Minefield Fractalis

I've been an avid Minesweeper player for many years and consider myself fairly adequate. I've seen many good clones of the game. Unfortunately, this is not one of them. It claims to eliminate the guessing element by allowing you to search below the top layer. But there is an important exception to that rule. You must acquire Phase Walkers to stabilize your air supply for this task, or else you will lose armor. You begin each game with three points of armour. There was another game that I recommended called "MineDeeper" that successfully used the same principle of digging below the top layer to get around the 50/50 guesswork of Minesweeper. Phase Walkers appear on the map as random glyphs that you must collect. The game never informs you how many of these you have collected, and in some challenges, you need to acquire a certain number of them to pass the level. For example, I was stuck on the third challenge for Mars, where you must stabilize ten or more Phase Walkers. I was unsuccessful since clicking on a Phase Walker glyph opens up a new layer below the surface. The two areas below the top surface are very tiny, and it's very easy to click a mine by accident. Unless you are ve…

For a puzzle game, there’s a purpose behind your actions. It’s still all very basic stuff, since you’re scanning planets in search of materials, but you can read a few lines in the terminal. You’ll go through around 10 systems, each with several planets, starting on Earth and in the Solar System. Although planets or puzzles within a system are played out of order, which means you might start on the third Earth puzzle instead of the first Mercury puzzle, there’s still a more or less linear progression because solving one planet unlocks another, and in some cases you get two or three. Access to other systems becomes available when you beat the required planet, which is always indicated on a locked planet or system. The main mechanic is the same as classic Minesweeper. You have a grid on which you click tiles and look for threats. Clicking a safe tile reveals a number that tells you how many threats surround it. Clicking a threat, however, takes away one point of armor. The armor system is great because it fixes Minesweeper’s main problem: failing a puzzle due to situations where you’re forced to guess. But there’s a twist. Threats aren’t mines but passages that send you deeper int…

Even this game is playable, lack of explanation of any game mechanic (such as recursive, game interface...) makes this game very hard to pick up.