Timesweeper
Minesweeper, except the mines can move!
A short puzzle game prototype made for Thinky Puzzle Jam 3. Estimated play time: 10-20 minutes
How to Play
- Left click to reveal tiles
- Right click to flag mines
- Ctrl to toggle tile highlighting
- Q/E to advance the timeline left/right
- Complete all time steps to finish a level
Developer Notes
- Fullscreen / Download recommended
- Warning: progress is not saved! (Sorry, I ran out of time)
Also: feedback is welcome! This is my first attempt at such a logic-heavy puzzle game, and I'm planning on continuing development, so if there's any thoughts about the game I would love to hear them.
Download
Development log
- Update v1.2: Small Bug FixJul 10, 2023
- Update v1.1: Level Reset ButtonJul 10, 2023
Comments
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Wish there was auto-open for when they're all zeros, but the level size is too small and makes it too easy, I guess?
This was a delightful little snack of a puzzle game. Thanks so much for making it.
Had I known that all the mines always moved, I would have used that for solving. I don't know how I feel about the fact that that wasn't made clear... but the puzzles weren't all that hard one way or the other, and in a full-fledged version you could make use of that behavior.
My only real "issues" with it are exactly what you'd expect from someone who's played Tametsi: in a full-featured version of the game, I'd want basically all of Tametsi's functionality. Autocomplete with a click, the ability to doodle notes on the grid, a countdown option, etc. None of that is important for a game jam version, of course! This felt perfectly complete as-is. But Tametsi done spoiled me.
Thanks again! So good.
[EDIT: Just wanted to note that I got here thanks to the thanks in the credits of "14 Minesweeper Variants 2," in case that's useful information for you.]
This inspired bridge in 14mv2.
Hello,
This game is fantastic! As a huge fan of logic puzzles (I think I have played them ALL) this brings a fresh set of logic to the genre and is ever so satisfying. Please please please continue developing this into a full product.
Thank you so much for your feedback!!
As a huge logic puzzle fan myself, my main motivation for making the game was because I really just wanted to play more of my favorite games - so I’m just thrilled to hear that you think this project has potential!! And I definitely have so many cool ideas that I had to cut for the jam (looping and branching timelines, “parallel universes”, etc) which I’m planning to implement in the future. So truly, thank you so much for your encouragement!
Nice concept!
I'm suspicious of the uniqueness of the solution to the middle layer of "Ships Pass", but I'm probably missing something. Cool game.
I’m pretty confident about the uniqueness of that one - though the confusion might stem from that puzzle making heavy use of the number of mines remaining as a core clue, and also relies on the player figuring out that…
(Spoiler - Puzzle Logic)
...if a tile is '0'/blank, it can't contain a mine on adjacent timeline layers.In any case, thank you so much for the feedback, and glad you liked the game!
Very cool, I enjoyed it a lot.
i think it broke, i can't undo the right click
Oh no, sorry that happened! Do you mind sharing what platform or browser you were playing on so I can investigate what might have caused that particular bug?
I am on Chrome. 114.0.5735.199
Unfortunately I don't really know why the flag got stuck on screen. I did place an excessive number of flags down, making the mine count go negative, but for all I know I did some weird finger stricking which made the two actions happen at the same time.
Could you add a full puzzle reset button in case these things happen?
Thank you for the additional info - and that's a great suggestion! I'll see if I can get that implemented and uploaded in the next day or two :)
Ohhh I figured it out. It happens if a zero tile auto-clears a falsely flagged tile.
That is incredibly helpful - thank you so much for figuring out how to reproduce that!!
In level one, the mine at b3+3 (middle, bottom, last time step) moves diagonally, and I didn't think that was possible?
That's intended! I probably should have found some way to word it better in the tutorial, but mines can move to any adjacent/neighboring tile (so any tile that changes color while the highlight toggle is activated is fair game)
Love it! Took me a while to realize that every mine always moves on every time step, since the tutorial made it seem like they could move or stay put.
I think it'd be really cool to see the mines' movement animated somehow as you scroll between solved time steps. So once you've beaten a level, you can scroll back through it and see that the movements really are what you've solved them to be.
I'm glad you liked it!! And the mines always / sometimes moving was definitely a design decision I went back and forth on for some time - I definitely made sure that every puzzle was solvable under the assumption that each mine may stay still, but I definitely found that it was more fun to design/play levels where the mines moved every step.
And animating the timeline is definitely a feature that I'd like to implement - especially since I have some ideas for levels where the timeline forms an infinite loop, and I feel those levels would be especially cool to see animated.
Thank you so much for your feedback!