Mineplanter (Incomplete)

This description is mostly for me. I'd like to be able to look back one day and see what I was thinking or look at how far I've come.

My entry for 1-BIT JAM 7.  The theme this year was "you are the enemy." This is the first game jam I've ever participated in.

My idea was to flip the roles of the "minesweeper" and "mineplanter"—who was it that planted all of those mines in the old Windows 98 game? What was the game from their perspective? This not only literally made players the "enemy", but the idea was to make it so that you could sabotage yourself by forgetting where you've already planted a mine. In that sense, you literally become your own enemy.

The main gameplay loop was supposed to involve receiving info about where and how your enemies would move up through the minefield, planting a small number of mines (possibly with unique explosion patterns) to counter them, readying-up, and watching it all play out.

More specifically, the enemies telegraphed movements would be simple and abstract, icons at the bottom of the screen representing one of maybe three different patterns: moving straight up, snaking upwards left and right, or running down the sides of the screen only to flank at the last second.

I wanted it to be a bit like Into the Breach where you're outnumbered and have to think strategically to compensate. The genius of that game is how simple yet complex it is, so I thought it would be an appropriate scope to apply an abstract version of those game rules to Minesweeper.

Sadly, I did not finish on time. In fact, I didn't even come close to finishing. I made this in Godot, and it was my first time using the software. I immediately liked it more than Unity, though, so I thought the game jam would be a good opportunity to learn it.

The simplest things were enormous challenges. I've got very little game dev experience, so I'll give myself some grace, but I spent maybe the majority of my time trying to get the tiles highlighting to move appropriately as players move the mouse. I also fiddled way too much with the buttons' appearances. I'm happy with the outcome, however, because I learned a ton about Godot, and I feel like I'm conceptualizing/internalizing the node/scene structure a lot better now.

All in all, I had a great time with this and will definitely be working on it some more. Hopefully I can create a version that more closely resembles what I envisioned.

Font for text is Pixel Operator.

Font for mine number is DS-Digital.

"Mine setting" sound effect ("blip") by u_a555j5miio from Pixabay.