Minesweeper Deluxe has just been released!

Ok so I don't get it at all. Could you please explain what the different sounds and all the jargon means. I mean, I'm guessing when it says empty at 1 1 etc, there are no mines there, but beyond that, I'm a bit stuck.

How does one mark/flag a bomb?

unfortunately the game just makes no sense whatsoever to me, so I deleted it. Hopefully others will have more joy with it than I did.

Hey John,

Thanks for the tip!

As someone who used to play this game years ago when I had better vision, I have to say that I’m a bit disappointed with the current implementation.

The game mechanics are fine, but the levels are not getting harder as advertised. I’m already past level 60, and if anything they are getting easier, not harder.

The problem is that the number of mines is growing too slowly relative to the size of the board. The first level had 3 mines in a 7 by 7 grid, or about 6% of the total area of the board. Now I’m up to 11 mines in a 22 by 22 grid, which is only about 2% coverage. There’s a huge amount of empty space, the mines are easily found without having to do much logical thinking, and sometimes a level is cleared immediately after starting because there are no spaces left to clear after the initial sweep. For me the 7 by 7 level was harder than what I’m getting now, where the only challenge is searching through all the empty space looking for the one or two spots where I actually have to do something.

Of course, it’s been ages since I last played Minesweeper, but I’m pretty sure there should be more than 11 mines in a grid that has 484 spaces in it. I think, therefore, that the level progression needs to be reworked so that higher levels actually present more of a challenge. I’m not sure what the best approach would be, but the current system doesn’t work, at least through the first 60 levels.

I got the game yesterday, and have a thought on how to change the difficulty. When the game starts, let's say after you have completed 10 levels to get the idea of the game, you are presented with two fields into which you can enter numbers. The first would be the grid. If you enter 10, it would be a 10 by 10 grid. The second number field would be the number of mines you want to have planted. There would also be a "random" button that gives you a random level of difficulty. I am having fun with this game, and thank you for providing it. Also, I feel that it is priced fairly. Also, thank you Anonymouse, for the podcast.

For starters, let me just say that I was lucky enough to get a promo code from Anonymouse after listening to this month's AppleVis Unleashed podcast and I am finding myself playing this old classic more and more.

Recently though, I have encountered a small glitch and was hoping that others were also encountering this same glitch.

As suggested by Thomas, when playing, I set the rotor to Vertical Navigation, which makes playing and getting a visual idea of the board a lot easier. When swiping down to Row #2, if I swipe down once again, focus is brought to the top of the window, on the Level #. I don't recall experiencing this in earlier levels. Perhaps this was introduced in the recent update from today?

I'm curious to know if others are also encountering this little glitch.

Either then that, wonderful game. Now one little suggestion, before I forget. When trying to sweep and flag the mines, if you accidentally tap on a mine, not sure if the original game on Windows used to do this, but is it necessary to go down one level?

Thanks!

Thanks for the tip, but I already had that setting turned off. I think it has something to do with the higher the level you get, the more columns and rows are on screen and that perhaps, visually, those additional columns and rows are hidden, not sure.

I seemed to have fix it for now, by changing the tile size down to 1. A small suggestion to the developper, when opening up the games options, when selecting to change the colour or adjusting the tile size, it would be nice if the game options window doesn't close each time you select an option. I know it's nothing major, but having to go back to the game options each time I adjusted the tile size by 1, was a little annoying.

Either then that, I am definitely loving the game so far. Brings me back to the good old days on Windows 3.1 and how many hours I spent playing Minesweeper, Solitaire and even Taipei.

I looked up what the difficulty levels are in the Windows version of Minesweeper. They are:

Beginner = 10 mines in a 9 by 9 grid (12% coverage)
Intermediate = 40 mines in a 16 by 16 grid (16% coverage)
Expert = 99 mines in a 30 by 16 grid (21% coverage)

I never liked the expert level, because at that setting there were too many cases where you had to guess to proceed, because there wasn’t enough information to deduce the mine locations logically. I think I played the intermediate level most often, at least when playing the Windows version of the game. There was actually a Mac clone of Minesweeper which I liked better than the Microsoft version, but I don’t remember what it was I preferred about the Mac version.

It would also be nice if I could put an upper limit on the board size. I am finding that VoiceOver acts sluggishly on my iPad Mini 4 when the board is larger than 20 by 20 or so (forget exactly when it started slowing down).

I should also comment about vertical navigation, since an earlier comment was encountering a glitch with it. The problem is that vertical navigation does not scroll the screen, whereas swiping left and right will scroll the screen if necessary. So, if the element you are focused on is at the bottom, and you swipe down, nothing will happen, or you will end up on an element that’s outside the playing area.

I actually have scrolling turned on in the game settings. In that mode, I can double-tap on any exposed square and have it moved to the center of the screen. So, if I want to move down and the vertical navigation won’t let me, I can just double-tap somewhere to have the screen scroll, then try swiping down again. So far this has always worked for me, but your mileage may vary (I am on an iPad, after all).

Just got the new version of the app, and the difficulty is much improved now. I had to reset to level 1, because the level I left off at was insane (more than 50% I believe). The lower levels play much more like the game I remember from my childhood.

If you’re wondering about how high the percent coverage of mines should be, perhaps this page can assist:

http://www.minesweeper.info/CustomWorldRanking.html

That shows world records based on the maximum number of mines solved at various board sizes. For the smaller sizes some were able to solve puzzles with more than 50% coverage, but for the larger sizes the maximum percentage drops to around 30% or so. The higher the percentage, the more the game relies on chance and the less you can solve with logic. I remember how much trouble I had at the expert level, with 21% coverage, and I can only imagine how it would be like to play a board even more dense than that, but apparently some people have.

In the earlier update, I was thinking the game was too easy as well, but that has definitely been fixed. I too had to restart the game from Level 1, because Level 46 was pure madness. I was almost always finding a mine in the first couple of moves. I'm back up to level 11 though, and the game is already a lot more challenging. It's also worth the asking price

how do i change difficulty in the latest version?

Nice work on this game. Got a gift card for a birthday present today and I got this game because I love games where I actually need to think and concentrate. A detail I really love is that I don't actually have to go back to level one after failing. I have one request and it is for a place where I can see what my highest level is. Think I have reached level seven.

You cannot change the difficulty. It gets harder each level.

What does the scrolling option in the main menu mean?