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rexact rated Dragonsweeper

rexact rated a game 1 year ago
A browser game made in HTML5.

Absolutely fantastic!

This has a similar vibe to Into the Breach, where the game is to learn the game. I.e. at first the game seems very hard when the mechanics and strategy are still developing, but after playing more games, the optimal strategy begins to unfold.. and it feels so satisfying to observe from my play how the mastery of the game develops, and it becomes easy to complete. So many "wait now I get it, I should probably do this instead." moments.

Thoughts (spoilers):
 - the fact that the music paused for periods of the time before replaying was a nice idea. It helps the music to not get repetitive as quickly (which many games suffer from), and adds to the atmosphere of playing the game at a calm pace, pondering and solving the board. Makes me wish there was a bit more music, it would be cool if the music track was selected based on how many heart containers Jorge has, so late game would build up to more and more epic music.
 - discovering the "outside" information/properties about the individual monsters, that is a stellar idea and really fun!
- when I do a max score finish by clearing every square and even having hearts left over, I still don't get a "Clear Board" stamp for some reason. Not sure what there would be more to do after erasing every square.
- the stamp mechanic felt a big dissatisfying after realizing (assuming I got it right) that they are mutually exclusive.. i.e. one cannot max clear a game and get all the stamps, since getting a stamp means making a concession.
- I think there is a minor visual UI dual meaning overload/inconsistency with how the number 3 is shown on defused mines versus other monsters: visually the numbers are shown identically, as if they would all have to be added up together, but one has to know to not count the 3 from the defused mine.
- I like that the game is just one level/one puzzle, and no infinite grinding of more and more levels, how some games are made. Though I did start to imagine it would be fantastic to get to have a go at a more challenging  New Game+ mode with completely different set of monsters if one did a max score clear of the regular game. That would give an extra "ooh I got to a hidden secret" reward after persisting to learn to do a max score game. I kept replaying the game again and again to get to see if there would be anything as a reward from getting max score, though it seems like that's the end as far as I understood.

Great work with the game! Itch.io's best in class :)