Sorry your browser is not supported!

Current High score: 140,992 Uncle Sam

Demo 1 Is Now Available - 8/2/2009
http://www.mediafire.com/?gki4dzwjdxd

SpeedSweeper is a little mini game I'm making based on MineSweeper. It is basically the same concept, only it's 3D, and it's color based. Even more so than that, you get high scores by clicking more quickly, or by dragging the mouse over squares. This scores much more than simply clicking each square one at a time.

New Shot:



Here's an old shot of a top-down view of a field partially solved. As you can see, red means there's a mine in the next square, orange two squares away, and so on and so forth:



Side view:



Completed field:



I'm trying to decide what to add to make it even better. Any ideas?

Flagging mines? Maybe have a black flag you can place so you don't accidentally click one later on.

Maybe a wee bit of texture, and a backdrop. Though it looks nice just as it is too.

I have an idea...

You have a guy walking across the minefield with your colour approach. You can tell him to walk as many squares as you like by clicking there. But 1 square is only like 10 points, but 5 squares forward could be 100 points. Make the guy travel quite a distance, and give him things to collect on the way. Tread on a mine, and game over, but the colours give you a guide. Have energy cannisters so that a player cannot just take 1 step every time, else runs out of energy.

I love the original take on the appearance! Will definitely download when it becomes available.

I also enjoy Pincho's idea, that could make for a really fun little game

Thanks guys, and thanks for the suggestions. Pincho, that idea actually sounds pretty good, and I will think about a way to implement it, perhaps at least partially.

I may put up a demo of what I have soon actually, so I can get more input.

Demo 1 Is now available!
http://www.mediafire.com/?gki4dzwjdxd

My high score is 140,992! I challenge anyone to beat it!

New Shot:

Looking good! Downloading...

This is quite fun. I thought i'd completed the puzzle, but got no message. I'll have another go. Got about 125k points.

Maybe you could have sometihng displaying the numbers of mines remaining, and have the right mouse button flag squares.

My high-score is 136500.

BTW, you need to make the squares farther apart. Without anti-aliasing it's a mess of lines.

Fun game. This is my best score, though I didn't actually win in the end (my best when I won was somewhere in the region of 130000); and here's a vid (to see if I could highlight anything that was up, which I couldn't really, but it serves well as a demo anyway).

One thing though:


Can't tell if it's a red or a bomb. In that particular play, it was a bomb . Keeping bombs away from the very edge would stop that happening, but then again when it's just a single bomb on the edge those are easily found, so just looking out for two next to each other at the edge would be the best solution.

One more minor thing is that the 3D-ness means that blocks furthest from the centre of the screen can get partially obscured by other taller ones. You could fiddle with the FOV if you want to fix that, or maybe implement a moving, zooming camera. On that note, a good way to move this from here would be adjustable-size maps, challenges, scenarios (like, imagine you had to divert a river through the map by carefully making paths and exploding specific bits and... IDK), things like that.

Great fun, aesthetically pleasing and pleasant use of sound, etc.

Edit: 139878

nice sweeper some thoughts:

after a few times through, my hand went numb from holding the mouse button down (i need a new wrist-rest...). while i don't think having the selector on full time is practical for normal game play (it's difficulty is just about right as-is), i do think it would make for a serious challenge (read as terribly dangerous, advanced-mode type of gameplay).

more on the current difficulty level:
mines that are connected/in immediate or very close proximity to one another should be part of later stages, in my opinion. i know you haven't implemented a level progression format yet, but "food for thought"...

since i'm on the subject, adding optional keyboard controls might prove worthy, though you'd probably have to switch to a 3d mouse/selector arrow or something. alas, this could open up more gameplay possibilities in things such as full camera rotation (relying less on an imperfect pick object command), and maybe even a first- or 3rd-person perspective.

since this is a 3d minesweeper clone, i'd (also) suggest adding "more" to set it apart from the standard 2d version, a la pincho's ideas. while playing, it reminded me of the many 3d mahjong games out there and i think this would do well to mimic the various tile layouts (and add a simple level maker so we can offer up even more layouts, increasing the game's replay value).
and, how about having random (non-"mine") blocks "fall" out of sight (or revert to "undiscovered") in some of the final stages? maybe add an enemy on the map that wanders around causing this? (maybe this adds a 2-player option? or a campagn mode, complete with storyline?! )

final thoughts:
as mentioned, i'd spice it up a bit. textures, flags, a pointer graphic... maybe some special effects for combos (which i still haven't come to quite understand yet... i'm assuming it's time span between correct choices? the combo indicator pretty much flashes constantly without any real indication as to why, from what i saw). with the speed theme, how about a count-down timer to increase our sense of urgency? maybe use that on a "bonus level/challenge" opportunity every 5-10 levels completed? and, standards such as a high score table and a "level of difficulty" setting would be nice.

as you can see, you've got my attention here good stuff!

add: i decided to record gameplay. note that it sometimes skips over boxes when racing back and forth at higher speeds. this only happened while recording. it's funny to go back and watch the video; you can see my train of thought throughout. see how i started to "get in the groove @ ~0:15, my strategies to achieve warp speed, and indecision encountered as i (as most geeks do) "think with the mouse" (those last few squares were a high-speed nightmare, and i made the final decision more difficult than it needed to be no guts, no glory!) thanks again, uncle sam!

btw, are you using:

? i thought i heard the tell-tale "buzz" once or twice when a sound is re-played before the previous instance is complete.

Wow guys. All I can say is thanks for taking the time to give me sooooo much input. The videos were funny (especially the ends) and fun to watch.

Now with all these ideas I don't know where to start! Just so you know, I read all of your suggestions, I just can't reply to each and every one of them. I will definitely consider them.



Actually, I did before. I took it away because it wasn't beeping fast enough with it. I think I can fix this by shortening the sound file though, and then putting that code back.

Wow, now I'm so inspired to add lots of new stuff! Maybe I could even add online support for two players, as you suggested, Virtual Nomad.

Here's something I was playing with. Maybe this effect could be used for later levels because it makes it harder to concentrate:

This game is sooooo addicting! I can't seem to get past 138,000.

Hahaha, glad you like it. You have to be blazing fast to get over 140k.