It’s basically Minesweeper but with rogue-like mechanics.
I’ve been introduced to this game by watching a friend stream it to a discord server I was in, and oh boy does this game look confusing out of context. The basic gameplay is exactly what you’d expect for Minesweeper, but you have life points? Defense? …Coins? What are those things bouncing around on the screen? Why are there signs and treasure chests? Items? Classes?? Ultimate abilities??? It’s a lot to take in, but after watching them play on and off for a while, I got more and more into the game, and as the Steam sale rolled around I thought I would pick it up for myself, and I have been playing a lot of it since. Fair warning, this game is a little rough around the edges, and not the most stable thing out there. It has gotten better and better though, and is still a fun time overall.
As you might have guessed form the previous paragraph, this game has a lot of things in it and a lot of mechanics. Thankfully though, it doesn’t throw everything at you at once, and has a tutorial that covers the very basics. But the gist of it is, each run (or “quest”) is a set of Minesweeper boards that you go through in order, with the size of the boards and mine density going up as you progress through. The mines are replaced with monsters, and they deal damage to you when you open their cells. You have more than one life point, so you can take a monster hit in the early stages, but the damage the monsters deal also goes up as the quest goes on. There is also loot that spawns randomly on the board as you uncover cells, such as hearts that refill your life points, coins and diamons that you can spend in item shops, and treasure chests that contain either money or an item. There are different kinds of items, most good, some bad, some passive, some that you have to use.
All of these as well as the other mechanics I won’t go over are what makes this game really unique. Unlike games like 14 Minesweeper Variants or other games with a no-guessing mode, this game will force you into a guess at some point (especially as the boards get really big, like, 25 x 25 big), and it’s up to you to get the necessary things and build going on to be able to take those 50/50 risks. Being good at Minesweeper helps a lot of course, and this game did make me better at that, but the game usually gives you something to help you in case you have to guess, whether it be revealing a cell that you would have had to guess on, or just straight up being able to take more hits.
The game also has a lot of meta-progress, through its story mode, unlocking abilities, completing the codex, and the entirety of the beyond mode. Runs usually get easier as you unlock more things and get used to the mechanics, but there is still quite a bit of luck involved, especially in some unlocks. Once you complete the story though, you unlock an endless mode, and then a daily quest mode where the game gets a randomly generated quest every day and you can keep attempting it as many times as you like, and eventually in doing those you will get the chance at an absolutely broken synergy of items that essentially hands you a very funny free win, usually getting enough stats to unlock more stuff along the way too.
In short, this game is minesweeper, but it is a lot. Lots of mechanics, lots of content, lots of fun for me.
Editors note: As none of us have played the mobile version of DemonCrawl, we cannot mention how the game’s monetisation works other than “contains ads and in app purchases.” We’ve also heard stories that it may be unstable on phone, so you’re best off playing the Steam version.
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1141220 £11.39
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thereforegames.demoncrawl Free to play
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