Since I couldn't find a description of the rules anywhere:
- Spaces contain monsters of various levels (numbers) and cause your character to lose that amount of HP when clicked. They drop the same amount of gold which you use to level up.
- Leveling up fully heals you and you gain 1 max HP
- You'll need to explore the map beating enough low level monsters to continuously level up while managing your HP. You CAN go to zero HP but not below.
- Get to level 15 and defeat the dragon to win the game.
I'm still a little confused. A monster of strength X seems to make me lose X HP and gain X gold.
The first level is easy. I have 5 HP, and I need 5 gold to level up, so I kill monsters worth 5 and I gain enough gold to level up.
But after that I need more gold than I have HP to spend. There's the odd heart, which gives me more HP, but there don't seem to be enough hearts to make up the difference.
Edit: Ok, I got it now. Like minesweeper, it requires careful exploration of safe areas in order to gain those hearts and chests that are needed to bridge the gaps between HP and XP.
There are enough hearts. Hint: You have to prioritize revealing squares to find those hearts over killing enemies whose strength you've already identified. Also make sure to pace out your level ups and heart usage because they always heal you to full.
* Scroll of HP (use these only after exhausting other ways to level up)
* Treasure chest (beware of mimics) containing the above or XP directly
* Walls cost a random amount of HP (despite registering as 0 for adjacent counts) but grant a random amount of XP. I suspect that getting a good score requires getting lucky and hitting a low-HP high-XP wall early, to stretch your score just a little bit further
* There's a gnome(?) that costs 0 HP but gives 10 XP
* Once you find the scroll of anti-mine, you get a lot of XP from picking up the leftover mines
Yes if you play optimally every game is winnable with a full clear. If you make some mistakes you can still win but not get a full clear. If you make too many mistakes it may become unwinnable.
It's impossible to play optimally, because you have no way of knowing which combination of monsters for the first 5 and 6 HP will reveal a scroll of HP to let you continue. You're dependent largely on luck.
I've found I have at least 75% success with the following strategy:
* if at any point the rat king becomes visible (directly or via using the warlock scroll to identify all other 5s), activate it as soon as possible
* don't worry about leaving 1 and 2 enemies for the endgame; there's 16HP worth of walls to play with. (do however worry about leaving 1 and 2 enemies for the immediate following turn)
* if you can figure out where the warlock is, use it as one of your 1s
* make your 5 out of as many small numbers (known or constrained) as possible, even if this means not leaving a certain combination that makes 6.
* if you know "these squares must add up to N", clicking one of them is better than clicking a known N, and clicking a known N on the perimeter is better than clicking a known N that won't reveal any knowledge to you.
(for example, in a game I just started, revealed enemies are 21333 2467, but I have 16=2+4+6 + three unknowns, so I start there)
* aggressively expand toward areas with known 0s, you might get the ?gnome or a treasure chest containing XP (the mimic is no threat if you're paying attention and deal with gazers)
* whenever you use a scroll of HP, always do one that will reveal new information
* if you find the scroll of orb, use it immediately only if it's the very beginning of the game; otherwise leave it until you're lacking information and don't have any suspected 0s (if you have "100" next to 2 squares, it might choose that instead of a more useful 0 elsewhere on the map)
* work towards at least 3 of the corners so that you can kill the lich as soon as you reach 11HP. But before activating the scroll, make sure to flag (or at least constrain the position of) as many mines as you can . It's really annoying that this game "maybe" flagging (and yet, it has a useless 9).
* do not click on any walls until the endgame unless you don't know/suspect where any 1s are and you have only 1HP left
* remember that cells near the center can only be 0-7 or 10. The fact that 8s are only near the edge and there are no 9s often constrains how a large number is formed.
* with mines you have an extra level of logic, so very often you can constrain what nearby numbers are
Does anyone the exact rules of the L0 enemy, the blue knight with red pants that sometimes gives 10xp.
For me the following happened in one game: early game a blue orb chest revealed him, and it said '0' on him. This was new since in previous games I encountered him later in the game and he'd say '10' and give 10 xp (the 0 was not visible in those cases since he got revealed by clicking a tile then, no blue orb).
I killed him and he just disappeared, no 10xp. But later that same game he appeared elsewhere, this time with 10xp, so he can move?
I fully cleared the entire board, but ended up with score 302, where normally that gives 303. I think that's related to what happened with this 0, and the guy seemingly moving.
I already beat the game to 303 before, but now I'm trying to beat it without gambling (that is no random clicks in the beginning other than the 2 blue orbs, while in earlier games I'd reveal corners in the beginning to make it much easier), and this 302 ruined it ;p
I accidentally enabled debug mode and figured out what's going on.
Whenever you click on the L0, he always teleports to an unoccupied square. Only if there is nowhere left to teleport do you get the 10XP. Since the scroll of orb uses similar mechanics to find an unoccupied square, that means it is worth using relatively early.
Incidentally, with perfect knowledge, there are at least 18 spare HP (it depends on how much XP the 1HP and 2HP walls happen to give). So theoretically you can get a score of 303 without using the last heart scroll. Without cheating the best I've done is 13 HP remaining when using the last scroll.
The only time I've got a score of 302 is when I didn't use the scroll of orb. Unlike scrolls of HP that one does seem mandatory.
Pretty cool design, I am not sure if some boards are unsolvable or if I suck though. Some hints:
* It works similar to minesweeper so hints/patters for minesweeper also applies.
https://minesweeper.online/help/patterns
* Prefer levelling up to heal over the hearts. You can use hearts later for bigger heals
* Don't level up unless needed to. Try to hit 0 heart before levelling up.
* Point is exploring as much as possible
* You can use right mouse button to mark cells with numbers or X (for mine). If you figure out a cell don't open it unless you want to explore that area. If not just mark them and leave them. Later when you need to heal/level up, you can kill those marked cells for extra XP with no cost since the health you have will be wasted anyway.
* While picking up hearts again prefer the ones that in areas you want to explore into
* To make things easier, at the beginning you can just open random cells that are far away from the orbs. If you die, you won't lose much :)
The ultimate goal is to kill the dragon, which has 15 lvl, so you need 15 hp (15 lvl) to fight it.
You therefore need to get 15 lvl.
You therefore need to kill monsters.
Killing monsters doesn't give you enough exp, so you need to find healing/gold to compensate.
As you pointed out, healing scrolls heal you completely and therefore are more effective at higher lvl.
The strategy therefore, is to search the map for gold and healing, by spending as few health as possible.
The exception from this strategy, as pointed below, is gaining information (helping in the above strategy) by killing the slime mage and rat king.
--
My tips:
- if you can't find a low lvl monster before healing up, hit a wall to get your hp to 0. I think a wall on average gives you less than 3 gold, which makes it a punishment for when you didn't strategize the monster killing optimally. Of course the wall could be strategically placed, explained later.
- Prioritize hitting low lvl monsters above hitting high lvl monsters, because you want to explore as cheaply as possible.
- Prioritize hitting where a monster can be, above where it surely is. It's probably a good idea to decide where to click based on average possible lvl multiplied by the chance it is there. Calculating this could be extremely hard (it would involve statistics from the Monsternomicon for example) but estimating it is pretty simple. Obviously ask yourself a question if you want to risk death if the average is very attractive, but maximum is beyond your current hp.
- Prioritize revealing fields with possibility of monsters of the category that you almost entirely discovered; you want to remove that lvl from possible combinations. Doesn't apply to rats and slimes.
- Of course combine the three points above with prioritizing fields that give you a strategic advantage; it's tricky to explain what a strategic advantage is: for example being able to swipe from a side, so that you have two numbers, where one describes 2 fields, and other 3, so that you can derive the strength of the third...
- SUPER IMPORTANT: try to find the slime mage: the pattern is simple, he's only lvl 1 and you want to kill him as early as possible.
- IMPORTANT: likewise, you want to kill the rat king as early as possible. That's the only non-slime 5, so should be easy if you listened to the above point.
- 3-digit numbers can be thought of as two numbers XYY, where X is the number of mines, and YY is the sum of strength of monsters. The game then plays as Mamono Sweeper (BLIND mode) merged with minesweeper, you can separately try to figure where mines are and the monster distribution. The logic of both games then applies.
- Just like you know the first digit of a 3-digit number must be a number of mines, because monsters aren't strong enough to combine to 100, sometimes you can know the distribution of monsters based on possible combinations. In particular, you should be able to quickly rule out all lvl 5 monsters, and all lvl 8 monsters, so you're left with a just a few lvl 6-7. You will probably save yourself a lot of time if you don't miss the moment when all lvl 7s are revealed. I think lvl 11 hides near eyes, but lvl 10 should be easily found. Rat king rules out lvl 1, so if you hunt for bats, the number of combinations becomes very manageable.
- Once on lvl 11, you probably already won. This is the time to kill the lvl 11 guy. Before you do this, mark your mines.
- Reveal destroyed mines. No need to remove the mark.
- Spot patterns, as Monsternomicon suggests. The most important is the fuchsia slimes pattern, also lvl4 go in vertical/horizontal pairs - near the end of the game you probably can figure out where the pairs are based on detecting x+y = 8 strength, and limited number of positions where the pairs could hide.
- I didn't dare to kill the mimic, because Monsteronomicon told me to fear it.
At the end, by using the strategies described above, I killed the dragon with 3 healing scrolls left: https://i.imgur.com/0Iz2IqT.png
OK the mimic mechanic is pretty simple, it just appears as a chest once you reveal it, which is a positive thing, because it gives you a 2nd chance not to fight it if you don't have the health for it. In other words, if you see a 10+ lvl and are afraid of the mimic, you can safely click, and as long as there's no lvl 11, you will get at most lvl 7 (or 8 if you didn't discover pink slimes yet).
lvl 11 always in a corner, and you probably want to kill the eyes early. the eyes produce question marks in a radius of 2 fields, rounded down, meaning it's 2 fields horizontally and vertically, and 1 field diagonally.
This game was released on android at a point (and removed from the store later). It's my favorite game ever.
This is a cross between Minesweeper and an RPG.
You gain levels by killing weak monsters and win when you defeat them all.
It's a bit different than Minesweeper in that the number you reveal when you click on a square is the total of the levels of the monsters in adjacent squares.
When you click on a tile with a monster in it, a battle begins.
First you attack, and deal damage (equal to your level) to the monster. On the next turn, if the monster is still alive, it attacks you back. Your attacks alternate until one of you dies. You don't see this, though -- the battle plays out instantly after you click.
Searched for "mamono" to see if anyone recommended already :) One of the best minesweeper clones, maybe "Demoncrawl" is better. I have beaten all modes for Mamono back in the flash times.
Had a lot of fun with this last week, played 10-20 games. It does reach a point where you can beat every game, I found myself craving an extended version that introduces some new elements.
One gripe, the code is incredibly inefficient - my laptop fan was running full speed and battery draining fast, while the game board just sits there with no animations or anything going on. Should be basically using 0% CPU while idle.
Anyway really fun concept & execution, and great game design.
Desktop Dungeons isn't this game at all. While a similar style of resource management, and a great game in it's own right, it's lacking the "minesweeper-y" exploration tactics.
Fun game! I lost a few points short of killing the dragon as I assumed it would work out that he was definitely killable if you wasted no heals. Turns out that’s false.
I can now fully clear the board very quickly. A few insights:
Since the lich is always in a corner you can guess where he is by checking just three corners. This also unlocks a free powerful spot on the map. It has strength 11 mind you.
You have to get your extra power ups early if you want enough hp to clear the board. This means you have to explore aggressively to find the gnome (10 coins) and the lich (2 coins per mine). It’s not terribly strict but you can’t waste time grinding up levels. You generally just want to explore tiles that you know won’t kill you. Don’t waste time on walls. Those are just buffer spots to help you avoid wasting heat scrolls.
The ? Blocks mean there’s a strength 5 beholder guy 2 spaces away. He obscures all tiles within a radius of 2 so it’s pretty easy to guess where he is. He’s a great target to hit because it usually lets you jump forward.
The 8 strength slimes cluster together. Might as well just leave that area alone once you find it.
pattern that can be rotated where the Ss are 8 strength slimes and the L is the 1 strength lich that, when killed, reveals all 8/5 strength slimes on the map. if the pattern is obvious from what you have revealed so far, it's worth it to kill the lich to give more map knowledge. but yeah, save the 8s for leveling up late game.
Form another slightly similar game, they used a trick to avoid stupid errors. When the user clicks on a monster that would kill them, the game ignores the first click. If the moron clicks again, they die. You can implement the same trick to squares marked with a red number too. (And perhaps to upgrade or hearts when you are too healthy.)
[spoiler alert]
Most of the time you have to buy knowledge in exchange of health.
A few essential things you should know: 8's are only on the 2 rows/columns next to the edge. 11's are always in the corner and if you see a '?' the purple 5 point monster is 2 blocks away, which direction you'll need to figure out!
Not essential: Mice look at a specific direction for a reason. You might figure out why later
To anyone else who's puzzled by how this could be possible to beat - after fighting an enemy, you need to click the square _again_ to collect the diamonds ("XP", I guess?) to allow you to level up.
You want to empty the health to 0 before leveling up, because any extra experience goes into the next level. For each level, heart only goes up by 1 but experience needed to level goes up by 3. You need to reach 15 to kill the dragon.
Adding some descriptions would definitely make the game easier to start with. For example the game starts with the orbs that can be clicked without danger, this could be shown or described.
Also the boxes are not dangerous, and the walls are unknown in strength.
It could help to add 0 to non-dangerous items, to make this more aligned to the rest of the numbers, or a ? for the walls.
I also struggled to understand that i survive with 0 health.
Lastly it doesnt make sense to me why the killed monsters "gold" must be gathered (clicked again). I strongly assumed i cannot have more then the slots filled with gold, only when i had to pick one up i did so and figured out i can have + gold.
Apart from the difficult part of understanding how it works, its a very nice game. But you took quite some time off the reviews i have to do for my students game design projects ;-) The ? do appear to gathered in some areas and prevented me from finding the bombs, but i was able to slay the dragon.
There were some cases (maybe all?) where those glitchy/rainbow graphics (during load or in the border while it ran) were the program utilizing graphics RAM as program RAM during a heavy process (decompression, for instance).
This is a great and well-constructed game but the difficulty scaling is almost comically bad, like, incredibly frustrating. I would recommend adding a tutorial level and some easier difficulty settings. Then the game would at least have the appearance that it is winnable.
Edit: Final score 195 in about a thousand tries. It was the catchy soundtrack that kept me going.
After playing a few rounds (or studying the board after dieing) there are a few patterns you can notice, like how the 8s are placed, where the slime revealer guy is, where the wizard thing is, etc.
It seems solvable for me (303 score) without risk about a third of the time. You can also cheat a little by clicking randomly a few times and restarting until you get a good start.
It's more difficult if you try to tackle the monsters head on. If you instead focus on finding clear spaces to unlock the scrolls, and maximize your HP usage (kill 5hp worth when you have 5hp, immediately level up at zero, repeat) it's relatively moderate in difficulty.
The comparison with the original minesweeper is a little bit unfavorable. That's a game that you can win more consistently with skill rather than luck until you crank up the number of mines to an excessive level. This game is punishingly difficult without near perfect play and extreme luck, while containing almost no instructions.
I feel like I'm grokking the rules after a couple of runthroughs and a peek at the help page (the button on the bottom right). I'm liking the idea of this game but need to make better use of the monster counts that you see in the help page - mostly because a 100+ score will usually mean exactly on 100 level mine, so can be treated as "there is an adjacent mine" rather than "there are 100 points of monsters adjacent.
Two things bother me though.
The thing that I continue to find most confusing is that sometimes a square has a question mark instead of a number. From looking at boards after I lose there does not appear any pattern to this.
The other thing that's strange is the "wall" squares -- seems like a wall can take a couple of hits to break, you can't die from a wall, and you seem to get damage each time you hit it and an arbitrary amount of gold from breaking it. Does anyone have any better ideas on how these work?
A slight spoiler, but there's a reason why some spaces are '?' - they hint that one specific type of creature may be nearby. (Think of the one that looks like a Beholder from D&D).
For the walls - think of them as an HP sink. The game largely revolves around using your health as efficiently as possible to explore the board. Walls are useful since you can attack them 1 HP at a time to get the XP out of them (thus allowing you to always fully use your allotment before refilling your health).
> The thing that I continue to find most confusing is that sometimes a square has a question mark instead of a number. From looking at boards after I lose there does not appear any pattern to this.
It took me a second to figure this out, too. Here's a couple hints (base64 encoded to prevent spoilers for other folks:
This seems to kind of work on mobile, except the right half of the game board is cut off, making it unfinishable despite playable.
Everything else works, but like 3-4 columns of tiles missing on the right and a purple book at the bottom which is visible in the screenshot.
So seems like just some fix needed to avoid that cut-off in the right an it should work properly on mobile.
I tried both chrome and firefox on android, with and without desktop mode, with and without horizontal orientation. Always exactly same cutoff problem. I have no idea what creates this problem so consistently in 2 different browsers in desktop mode.
If it worked on mobile, it would eat my day alive. For such a fantastically designed game, I’m shocked at this misstep. It’d popularity would explode with a working mobile version.
Found that it works on Firefox on mobile, if you request the desktop version and change the zoom to 50% . does anybody have a better option for mobile?
Firefox refuses to zoom out for me on mobile (Android), even with the accessibility setting to allow zoom enabled (that setting is about zooming in though). How do you force mobile FF to zoom out?
A big improvement would be showing how many box numbers you marked, visible and left in the help screen to help you with your guesses. It only shows how many left
You pretty much always have to waste the starting spell. Your first 5HP worth of attacks is rarely going to give you enough information to deduce a path, so you'll need that sound 6HP to try to find another scroll.
Fun game, would fit well on mobile. The mark mechanic might be the trickiest thing to translate over, maybe tap and hold to bring up a numpad sort of interface? I'd drop a couple bucks on it.
The numbers on explored spaces show the total level of monsters in the 8 spaces around it. Mark squares with numbers to remind yourself what level of monster is on that space (using deduction). Later you'll come back and defeat monsters of specific levels, because you want to get to exactly 0 HP before you level up.
Oh, I never noticed it was always in the corner; that really reduces the luck needed, as finding the 11 as soon as you can kill it makes the game a lot easier.
What device are you playing on? I have accidentally figured out that playing in a narrow browser window hides the right side of the board without any hint it is there (except for the health bar being cut mid-heart - I have initially thought remembering whether you already have 15 hearts or not was part of the game process). This partially visible/explored board might be the reason you did not get enough resources for lvlup
I played later, still I thought perfectly, but was 4-5 hearts short. Then I played again and cleared the board with 2 hearts to spare, and another time with 1 to spare. I've scored 303 and 302 points. It might be possible to score higher by getting really lucky.
I think it's about delaying using the heart-healup as long as possible. Use them at later levels, not earlier levels, whenever possible.
There are a couple of mechanics that can only be observed on a fully visible board (the death screen), such as the purple slime mage who is level 1 but is always surrounded by level 8 tiles or the basilisk that marks number tiles with a ? in a diamond shape.
One pattern is that all the 8s are always clustered around a single edge space that contains a level 1 wizard thing. I don't know if there are other patterns, none popped up immediately.
Since I couldn't find a description of the rules anywhere:
- Spaces contain monsters of various levels (numbers) and cause your character to lose that amount of HP when clicked. They drop the same amount of gold which you use to level up.
- Leveling up fully heals you and you gain 1 max HP
- You'll need to explore the map beating enough low level monsters to continuously level up while managing your HP. You CAN go to zero HP but not below.
- Get to level 15 and defeat the dragon to win the game.
I'm still a little confused. A monster of strength X seems to make me lose X HP and gain X gold.
The first level is easy. I have 5 HP, and I need 5 gold to level up, so I kill monsters worth 5 and I gain enough gold to level up.
But after that I need more gold than I have HP to spend. There's the odd heart, which gives me more HP, but there don't seem to be enough hearts to make up the difference.
Edit: Ok, I got it now. Like minesweeper, it requires careful exploration of safe areas in order to gain those hearts and chests that are needed to bridge the gaps between HP and XP.
I got to level 13, then misclicked.
There are enough hearts. Hint: You have to prioritize revealing squares to find those hearts over killing enemies whose strength you've already identified. Also make sure to pace out your level ups and heart usage because they always heal you to full.
* Scroll of HP (use these only after exhausting other ways to level up)
* Treasure chest (beware of mimics) containing the above or XP directly
* Walls cost a random amount of HP (despite registering as 0 for adjacent counts) but grant a random amount of XP. I suspect that getting a good score requires getting lucky and hitting a low-HP high-XP wall early, to stretch your score just a little bit further
* There's a gnome(?) that costs 0 HP but gives 10 XP
* Once you find the scroll of anti-mine, you get a lot of XP from picking up the leftover mines
But yes, many games are unwinnable.
Observing patterns when dead is also useful for subsequent games (a cryptic clues in the monsternomicon on the bottom right of the screen)
> But yes, many games are unwinnable.
Below the game: "Yes, the board can be cleared."
Yes if you play optimally every game is winnable with a full clear. If you make some mistakes you can still win but not get a full clear. If you make too many mistakes it may become unwinnable.
It's impossible to play optimally, because you have no way of knowing which combination of monsters for the first 5 and 6 HP will reveal a scroll of HP to let you continue. You're dependent largely on luck.
There is an optimal way to play even for the first 11 XP as well as onwards and will always give you enough health scrolls / level ups to continue.
FYI I've played probably a couple of hundred games at this point (since a week ago when I found it) and have not found any unwinnable one.
So what is the optimal way for the first 11 XP? I've found that I'm often left with a 50/50 on which one is which.
I've found I have at least 75% success with the following strategy:
* if at any point the rat king becomes visible (directly or via using the warlock scroll to identify all other 5s), activate it as soon as possible
* don't worry about leaving 1 and 2 enemies for the endgame; there's 16HP worth of walls to play with. (do however worry about leaving 1 and 2 enemies for the immediate following turn)
* if you can figure out where the warlock is, use it as one of your 1s
* make your 5 out of as many small numbers (known or constrained) as possible, even if this means not leaving a certain combination that makes 6.
* if you know "these squares must add up to N", clicking one of them is better than clicking a known N, and clicking a known N on the perimeter is better than clicking a known N that won't reveal any knowledge to you.
(for example, in a game I just started, revealed enemies are 21333 2467, but I have 16=2+4+6 + three unknowns, so I start there)
* aggressively expand toward areas with known 0s, you might get the ?gnome or a treasure chest containing XP (the mimic is no threat if you're paying attention and deal with gazers)
* whenever you use a scroll of HP, always do one that will reveal new information
* if you find the scroll of orb, use it immediately only if it's the very beginning of the game; otherwise leave it until you're lacking information and don't have any suspected 0s (if you have "100" next to 2 squares, it might choose that instead of a more useful 0 elsewhere on the map)
* work towards at least 3 of the corners so that you can kill the lich as soon as you reach 11HP. But before activating the scroll, make sure to flag (or at least constrain the position of) as many mines as you can . It's really annoying that this game "maybe" flagging (and yet, it has a useless 9).
* do not click on any walls until the endgame unless you don't know/suspect where any 1s are and you have only 1HP left
* remember that cells near the center can only be 0-7 or 10. The fact that 8s are only near the edge and there are no 9s often constrains how a large number is formed.
* with mines you have an extra level of logic, so very often you can constrain what nearby numbers are
Does anyone the exact rules of the L0 enemy, the blue knight with red pants that sometimes gives 10xp.
For me the following happened in one game: early game a blue orb chest revealed him, and it said '0' on him. This was new since in previous games I encountered him later in the game and he'd say '10' and give 10 xp (the 0 was not visible in those cases since he got revealed by clicking a tile then, no blue orb).
I killed him and he just disappeared, no 10xp. But later that same game he appeared elsewhere, this time with 10xp, so he can move?
I fully cleared the entire board, but ended up with score 302, where normally that gives 303. I think that's related to what happened with this 0, and the guy seemingly moving.
I already beat the game to 303 before, but now I'm trying to beat it without gambling (that is no random clicks in the beginning other than the 2 blue orbs, while in earlier games I'd reveal corners in the beginning to make it much easier), and this 302 ruined it ;p
I accidentally enabled debug mode and figured out what's going on.
Whenever you click on the L0, he always teleports to an unoccupied square. Only if there is nowhere left to teleport do you get the 10XP. Since the scroll of orb uses similar mechanics to find an unoccupied square, that means it is worth using relatively early.
Incidentally, with perfect knowledge, there are at least 18 spare HP (it depends on how much XP the 1HP and 2HP walls happen to give). So theoretically you can get a score of 303 without using the last heart scroll. Without cheating the best I've done is 13 HP remaining when using the last scroll.
The only time I've got a score of 302 is when I didn't use the scroll of orb. Unlike scrolls of HP that one does seem mandatory.
Thank you for the write up. That's a lot of great information
- The highest score of 303 is obtained by killing everything on the board before killing the dragon. This includes the brick walls.
Pretty cool design, I am not sure if some boards are unsolvable or if I suck though. Some hints:
My thoughts:
The ultimate goal is to kill the dragon, which has 15 lvl, so you need 15 hp (15 lvl) to fight it.
You therefore need to get 15 lvl.
You therefore need to kill monsters.
Killing monsters doesn't give you enough exp, so you need to find healing/gold to compensate.
As you pointed out, healing scrolls heal you completely and therefore are more effective at higher lvl.
The strategy therefore, is to search the map for gold and healing, by spending as few health as possible.
The exception from this strategy, as pointed below, is gaining information (helping in the above strategy) by killing the slime mage and rat king.
--
My tips:
- if you can't find a low lvl monster before healing up, hit a wall to get your hp to 0. I think a wall on average gives you less than 3 gold, which makes it a punishment for when you didn't strategize the monster killing optimally. Of course the wall could be strategically placed, explained later.
- Prioritize hitting low lvl monsters above hitting high lvl monsters, because you want to explore as cheaply as possible.
- Prioritize hitting where a monster can be, above where it surely is. It's probably a good idea to decide where to click based on average possible lvl multiplied by the chance it is there. Calculating this could be extremely hard (it would involve statistics from the Monsternomicon for example) but estimating it is pretty simple. Obviously ask yourself a question if you want to risk death if the average is very attractive, but maximum is beyond your current hp.
- Prioritize revealing fields with possibility of monsters of the category that you almost entirely discovered; you want to remove that lvl from possible combinations. Doesn't apply to rats and slimes.
- Of course combine the three points above with prioritizing fields that give you a strategic advantage; it's tricky to explain what a strategic advantage is: for example being able to swipe from a side, so that you have two numbers, where one describes 2 fields, and other 3, so that you can derive the strength of the third...
- SUPER IMPORTANT: try to find the slime mage: the pattern is simple, he's only lvl 1 and you want to kill him as early as possible.
- IMPORTANT: likewise, you want to kill the rat king as early as possible. That's the only non-slime 5, so should be easy if you listened to the above point.
- 3-digit numbers can be thought of as two numbers XYY, where X is the number of mines, and YY is the sum of strength of monsters. The game then plays as Mamono Sweeper (BLIND mode) merged with minesweeper, you can separately try to figure where mines are and the monster distribution. The logic of both games then applies.
- Just like you know the first digit of a 3-digit number must be a number of mines, because monsters aren't strong enough to combine to 100, sometimes you can know the distribution of monsters based on possible combinations. In particular, you should be able to quickly rule out all lvl 5 monsters, and all lvl 8 monsters, so you're left with a just a few lvl 6-7. You will probably save yourself a lot of time if you don't miss the moment when all lvl 7s are revealed. I think lvl 11 hides near eyes, but lvl 10 should be easily found. Rat king rules out lvl 1, so if you hunt for bats, the number of combinations becomes very manageable.
- Once on lvl 11, you probably already won. This is the time to kill the lvl 11 guy. Before you do this, mark your mines.
- Reveal destroyed mines. No need to remove the mark.
- Spot patterns, as Monsternomicon suggests. The most important is the fuchsia slimes pattern, also lvl4 go in vertical/horizontal pairs - near the end of the game you probably can figure out where the pairs are based on detecting x+y = 8 strength, and limited number of positions where the pairs could hide.
- I didn't dare to kill the mimic, because Monsteronomicon told me to fear it.
At the end, by using the strategies described above, I killed the dragon with 3 healing scrolls left: https://i.imgur.com/0Iz2IqT.png
OK the mimic mechanic is pretty simple, it just appears as a chest once you reveal it, which is a positive thing, because it gives you a 2nd chance not to fight it if you don't have the health for it. In other words, if you see a 10+ lvl and are afraid of the mimic, you can safely click, and as long as there's no lvl 11, you will get at most lvl 7 (or 8 if you didn't discover pink slimes yet).
lvl 11 always in a corner, and you probably want to kill the eyes early. the eyes produce question marks in a radius of 2 fields, rounded down, meaning it's 2 fields horizontally and vertically, and 1 field diagonally.
In theory every board is solvable if you know where everything is.
Similar to Mamonosweeper, a 10 year old game from a japanese dev: https://hojamaka.com/game/mamono_sweeper_h2/html5/en.html (playable in html5 there).
This game was released on android at a point (and removed from the store later). It's my favorite game ever.
Searched for "mamono" to see if anyone recommended already :) One of the best minesweeper clones, maybe "Demoncrawl" is better. I have beaten all modes for Mamono back in the flash times.
Had a lot of fun with this last week, played 10-20 games. It does reach a point where you can beat every game, I found myself craving an extended version that introduces some new elements.
One gripe, the code is incredibly inefficient - my laptop fan was running full speed and battery draining fast, while the game board just sits there with no animations or anything going on. Should be basically using 0% CPU while idle.
Anyway really fun concept & execution, and great game design.
If you liked this, there's a game on steam: "Desktop dungeons". It's a more refined version and more puzzles, character classes etc https://store.steampowered.com/app/226620/Desktop_Dungeons/
Desktop Dungeons isn't this game at all. While a similar style of resource management, and a great game in it's own right, it's lacking the "minesweeper-y" exploration tactics.
It's pretty similar:
- a grid of hidden tiles containing monsters
- that you fight by clicking on
- where you balance exploration and combat
- using your HP and level-ups as resources
I'd say this game was directly inspired by Desktop Dungeons (which isn't a bad thing!)
I’d say DemonCrawl is a more likely inspiration since it is also a minesweeper variant.
Fun game! I lost a few points short of killing the dragon as I assumed it would work out that he was definitely killable if you wasted no heals. Turns out that’s false.
I can now fully clear the board very quickly. A few insights:
Since the lich is always in a corner you can guess where he is by checking just three corners. This also unlocks a free powerful spot on the map. It has strength 11 mind you.
You have to get your extra power ups early if you want enough hp to clear the board. This means you have to explore aggressively to find the gnome (10 coins) and the lich (2 coins per mine). It’s not terribly strict but you can’t waste time grinding up levels. You generally just want to explore tiles that you know won’t kill you. Don’t waste time on walls. Those are just buffer spots to help you avoid wasting heat scrolls.
The ? Blocks mean there’s a strength 5 beholder guy 2 spaces away. He obscures all tiles within a radius of 2 so it’s pretty easy to guess where he is. He’s a great target to hit because it usually lets you jump forward.
The 8 strength slimes cluster together. Might as well just leave that area alone once you find it.
Edit: 5:21 for a first attempt at an any% time
if you see the 8 slimes, they cluster in a
pattern that can be rotated where the Ss are 8 strength slimes and the L is the 1 strength lich that, when killed, reveals all 8/5 strength slimes on the map. if the pattern is obvious from what you have revealed so far, it's worth it to kill the lich to give more map knowledge. but yeah, save the 8s for leveling up late game.Quite difficult!
Form another slightly similar game, they used a trick to avoid stupid errors. When the user clicks on a monster that would kill them, the game ignores the first click. If the moron clicks again, they die. You can implement the same trick to squares marked with a red number too. (And perhaps to upgrade or hearts when you are too healthy.)
[spoiler alert]
Most of the time you have to buy knowledge in exchange of health.
Yes, I died a few times just because I miscounted my hearts by 1
I've been playing this game all week.
A few essential things you should know: 8's are only on the 2 rows/columns next to the edge. 11's are always in the corner and if you see a '?' the purple 5 point monster is 2 blocks away, which direction you'll need to figure out!
Not essential: Mice look at a specific direction for a reason. You might figure out why later
8's always surround the 1-point warlock (always on the edge) who has a scroll which reveals all the 5-point green things.
The slime scroll reveals all slimes (green and purple).
Also, 4s always come in pairs facing each other
To anyone else who's puzzled by how this could be possible to beat - after fighting an enemy, you need to click the square _again_ to collect the diamonds ("XP", I guess?) to allow you to level up.
You also don't want to level up immediately since that is a free health refill
You want to empty the health to 0 before leveling up, because any extra experience goes into the next level. For each level, heart only goes up by 1 but experience needed to level goes up by 3. You need to reach 15 to kill the dragon.
Adding some descriptions would definitely make the game easier to start with. For example the game starts with the orbs that can be clicked without danger, this could be shown or described.
Also the boxes are not dangerous, and the walls are unknown in strength.
It could help to add 0 to non-dangerous items, to make this more aligned to the rest of the numbers, or a ? for the walls.
I also struggled to understand that i survive with 0 health.
Lastly it doesnt make sense to me why the killed monsters "gold" must be gathered (clicked again). I strongly assumed i cannot have more then the slots filled with gold, only when i had to pick one up i did so and figured out i can have + gold.
Apart from the difficult part of understanding how it works, its a very nice game. But you took quite some time off the reviews i have to do for my students game design projects ;-) The ? do appear to gathered in some areas and prevented me from finding the bombs, but i was able to slay the dragon.
Also add a mute button...
edit: more detailed description
> This game is not designed to run on your device.
This would be more actionable if it revealed to me what platform the game is designed for.
Out of curiosity I tried running it anyway and it filled the viewport with rapidly flashing colored bars.
Plays fine on a desktop monitor.
The rapidly flashing colored bars is just the intro graphic while it loads.
like old school c64 games would do sometimes
There were some cases (maybe all?) where those glitchy/rainbow graphics (during load or in the border while it ran) were the program utilizing graphics RAM as program RAM during a heavy process (decompression, for instance).
This is a great and well-constructed game but the difficulty scaling is almost comically bad, like, incredibly frustrating. I would recommend adding a tutorial level and some easier difficulty settings. Then the game would at least have the appearance that it is winnable.
Edit: Final score 195 in about a thousand tries. It was the catchy soundtrack that kept me going.
After playing a few rounds (or studying the board after dieing) there are a few patterns you can notice, like how the 8s are placed, where the slime revealer guy is, where the wizard thing is, etc.
It seems solvable for me (303 score) without risk about a third of the time. You can also cheat a little by clicking randomly a few times and restarting until you get a good start.
The music develops a bit after you win and is worth waiting to hear, IMO.
Took me 3-4 attempts to work out a strategy and then a couple more to get the first win. Have since had a few more wins. Great little game.
Amusingly, if you get a 16th (and 17th) heart, the Monsternomicon slides across to the left side of the interface to accommodate it.
It's more difficult if you try to tackle the monsters head on. If you instead focus on finding clear spaces to unlock the scrolls, and maximize your HP usage (kill 5hp worth when you have 5hp, immediately level up at zero, repeat) it's relatively moderate in difficulty.
The comparison with the original minesweeper is a little bit unfavorable. That's a game that you can win more consistently with skill rather than luck until you crank up the number of mines to an excessive level. This game is punishingly difficult without near perfect play and extreme luck, while containing almost no instructions.
I feel like I'm grokking the rules after a couple of runthroughs and a peek at the help page (the button on the bottom right). I'm liking the idea of this game but need to make better use of the monster counts that you see in the help page - mostly because a 100+ score will usually mean exactly on 100 level mine, so can be treated as "there is an adjacent mine" rather than "there are 100 points of monsters adjacent.
Two things bother me though.
The thing that I continue to find most confusing is that sometimes a square has a question mark instead of a number. From looking at boards after I lose there does not appear any pattern to this.
The other thing that's strange is the "wall" squares -- seems like a wall can take a couple of hits to break, you can't die from a wall, and you seem to get damage each time you hit it and an arbitrary amount of gold from breaking it. Does anyone have any better ideas on how these work?
A slight spoiler, but there's a reason why some spaces are '?' - they hint that one specific type of creature may be nearby. (Think of the one that looks like a Beholder from D&D).
For the walls - think of them as an HP sink. The game largely revolves around using your health as efficiently as possible to explore the board. Walls are useful since you can attack them 1 HP at a time to get the XP out of them (thus allowing you to always fully use your allotment before refilling your health).
> The thing that I continue to find most confusing is that sometimes a square has a question mark instead of a number. From looking at boards after I lose there does not appear any pattern to this.
It took me a second to figure this out, too. Here's a couple hints (base64 encoded to prevent spoilers for other folks:
Hint: QXQgdGhlIGRlYXRoIHNjcmVlbiwgdGFrZSBhIGNhcmVmdWwgbG9vayBhdCB3aGF0J3MgKipuZWFyYnkqKiB0aGUgcXVlc3Rpb24tbWFyayBzcXVhcmVzCg==
Answer: VGhlIGdhemVyIGVuZW15IG1ha2VzIGFkamFjZW50IHNxdWFyZXMgc2hvdyBhID8uIFRoaXMgZWZmZWN0IGV4dGVuZHMgcGFzdCB3YWxscyBhcyB3ZWxsLgo=
See my comment above. After I learned a few essentials that are not mentioned the game became very reasonable and more enjoyable
At the end credits it says inspired by https://hojamaka.com/games/mamono_sweeper which is also a fun game on its own :)
This seems to kind of work on mobile, except the right half of the game board is cut off, making it unfinishable despite playable.
Everything else works, but like 3-4 columns of tiles missing on the right and a purple book at the bottom which is visible in the screenshot.
So seems like just some fix needed to avoid that cut-off in the right an it should work properly on mobile.
I tried both chrome and firefox on android, with and without desktop mode, with and without horizontal orientation. Always exactly same cutoff problem. I have no idea what creates this problem so consistently in 2 different browsers in desktop mode.
If it worked on mobile, it would eat my day alive. For such a fantastically designed game, I’m shocked at this misstep. It’d popularity would explode with a working mobile version.
Agree, it's a genius game design! Played it in pc now but long for playing it anywhere!
Got a game with score 299, really want one with above 300 and everything maxed :)
Works on Firefox on mobile, if you request the desktop version and change the zoom on the page to 50%
Found that it works on Firefox on mobile, if you request the desktop version and change the zoom to 50% . does anybody have a better option for mobile?
Firefox refuses to zoom out for me on mobile (Android), even with the accessibility setting to allow zoom enabled (that setting is about zooming in though). How do you force mobile FF to zoom out?
A big improvement would be showing how many box numbers you marked, visible and left in the help screen to help you with your guesses. It only shows how many left
This is such a fun game! Once I got used to it, it felt a lot like a very careful dungeon crawl.
[Spoiler]
Extra experience points go into the next level up, so it is better to empty the hearts before leveling up.
I block HTML5 canvas reading in Floorp, which screwed up the book. Normally I can disable it but no dice here.
I had to set the player hp to 1 million so I could just click the dragon and set myself free.
I have find that those workarounds are as rewarding as just closing the game.
If you really want to cheat your way through, pressing D toggles debug mode which reveals all locations.
Good way to get ahead in Paperclips.
Very much like Desktop Dungeons, which is high praise in my mind.
Excellent work! I think a lot of the feedback here is well intentioned but not from people as used to the turn-based space.
Really enjoying this. Thanks
Runs instantly on my phone but is cropped and unplayable
Does not run in edge/Firefox/chrome on my windows 11 laptop. Just rapidly changing colored bars forever.
I have gotten good enough to solve the map every time, but still can't seem to get enough XP to reach level 15...
I haven't been able to figure out what the ? in squares mean.
A gazer nearby.
of course the run where i waste the starting heal spell is the run I win
You pretty much always have to waste the starting spell. Your first 5HP worth of attacks is rarely going to give you enough information to deduce a path, so you'll need that sound 6HP to try to find another scroll.
You can't waste any heals if you want to clear the board.
I cleared the board multiple times using the exact tactic I outlined.
Wasting it is the same as just keeping it unused forever, the other use for heal spells.
Fun game, would fit well on mobile. The mark mechanic might be the trickiest thing to translate over, maybe tap and hold to bring up a numpad sort of interface? I'd drop a couple bucks on it.
What does marking a square with different numbers (or an X) mean?
The numbers on explored spaces show the total level of monsters in the 8 spaces around it. Mark squares with numbers to remind yourself what level of monster is on that space (using deduction). Later you'll come back and defeat monsters of specific levels, because you want to get to exactly 0 HP before you level up.
Okay; I wish I could mark up to 11.
There is only one 11-strength enemy and it's always in a corner of the board, so it's not strictly necessary to mark it.
Oh, I never noticed it was always in the corner; that really reduces the luck needed, as finding the 11 as soon as you can kill it makes the game a lot easier.
Huh, I thought I played perfectly, but when I cleared the board (aside from the dragon), I had only 14 hearts left.
What device are you playing on? I have accidentally figured out that playing in a narrow browser window hides the right side of the board without any hint it is there (except for the health bar being cut mid-heart - I have initially thought remembering whether you already have 15 hearts or not was part of the game process). This partially visible/explored board might be the reason you did not get enough resources for lvlup
I played later, still I thought perfectly, but was 4-5 hearts short. Then I played again and cleared the board with 2 hearts to spare, and another time with 1 to spare. I've scored 303 and 302 points. It might be possible to score higher by getting really lucky.
I think it's about delaying using the heart-healup as long as possible. Use them at later levels, not earlier levels, whenever possible.
Gotta get the gnome and mines earlier in the game to get more juice out of the hearts
The rat scroll removes points from the board (replaces monsters with 1hp rats).
The rat scroll reveals rats.
As you find rats, they are facing towards the rat king, which helps you locate it, get the scroll, and reveal cheap kills.
Does it? I thought it just revealed the rats
Huh, now I have to check.
There is a comment in the help book about observing patterns at the death screen. Has anyone figured out what that means?
There are a couple of mechanics that can only be observed on a fully visible board (the death screen), such as the purple slime mage who is level 1 but is always surrounded by level 8 tiles or the basilisk that marks number tiles with a ? in a diamond shape.
Minor correction: it's a beholder, not a basilisk. Look them up, they're adorable.
One pattern is that all the 8s are always clustered around a single edge space that contains a level 1 wizard thing. I don't know if there are other patterns, none popped up immediately.
Rats always look at their king.
Other than what sibling comments said, the 11-strength enemy that drops the powerup to kill all mines is always in a corner of the board.
Is there a way to download it? It would be nice to decide to play even while offline.
This is a lovely little game, nice work.
This is really fun.
AAA indie game :)
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