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devin 5 hours ago [-]
So good.
Maybe lean into some of the metal gear solid dialogue by having a long back and forth about "What's a mine?" "What do you mean 'mark a mine'?" "How do I know when I'm done?" etc.
mkobit 5 hours ago [-]
I really enjoy this trope. The "Zelda Ocarina of Time if it were a modern game" series has the MGS style discussion, and the whole series is incredible.
It's probably a bit too far, but nevertheless enjoyable for the comedic effect.
dormento 4 hours ago [-]
"Sweeper, press the X button to mark a mine."
"X... button?"
"Focus, Sweeper! Sweeper? SWEEPEEEER!"
siva7 2 hours ago [-]
I liked the triple-a minesweeper better than the windows original. First time i won the game.
willguest 16 minutes ago [-]
36 goddamn seconds, mere moments are waking and, for what?! stabbed in the back again. i knew she wasn't good for it, why didn't i trust my instincts. all those people, so many goddamn people, and now this?! i ain't sweeping no more, i'm out.
NSUserDefaults 4 hours ago [-]
Nice but the logos are skippable, which is not realistic.
LugosFergus 4 hours ago [-]
Also, since it's an Unreal game, it's missing long load times, camera jitter, frame spikes, and dynamic resolution constantly kicking in.
easterncalculus 3 hours ago [-]
but muh Steam's 30% cut, or something
dijit 2 hours ago [-]
Unreal Engine and the Epic Games Store have nothing to do with each other really.
You can get some royalty fee's reduced by launching on Epic Games Store but that's it.
Most Unreal Engine games are distributed by Steam.
ALSO, fun fact while we're here.. to display the Unreal Engine logo on startup you're supposed to ask Epic Games for permission; but since it's the default project splash screen (meant to be replaced) people just assume that they want the publicity and that it's part of using the engine- Epic doesn't feel like enforcing this because they don't see the point.
So, feel free to remove it, and if you see it, just know that the developers very likely didn't read the agreement they signed when they started using the Engine :)
Source: the last unreal engine technical advisory board in Stockholm; I too didn't read this from the agreement ...
guyzero 2 hours ago [-]
I wished it was just all into logos and no actual game. That's the real AAA experience.
jakzurr 16 minutes ago [-]
Heck yeah, it was great. But OMG the captions over the bottom of the play area almost drove me nuts! Still, it's quite a piece of art, even if I don't really understand it (typical).
ArekDymalski 7 minutes ago [-]
I'd buy it just to learn what happened in Singapore.
Does anyone know if the voices are AI-generated? I was a little surprised; I don't think I would have questioned it if I heard them in a real game or video but since this seems to basically be a joke, I'm doubtful real voice actors were used.
geraldwhen 1 hours ago [-]
The frontier of voice synth has reached roughly human parity. It’s also very inexpensive.
I’d be shocked if we don’t have mainstream games with AI voices soon.
EleKtr1X 2 hours ago [-]
they definitely sound ai generated yeah
grumbel 4 hours ago [-]
There is also the classic "Minesweeper - The Movie"[1]
But I didn't need to install a publisher specific launcher to run it.
ravenstine 5 hours ago [-]
And then be forced to download a 42GiB update.
ASalazarMX 3 hours ago [-]
And accept telemetry and marketing!
xbar 5 hours ago [-]
I was angry at the wasted 30 seconds of opening licensed 3rd party software listings, but I stayed through to the end of the credits roll, laughing until I cried.
This is Art.
nottorp 5 hours ago [-]
I think the opening logo sequence is too short. Also it's missing agreement to 2-3 EULAs that you have to scroll down all the way for the accept button to get enabled. And the epilepsy warning. And the disclaimer that it's all a work of fiction.
jameshart 4 hours ago [-]
Failed certification because it didn’t warn you not to turn off when the save icon is spinning.
adamanonymous 4 hours ago [-]
Also missing the redirect to your browser to connect to Epic Games and create a SweeperPro account with 2FA
Toutouxc 3 hours ago [-]
I was hoping for the thing where you play through like half of the game and only then it shows you the title against a dramatic vista.
theroadnotbacon 5 hours ago [-]
I was absolutely hoping to see production babies in the credits. Can’t win ‘em all.
jameshart 4 hours ago [-]
No pets credited either.
donkey_brains 5 hours ago [-]
So good. Looking forward to level 2 so we can find out what happened in Singapore.
jameshart 4 hours ago [-]
That will be coming in the first DLC in a few months, delayed because it is being developed by a new team after the original development studio was bought by Activision, retasked to making a mobile solitaire game, then laid off.
lapetitejort 6 hours ago [-]
Missing:
Sidequest to sweep 10 mines.
Achievement after sweeping 5 mines
The yellow diamond is nice but what if I don't notice the diamond? I need a colored scent trail leading from my cursor to the yellow diamond, and a pinging noise when my cursor is near a mine
Mocapped mines
Jack Quaid
$70
jandrese 5 hours ago [-]
There should be additional audio logs you can find under some squares that provide snippits of backstory.
lapetitejort 5 hours ago [-]
This is minesweeper 33. I'n out sweeping mines and I ran across one that looks different than the others. I'll keep investigating while mine sweeping. I'm recording this 30 second clip onto an entire recording device with a 64gb SD card. I'll leave it on this rock for others to find. Don't worry, I have 11 other devices to record my short messages. Wait, the mine, it's glowing! I can't--
rf15 5 hours ago [-]
Sorry, did you mean Achievement for Starting the Game for the First Time?
em-bee 1 hours ago [-]
it took me an hour to realize that i needed to double click to start the game. i tried switching browsers, using a vpn/proxy, turning off ublock... nothing helped...
buran77 4 hours ago [-]
"Only 7.89% of gamers unlocked this".
RobotToaster 3 hours ago [-]
Those will be in the $50 DLC
aidenn0 55 minutes ago [-]
Is it always wrong when it says "I think there's a mine here"? It seemed to to me on my playthough...
[edit]
Oh, it says "I think there's a mine here" when you mark a location, but the yellow-diamond is "click here because there's no mines" it's not related to what is being said.
LunicLynx 4 hours ago [-]
Needs:
- Checkpoints after each mine
- DLC for rounded corners
thesuitonym 3 hours ago [-]
The DLC is a hat for John Sweeper.
hiccuphippo 2 hours ago [-]
It really does need a store with skins, several kinds of currencies, and loot boxes!
Please expand this into a full open-world minesweeping game
xoxxala 5 hours ago [-]
10/10 story. I look forward to the forthcoming motion picture adaptation from Skydance directed by Michael Bay.
test6554 5 hours ago [-]
After Singapore, there just wasn't any choice.
jandrese 5 hours ago [-]
I like the part where it doesn't even matter if you hit a mine, you are on this train ride regardless of what you do.
larrydag 3 hours ago [-]
I love the parody. Is this a treatise on modern game development? I hope so.
361994752 5 hours ago [-]
the non-stopping narration makes it so hard to actually sweep the mines....
nvme0n1p1 5 hours ago [-]
Don: Sounds like you're getting rusty. The Sweeper I knew in Singapore would never have choked like this from just a little background noise.
em-bee 1 hours ago [-]
i could block that out. the subtitles covering the area were more annoying.
MitPitt 5 hours ago [-]
Focus, M.
m_w_ 3 hours ago [-]
Great parody - very "Focus, M"-esque. Often, it feels that we've lost sight of "If it's not fun, why bother".
wredcoll 5 hours ago [-]
That was a great parody, but how much of those effects still worked even though you knew it was coming? The fade ins, blurring the outsides, the emotional voice talking to you... it definitely raised my interest more than just opening minesweeper!
I mean, it doesn't last very long without something else going on, but there is a reason.
thaumasiotes 4 hours ago [-]
> That was a great parody, but how much of those effects still worked even though you knew it was coming? The fade ins, blurring the outsides, the emotional voice talking to you...
Worked?
The game takes a very long time to load. This is funny, but not desirable in an actual game.
There is voiceover dialogue as you start. You can listen to it, but at some point you'll want to start playing the game.
There is an indicator telling you which square to clear next. I ignored this for several reasons:
- I want to know if you're compelled to follow it (you aren't);
- It's pointing to the wrong square;¹
- Following it would defeat the entire purpose of playing the game.
Dialogue continues as you play. But you can't listen to it because your mind is occupied. Following the indicator would solve that problem...
¹ There is a game you can find called Hexcells that is supposed to be an "improved" version of minesweeper. The "improvements" are two:
1. It's a hex grid, not a square grid.
2. In general, there is only one hex known to be clear at any given time. This means that the structure of the game is that you mindlessly reveal whichever tile you just gained information about rather than suffering under any obligation to think about what you can tell from the board.
I'm not sure why this was supposed to be an improvement; the only effect is to remove the entire puzzle aspect from a puzzle game. But hey, Steam reviews are "overwhelmingly positive". https://store.steampowered.com/app/265890/Hexcells/
bigstrat2003 26 minutes ago [-]
> In general, there is only one hex known to be clear at any given time. This means that the structure of the game is that you mindlessly reveal whichever tile you just gained information about rather than suffering under any obligation to think about what you can tell from the board.
That is not remotely an accurate description of Hexcells. Either you didn't play it, or you didn't play it more than the early levels. In Hexcells, you do not just have info on the tiles, but also along rows of hexes (telling you how many are in that row, and sometimes if they are contiguous or separate), as well as some hexes which tell you how many tiles you need to flag in a radius around them. It is fairly common that you need to combine multiple pieces of information about the board state in order to deduce what the next move is, with some of the later puzzles being so complicated at points that you practically have to bust out pencil and paper to work through the logic.
And all of that, while interesting, is not the improvement of Hexcells over Minesweeper (nor are the hexagon cells). The improvement is that you never, ever have to guess blindly and have the game tell you if you were wrong. Every puzzle can be worked out through sheer logic, though some do require you to guess at a hypothesis and then do a long chain of logic to prove or disprove if that would be a valid move (kind of like sudoku puzzles often do). The expanded mechanics are interesting too, but just the fact that you don't ever have to guess blindly is a massive improvement.
johnnyanmac 4 hours ago [-]
>First, the game takes a very long time to load. This is funny, but not desirable in an actual game.
In unrealistic fashion, you can in fact mash through the license logos once you load in. So thr game itself doesn't actually take long at all to boot up on a technical level; the delays were a design choice.
derac 3 hours ago [-]
What no 30 minute shaders compiling sequence?
ben_w 3 hours ago [-]
Despite all the stuff it's parodying, this is still a lot better than Bomberman: Act Zero.
There aren't even any skins I can buy with my mom's credit card.
NSUserDefaults 4 hours ago [-]
And which half of the staff gets fired day after release?
progforlyfe 3 hours ago [-]
You need to add achievements/trophies! Definitely need to achieve a trophy for clicking on the very first square, finding the first mine, your first flag, etc.
dllrr 5 hours ago [-]
That's hilarious. Spot on.
mlekoszek 2 hours ago [-]
Needs an 'always online' requirement
9 minutes ago [-]
djsavvy 1 hours ago [-]
Wow the ending credits music was actually pretty awesome
magnat 4 hours ago [-]
Felix Varga and Johanna Kowalski (Online Services Engineers) must have done a really good job - with all the traffic from the HN front page login servers didn't go down and queue was almost instant.
The ending needed to force you to click on a mine so you die in the cutscene lmao.
UtahDave 5 hours ago [-]
This is hilarious
avereveard 4 hours ago [-]
Not even a dlc and cosmetics?
bentt 5 hours ago [-]
Art
etchalon 6 hours ago [-]
I laughed way way way too hard
duhballs 5 hours ago [-]
Needs Debra Wilson
b3lvedere 5 hours ago [-]
That was awesome
ciefa 57 minutes ago [-]
Made me lol, thanks :D
ReptileMan 4 hours ago [-]
The part where the subtitles hide the mines is the best for me. Also talk with Ubisoft - they make AAAA games.
viccis 4 hours ago [-]
Damn I didn't even have to Press Start to begin
bbeonx 4 hours ago [-]
omg this is brilliant i was IMMEDIATELY tilting my face off
5 hours ago [-]
serf 4 hours ago [-]
now add a kernel level rootkit and a monthly subscription which guarantees a set amount of loot-boxes a month.
justmaris 8 hours ago [-]
This is fun.
IshKebab 3 hours ago [-]
lol perfect execution. I cracked up with the smiley face lip sync.
fHr 3 hours ago [-]
Lmao
peterramsing 6 hours ago [-]
[dead]
iwontberude 5 hours ago [-]
[dead]
cootsnuck 2 hours ago [-]
I'm curious which TTS model was used for the "Nora" voice. I kept noticing vocal artifacts in her speech disfluencies. Which bothers me more than it probably should...
Maybe lean into some of the metal gear solid dialogue by having a long back and forth about "What's a mine?" "What do you mean 'mark a mine'?" "How do I know when I'm done?" etc.
Here is the forest temple video which is a short sample of what to expect: https://youtu.be/KC656o7_zVk
It's probably a bit too far, but nevertheless enjoyable for the comedic effect.
"X... button?"
"Focus, Sweeper! Sweeper? SWEEPEEEER!"
You can get some royalty fee's reduced by launching on Epic Games Store but that's it.
Most Unreal Engine games are distributed by Steam.
ALSO, fun fact while we're here.. to display the Unreal Engine logo on startup you're supposed to ask Epic Games for permission; but since it's the default project splash screen (meant to be replaced) people just assume that they want the publicity and that it's part of using the engine- Epic doesn't feel like enforcing this because they don't see the point.
So, feel free to remove it, and if you see it, just know that the developers very likely didn't read the agreement they signed when they started using the Engine :)
Source: the last unreal engine technical advisory board in Stockholm; I too didn't read this from the agreement ...
I’d be shocked if we don’t have mainstream games with AI voices soon.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHY8NKj3RKs
This is Art.
Sidequest to sweep 10 mines.
Achievement after sweeping 5 mines
The yellow diamond is nice but what if I don't notice the diamond? I need a colored scent trail leading from my cursor to the yellow diamond, and a pinging noise when my cursor is near a mine
Mocapped mines
Jack Quaid
$70
[edit]
Oh, it says "I think there's a mine here" when you mark a location, but the yellow-diamond is "click here because there's no mines" it's not related to what is being said.
- Checkpoints after each mine
- DLC for rounded corners
I mean, it doesn't last very long without something else going on, but there is a reason.
Worked?
The game takes a very long time to load. This is funny, but not desirable in an actual game.
There is voiceover dialogue as you start. You can listen to it, but at some point you'll want to start playing the game.
There is an indicator telling you which square to clear next. I ignored this for several reasons:
- I want to know if you're compelled to follow it (you aren't);
- It's pointing to the wrong square;¹
- Following it would defeat the entire purpose of playing the game.
Dialogue continues as you play. But you can't listen to it because your mind is occupied. Following the indicator would solve that problem...
¹ There is a game you can find called Hexcells that is supposed to be an "improved" version of minesweeper. The "improvements" are two:
1. It's a hex grid, not a square grid.
2. In general, there is only one hex known to be clear at any given time. This means that the structure of the game is that you mindlessly reveal whichever tile you just gained information about rather than suffering under any obligation to think about what you can tell from the board.
I'm not sure why this was supposed to be an improvement; the only effect is to remove the entire puzzle aspect from a puzzle game. But hey, Steam reviews are "overwhelmingly positive". https://store.steampowered.com/app/265890/Hexcells/
That is not remotely an accurate description of Hexcells. Either you didn't play it, or you didn't play it more than the early levels. In Hexcells, you do not just have info on the tiles, but also along rows of hexes (telling you how many are in that row, and sometimes if they are contiguous or separate), as well as some hexes which tell you how many tiles you need to flag in a radius around them. It is fairly common that you need to combine multiple pieces of information about the board state in order to deduce what the next move is, with some of the later puzzles being so complicated at points that you practically have to bust out pencil and paper to work through the logic.
And all of that, while interesting, is not the improvement of Hexcells over Minesweeper (nor are the hexagon cells). The improvement is that you never, ever have to guess blindly and have the game tell you if you were wrong. Every puzzle can be worked out through sheer logic, though some do require you to guess at a hypothesis and then do a long chain of logic to prove or disprove if that would be a valid move (kind of like sudoku puzzles often do). The expanded mechanics are interesting too, but just the fact that you don't ever have to guess blindly is a massive improvement.
In unrealistic fashion, you can in fact mash through the license logos once you load in. So thr game itself doesn't actually take long at all to boot up on a technical level; the delays were a design choice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomberman%3A_Act_Zero
I was expecting it to open up on some WW2 style battlefield with smoke and explosions, but this was better.