Few games have made us swear at the screen as much as the traditional Minesweeper. Revealing the field one click at a time, flagging mines, and proceeding carefully only to lose at the final 50/50 is a very particular experience. Now, what could be worse than that? Simple: imagine the field turned into a dungeon full of monsters, and with a nearly invincible dragon as the boss battle. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to guide the knight Jorge, manage his health, and help him gain experience. The game is called Dragonsweeper, and the first thing to die will be your productivity.
Unlike the original Minesweeper, Dragonsweeper is not so stingy with the information it presents to the player. Every game starts the same way: with the dragon's precise location, and an orb/eye that reveals part of the map around it. The book in the bottom-right corner contains everything we need to know about the monsters, from the exact count to their combat power. And on the other side... Jorge. Warrior, knight, improvised hero.
Dragonsweeper: "Jorge and the Dragon"
Jorge has two stats: health (in the form of hearts) and experience points (represented as gems). Every time Jorge attacks a monster, he loses an amount of health equivalent to its power. For example, bats have a power of 2, and upon defeating them, Jorge will consume two hearts. However, with that victory he receives two experience gems in return, which will later help him level up. If Jorge doesn't have enough hearts to attack a monster, he will lose the encounter and the game will come to an end, but there is another important detail: Jorge can be "reduced to zero" and recover health with one of the power-ups on the map, or by leveling up.
This is the essence of Dragonsweeper: in addition to exploring, fighting monsters, and avoiding traps, we must strike a very delicate balance between Jorge's health, the desire to attack, and the experience points accumulated to keep advancing. As if that weren't enough, the dragon is not alone: the map hides some mini-bosses, starting with the Rat King (power 5, reveals the presence of rats), the Mine King (power 10, defeating him detonates all mines present), and a Mimic, which we can only recognize by its unusual 11 power points.
To finish, the most obvious thing: Dragonsweeper has a very small tolerance for errors. The only way to defeat the dragon is to accumulate enough experience to get thirteen hearts... and survive everything else in the process. If we have to talk about "allies", the hearts (which restore health) stand out, as do the unnumbered cells, which register no threats around them. My recommendation? Don't neglect exploration. Destroying enemies like crazy is very tempting, but sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.
Dragonsweeper is a creation of Daniel Benmergui and Hernán Rozenwasser, with the collaboration of several developers. Link below!
Official site: Click here
Source: Ars Technica
