Minefield

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1, Online Leaderboards

.

Review:

(Note: This game is included in the All In! Bundle, along with Alchemist’s Castle, Awakening of Cthulhu, Color.Motif Deluxe, Drift Racing Madness, Soccer Pinball, and World of Riders.)

Minefield is a Puzzle game that’s clearly based on the classic PC Puzzle game Minesweeper, where players are clicking on a grid of squares to reveal numbers that hint at where bombs are so that players can mark them. I should note that this game appears to have been listed on the eShop twice, by two different publishers – one version published by Kodobur Yazilim, and another by Vertical Reach. As far as I can tell, no matter which version you buy, you get the same game, even though one retails for $1, and the other retails for $4.50. It’s… pretty strange, actually.

The visuals in this game are technically good, but ill-conceived in multiple ways. The grid of squares you’re working with are actually rendered using fully 3D blocks that shift and move as you select them… however, this movement is distracting, and the darker color of these blocks can make it difficult to see the numbers on their face. This grid is in front of one of eight selectable images, which is nice… though the energetic music that plays during the gameplay clashes horribly with the mostly-serene images.

Also, I have to point out something that really struck me as poor taste here. One of the selectable backgrounds here is a 9/11 themed background. In a game about bombs and explosions. Yeah. To the game’s credit, it’s a 9/11 remembrance background, and just depicts a black and white version of New York (no shots of the two towers specifically), but even so, the use of it here seems really tone-deaf.

The gameplay here is mostly pretty decent, standard fare for Minesweeper (save for the issues caused by the presentation), though I will say that this version of the game doesn’t allow you to click on a completed cel to clear surrounding cels, a nice quality-of-life feature that Minesweeper games often include. Also, it bears mention that this game does not support touchscreen controls, despite the touchscreen being pretty ideally-suited to this style of game.

In the end, Minefield is a fairly competent version of Minesweeper, but it’s missing a pretty common feature, and the gameplay is marred a bit by a presentation that’s not only all over the place and distracting, but that actually makes it hard to see vital information you need to play. For $1, this is decent, but it definitely needed a little work before release, and preferably an outside opinion to comment on some of the questionable choices made here.

tl;dr – Minefield is a mostly-decent version of the classic Puzzle game Minesweeper, but it lacks a few basic features like quick-clearing around a cel and touchscreen, and the presentation is not only distracting, it actually makes it more difficult to see the gameplay. For $1, it’s not terrible, but it’s definitely not without its problems.

Grade: C-

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}