded it to max, and I’ve found maybe 7 jars with max 80 dollars of value between them. There should be a complete rebalance there. (Finding exactly one rail in a jar is just silly. It’s worth 1 gold.)

I never got to the point of where I felt like building tracks because if I die none of it carries over. I did eventually buy them to try them, and having them drop in your path where you walk would be an easier way of deploying them.

I would appreciate a single use defusing kit to remove one mine, so I could clear paths.

It is not immediately obvious how to unlock chests and I assume if I fail I die, so I didn’t bother because I would rather keep my progress. I’m not sure if pickaxe hardness lets you break them because a later chest simply opened. If it was, the upgrade was again not worth the gold to get it.

There’s not enough visible environmental goals, environmental variation, and “random encounters”. I found the tiny house biome, I found the exit, I found some mining gates, I found water, but you maybe only find one per 45 minutes of play and that’s too infrequent. Examples would be:

Differently-colored blocks you can’t dig through unless you have an upgrade,

Dungeons of impassible blocks with an open side so you have to approach from the right direction,

Funny mine clumps and shapes. Meaningful mine shapes like arrows pointing to hidden goodies or an X marks the spot.

Other miners’ railroad segments that are usable.

high density of mine areas indicated by different colored soil with high rewards vs low density of mines area which are mostly good for establishing tunnel networks.

Cursed areas where mine numbers are question marks with a core that must be destroyed to reveal the numbers - maybe requiring a purchasable candle to reveal the numbers in a small radius to search for it.

Other miners maybe and more silly notes.

Treasure maps that mark an x on the overworld where loot is.

Incentive to visit biomes so upgrades are unlocked with the right materials as opposed to everything is money.

A save from death upgrade would change the dynamic so I would be a lot more invested in building out a world. You just have to make it expensive enough to hurt. Drop the price of the upgrades, and sock it to the player if they want mine safety.

Edit: adding that my two high scores were 13770 and 9700ish, so I did quite a bit of exploring.

I love the game and the art is really cute! I've played for about an hour with 2 deaths. The upgrades seem a bit pricey. Unlocking the rails doesn't seem like it's that useful, especially since you can't keep the rail system if you die. 

I do agree with some of the comments that the difficulty might be too high because one slip means complete reset. I kept thinking that maybe if there was an upgrade or an item to withstand a single blast it would be less stressful. Maybe there could be a cooldown on using the upgrade/item that is based on amount of blocks mined or works like the rails where you buy the upgrade to unlock the consumable item. 

Alternatively, maybe the upgrades that you unlocked could carry over between runs? 

Maybe one day there could be a permadeath mode (this version) and a more casual one with some forgiveness.

Overall it was very fun and I wishlisted on Steam! 

Great game. very fun.
You can tell a lot of work and polish went into it.
IMO, the 4's look like 1's - Only made that mistake once
I do agree that it stinks the penality for death is to restart the game from the begining

i like the game, but the punishment for failure being "haha you made a slip, there goes several hours of effort" is a bit extreme, especially considering this is supposed to be a more casual minesweeper game, it's a bit jarring that the stakes are so high for a game supposed to be relaxing.

this game is a ton of fun, my only complaint is the ui is a little innefficent. something that would help would be making the wasd keys able to change whats selected in the ui. another thing is placing rails can be annoying, i think changing the rails to place and pick up directly under you would make it more intuitive. also please make it so i can continuosly place rails while holding down the button. very fun game, i would absolutely pay money for a full version.

The progression is too slow, I don't know why I would play this instead of the original Minesweeper.

a suggestion for the rail system: you could pre-calculate the positions at each "physics frame" beforehand, up to intersections or path ends, then speed up or slow down the rate you play them based on the speed and direction the rail is being traveled. something like this would prevent instances where you get stuck halfway off a rail on corners.

other than that, I very much enjoy the gameplay of the rail system and the path optimizations involved, both for direction and length, and would be fine with keeping it the way it is.

and I just got kicked out for posting too many pictures in a short period of time

the face of death (game frozen)

just so you know, the sound is a bit glitchy when is fullscreen and when holding down any action key. when doing both, the sound mutes entirely 

microban 1 shaped

whenever I blow up the game crashes 

it is a really good game and it is fun while also using your mind but is there anything while ur ingame to save it so you can keep your progress bc i lost it all😭

I love the concept here, but the video is so start-stop it makes me motion sick. Definitely will be keeping an eye on this game, though!

this is a good way to do minesweeper.

Really really been enjoying the demo for the past few days, such a unique and addictive take on minesweeper! Sadly though, I have yet to come across any elevator appearing on any of my runs even with more than an hour of playtime in each of them. After 5 days of playing on and off... I've finally found it!! :D

Also, is there not a way to mine diagonally? I thought the upgrade that lets you chord would do it but sadly not. Knowing that there's no dynamite there but not being able to mine it is kinda infuriating, haha.

And, instead of getting dirt all the time, maybe there could be an upgrade that gives you a small chance of getting an ore, or even just a stone!

Another thing, I wish there was a way to spectate the game after dying, it would be nice to see all your hard work one last time before restarting again.

Overall, I'm really excited for the future of this game, and will be patiently waiting for more updates!!

I love this demo. I'm a huge fan of minesweeper type games. My only complaint is that I'm not liking to controls at all. I dislike having my cursor/target be so restricted, feel like it'd feel a lot smoother if we could just target any tile adjacent to us regardless of where the character is facing. It feels bad when I want to mark a tile diagonal to me and I have to move over a tile and only then will it be targetable. A little more freedom in the flagging and targeting system would go a long way here I feel.

is there not actually smelting in the demo yet?
slightly dissapointing but i suppose I'll just have to keep tabs on this one for future updates

Awesome game bro.

I'm so glad that zero spreading is a thing.

i know this wasnt the intent but i love this because it makes minesweeper accessible to me. i cannot tell you how many times ive lost a minesweeper game because ive had a weird muscle twitch thats made me click the wrong square! this avoids that isssue by just, requiring a little bit of a hold, and i love it!

Very laggy and  upgrade menu bugs out after you buy a upgrade

Essentially, this game drastically slows down minesweeper and then sells you upgrades that speed it up again.  The puzzle element hasn't changed.

Funny that it works somehow.

really like it, but the progression is VEEERY slow. also wondering if there could be an upgrade to help find the other elevator.
also just a general question: is there an actual end to the map? or is it constantly being generated

As an old skool minesweeper, I really enjoyed the idea, I think it's got a lot of potential.
I have noticed some performance issues playing from the browser:

- The game freezes the first time I drill, not sure if it's the world generating right there, or loading the sound resource, but the lag is noticeable.

- After some restarts, the game becomes very laggy and requires reloading the page. It looks like memory buildup.