By Kieron Gillen on May 24th, 2010 at 11:27 pm.
Catching up with recent indie-games, and hit up on Mamono Sweeper which Indie Games discovered and forwarded to us by the bad-damage-dice-for-a-monster-to-have d32. It’s a simple one: minesweeper meets an RPG. You level up by killing monsters. The numbers are the total number of monster levels adjacent to the square. Pick fights with monsters of your level or below not to lose HP and gain XP, so leveling up and allowing you to take on bigger monsters. Play here. There’s also a harder version available here. Pure game design. Love it.
24/05/2010 at 23:41 Tom-INH says:
See also Cluesweeper, linked from the excellent Play This Thing, a cross between Cluedo (or Clue, for Americans) and Minesweeper in reverse, where your aim is to find all the clues in a grid and use them to determine which of the suspects committed the murder.
24/05/2010 at 23:56 Tom-INH says:
Also, that is great fun. One question though, what does the NE number mean?
24/05/2010 at 23:58 Tom-INH says:
D’oh, I’ve figured it out now, it’s the experience needed to level up.
25/05/2010 at 09:24 HexagonalBolts says:
And what does ‘Mamano’ mean???
25/05/2010 at 09:24 HexagonalBolts says:
*Mamono
25/05/2010 at 11:00 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
I think “mamono” means monster. As in the RPG generic enemy kind of “monster.”
25/05/2010 at 00:20 Bhazor says:
From what little I’ve played I’m not too impressed. The best puzzle rpg I’ve played recently is Knight Fall. A remarkably polished “Puzzle Quest With A Twist” style game. Really it’s joy hampered only by my sheer ineptitude in working out how to turn the board the way I want.
http://armorgames.com/play/3273/knightfall
25/05/2010 at 00:21 Peter Radiator Full Pig says:
Am, minesweeper meets RPG is actually called Desktop Dungeon, and it rocks.
Though ill also play this.
25/05/2010 at 03:28 Bret says:
They kinda covered that already.
Beat the easier one, eventually. Fun.
25/05/2010 at 00:24 airtekh says:
Beat it with 1HP to spare. Phew!
25/05/2010 at 00:43 Sagan says:
This is pretty good. Took me a while to get used to it, because I kept going back to Minesweeper way of thinking. And while it is possible to go about this as if it was Minesweeper, that is actually not the optimal way to play it.
25/05/2010 at 02:17 Mario Figueiredo says:
Very smart. I liked it. And it’s a bit addicting.
25/05/2010 at 02:24 Mad Doc MacRae says:
It took me a distressingly long time to figure out that I was supposed to click the monsters because there’s no right-click flag-placing. It’s pretty fun though. Beat the easier one with a really long time thing and maybe 4 HP left.
25/05/2010 at 06:40 Agrajag says:
I wonder if everybody start playing this game by clicking at the bottom middle part of the game area.
25/05/2010 at 06:55 drewski says:
Extreme one is too extreme for me.
25/05/2010 at 08:42 Chiller says:
A lot like Desktop Dungeons in that you need luck to survive past the first 2 levels. Not bad overall, but I wish there was a way to increase the grid size (too small! my eyes!)
25/05/2010 at 14:56 d32 says:
Ctrl + wheel up in most browsers. Or whatever shortcut for zoom-in.
25/05/2010 at 09:50 Bowlby says:
Shake-shake-shake the room?
25/05/2010 at 10:05 Hmm.-Hmm. says:
Hmm. Didn’t even notice you could click the monsters the first time ’round I finished a game. But in some cases I prefer to see the monsters anyway.
25/05/2010 at 10:44 Jarmo says:
From Akemi’s Anime World Anime Fan’s Dictionary Reference:
mamono
Monster; ghost; specter; spirit; demon.
Mamono is broader than any of the possible English translations, covering both physical and spectral supernatural creatures. Synonym: bakemono, youkai
25/05/2010 at 12:26 Amqz says:
I wouldn’t say that this is a very well designed game, as it lacked a yellow smiley face.
25/05/2010 at 12:48 Thomas Lawrence says:
If you’re finding the grid too small, depending on your browser you may be able to make it bigger – try CTRL + a few times, which works for me on Chrome.
25/05/2010 at 15:30 Riztro says:
Great, now I need to track down Nextwave and read it again. And, of course, try the game.
25/05/2010 at 23:07 Bret says:
Honestly, who doesn’t need to read Nextwave again?
Nobody worth mentioning.
25/05/2010 at 17:48 LukeE says:
It sounds a lot better than it actually is.
25/05/2010 at 21:55 TenjouUtena says:
Meh. Once you figure out the strategy, it’s all luck on the board. Even the extreme version just puts you more at prey of the RNG. Would be a lot better if you could mark suspected monster locations as value, but even then….
I think I might perceive the game better without the RPG overlay onto it.
25/05/2010 at 22:57 Mischa says:
You CAN mark suspected monster values. In a previous version (yesterday) you had to use the spacebar to do it, but currently it seems to work with the right/left arrow keys.
Makes solving it a lot less tedious.
Also remember that you can click on a ‘beaten’ monster to show the level of the monsters around it.
I found that after getting a succesfull six or so mouseclicks at the start, the game can usually be beaten, even the extreme version. That is a better win ratio than minesweeper… (Especially since minesweeper’s problems are usually at the very end, having to make a 50/50 guess.)
25/05/2010 at 23:48 drewski says:
The huge map is awesome.
If you can get started, much like in Minesweeper, you can usually get fairly far. And, unlike Minesweeper, once you get into the middle game, you should never really have a 50/50 blind chance.
26/05/2010 at 00:18 mipiro says:
487 seconds is my pb. Some tips:
You can click on the monsters to see the total level of the monsters around it.
You can mark boxes with with a number using A/D or eft/right arrow.
If you have full health at lvl 3, you can pick a lvl 4 and lvl 5 monster and you’ll still have 1 hp, this’ll let you advance faster.
26/05/2010 at 03:55 LintMan says:
I like it a lot. I love that after the few initial starting picks, it’s just pure logic and reasoning to solve it. I used to have a bit of a Minesweeper obsession, and this does it one better by removing most of the likelihood of solving the entire thing except for a few squres at the end you’re forced to guess at.
If this had more RPG elements, it’d be pretty addictive, I think. Desktop Dungeon felt way too much like Solitaire to me in that luck and starting position is the major factor. Puzzle Quest was fun, but I’m really burned out on match-n sliding tile type games.
26/05/2010 at 08:12 drewski says:
soooo very very addictive