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Very nice!

I got up to level C-5 on another computer while traveling, but that level absolutely escaped me.

Writing this on my home PC, The only thing I can think of that I didn't try (and can't get back to without playing all through again :( ), is to walk into the spikes (taking damage), then plant the sigil and turn back, hoping that teleporting into the sigil would not cause taking damage again, and then I could leap past the second spike. But not quite sure.

In any case, absolutely enjoyed this title. Very well done! It is a great example study of how a simple puzzle game makes or breaks 100% by how good its level design is. If the puzzles don't have variety, then the graphics and music and polish alone would not be able to keep it interesting for long. 

Very good - that is of course true!

In practice there is very little reason to not blow up the mines immediately when it becomes possible. This is because one has to do it before having to resort to the next health scroll (the XP from the mines is better), and at that point of the game, since one has >= 10 HP, then there are no things on the board that can kill the player at health. (only mimic chest, but it makes itself known on click) So ambiguities are not that important anymore.

> very few non lethal guesses. way less than a traditional game of minesweeper.

Non-lethal guesses in traditional minesweeper? lol.

For the Clear Board stamp, there is no direct game rule requirement for to get all the XP before using a single health scroll.

In the current v1.1.18 version of the game, there will always be three +5XP treasure chests in the game.

The theoretical latest that one would have to use a health scroll is when they run out of HP with 11 heart containers. This playthrough would lead to 13 HP left at the end with a max clear. I've never got that much, my record is 10 HP left at the end. So the game is quite generous with extra health for the Clear Board achievement.

The gnome +9XP is very late game, getting that before having to use a health scroll would require tremendous luck. I typically get the gnome XP about the time I have used one or two health scrolls.

Typically I get the egg and one, or if lucky, two +5 XP chests before having to use a health scroll, and do so at about 8 health containers.

The mine king kill is generally easy to get immediately upon reaching lv10, to maximize the health gain there.

Here's my walkthrough (game v1.1.18), with which max clears are easy. Intense spoiler heavy (probably will only want to read after completing everything yourself):

- What I love about this game is that it is like a mini-version in the spirit of FTL and Into the Breach. "The game is to learn the game." So below is what I have learned about it. With the walkthrough below, the joy of discovering the game might be taken away (at least if I had read this before playing, I would feel having lost something), so read at your own peril.

- Overall, fantastic game! I wish for a harder New Game+ mode with new monsters and patterns that one could attempt after completing a regular board, where one would really have to pause to make only the most calculated moves.

 - You've probably learned all the monsters RPG patterns, many comments about those already. Knowing about the monsters is not really needed to get a max clear (but of course makes the game much easier). I did my first max score before picking up on that the board was not random.

- From the start, easy way to get past the first "missing XP to level up" hill is to explore immediately towards the egg. It is semi-easily locatable free +3xp, and helps avoid using a heart scroll at early game.

- Whenever board permits, speculate the play direction towards where the wizard's lair could lie. Since it is kind of big with its 2x3 cell pattern and always on the edge, its location is quite constrained. After finding the edge/corner, sniping the wizard is super beneficial for uncovering information, since it reveals the 2x3 cell and P5 enemies. Makes ruling out rat king easier as well.

- Plan so you never need to bash the walls (+1/3 xp per heart only) until at the end of the game when whole board is cleared. It won't be the end of the world if this happens, but it can't happen more than a few times to get a max clear.

- Do not kill an enemy if it does not provide new board information (unless you absolutely have to in order to avoid wasting hearts before leveling, or to avoid denomination problems, see below).

- Prefer to open board squares that cost least lives first. The game is all about paying hearts to buy board information, so you of course want to buy as cheap as possible. (there are tradeoffs of course which makes the game interesting, see below)

- The very moment you reach lv10, you should kill the mine king for the boost to XP. (as corollary, the game objective is to identify where mine king is before lv10 is reached) . If you have 10 hearts and use a heart scroll, while mine king is still alive, the play was suboptimal.

- If you don't know which corner the mine king is when you reach lv10, then if you want to live on the edge, you might calculate how many >P10 unidentified mines + mimic chest remain that could live in the corners, vs how many unknown squares exist, and if the odds are exceedingly in your favor, then just take a calculated guess and pick a random corner.

- If you have a choice of killing e.g. a P5 enemy or a P2+P3 enemy, there is an interesting complex tradeoff to be made:

a) do I prefer to kill the P5 enemy, so that I ensure that the lower denominations of 2 and 3 will remain available, to leave less chance of wasting hearts later on (due to not having the exact denomination to kill), or

b) assuming that the P2+P3 are both at the boundary of information, do I prefer to kill those two enemies rather than one P5, since the two enemies will provide one more square of board information for the same cost.

Early on in the game, a) seems to be more important.

At first I thought that a) would have always been more important (i.e. optimal play is bottlenecked on denominations throughout to the end), but after playing several max clears, it is apparent that in the middle game and later, one will already have plenty of P1, P2 and P3 denominations available to kill when needed, so then b) is more productive.

- Another example of a denomination tradeoff is e.g. when pondering if to kill a P4+P1 or a P3+P2. Assuming produced board information would be indifferent/equivalent, it is generally better to kill P3+P2, to keep the P1 for later to help with a denomination problem. (of course one can "read ahead" to the health bar, to know which denominations will be needed)

- Never commit to batch kill multiple enemies at once, but always re-evaluate the new board state after each kill, and only then make another move. (don't mindlessly commit to mass murder thinking "I've got 7HP so I'll kill those P3+P3+P1"). Maybe after killing the first P3, you realize that you don't gain info from killing the rest. Kill the enemies in the descending order of most info to least info.

- Before deciding to open a given board square, pause to think what new board information opening that cell can provide. I.e. ask "If I knew what number was in this cell, would it even help me deduce the power number of any adjacent cell?" If not, then opening that cell is not immediately productive. Prefer to open those cell squares first that do expand the information boundary, and leave the cell squares that do not for later.

- Use monsternomicon's "monsters of each type remaining" info to deduce complex two-cell patterns. Sometimes the monsternomicon's numbers fully reveal what two adjacent cells summing up to X will have to contain. (although not which one is which)

- Use Venn diagramming to deduce which cells cannot be empty, to give min-max power levels that a cell must contain. For example, this can be used to deduce the location of a Minotaur's chest, if your game is about to come crashing down:

 - At very early game, I like to build up small denominations to have available when needed. Towards the middle game, denominations won't be a problem, so maximizing boundary information is more important instead.

 - There will be times when one has to guess. Some guesses are nonlethal ("whatever lurks here can't kill me"), and other guesses are lethal ("I might die if I click here"). Naturally make only nonlethal guesses, in the descending order of "most board information gained."

 - In an unlucky run, one might have to make a lethal guess, but that does not seem to happen that often, which is a testament to the balance of the game. When going for the lovers+rats+egg stamp victory, this happens way more often, since the rats easily get in the way.

 - At the very end, when all board cells have been identified, one will typically still have lots of monsters alive on the board, something like this:

From here on, it is a mop up game, given that there are plenty of P1 and P2 and P3 still available to steer clear of running into denomination problems.

 - There are always more hearts on the board than are needed to clear everything. My record is 10 hearts remaining at the end of a game.

The fact that you write "blind guesses" states that you have missed something.

There are nonlethal guesses that one has to often make in the game. Learning to understand the dynamics of such guesses is what the game is about. After mastering, it is rather easy to manage these, and the game becomes consistently beatable.

Then there are lethal guesses, that one makes when things have gone bad. This happens rarely if playing with a good strategy, though can happen (especially on the first few moves, when the discovered board size is still so tiny). If going for the three stamps extra achievement victory, then this happens more often, because the rats get in the way. But in general play, it is possible to beat the game with a routine.

Not all games are for everyone. It is good to learn that, and if/when that happens, just move on, rather than to get worked up for no reason and go shouting in the comments.

I think so, yes.

There is no downside to using the explode mines scroll immediately. When shooting for max score of 365, it is best to plan to find and use the scroll so that you can trigger it immediately when you XP up to 10 hearts.

How do you get a clear board stamp with the other stamps? Isn't clearing the board mutually exclusive with not killing rats/egg/lovers?

Not sure how easy/hard the older versions were, though I do now get a clear on almost every run, and those come with max clears rather easily. If I don't clear, it is typically because I made a calculation mistake and stumbled onto an unintended high level monster.

It does feel quite balanced to me in the sense that in the beginning it felt hard ("how is it even possible"), but after mastering the decisions to make, it becomes easy. Very much like FTL or Into the Breach. At this point I wish there was a Hard mode.

I found it to be surprisingly enjoyable that the music was paced like that, since it added to the calm paced tone of the game. And it really helped avoid the music from becoming so repetitive as quickly as it would, had it played on a loop.

Last night I was playing in my bed on my iPad, and I was getting that dog to appear in the corners several times. I didn't understand what the dog did, couldn't observe any effect. Finished the game eventually, but did not get max score clear.

Today I played on my desktop PC, and improved my play to do several max clears, but I never saw the dog. I wonder what happened to it and where it lurked throughout my play :(

What does the dog do?

Very nice, really enjoyed this! Took about 55 minutes to beat. Good polish, only thing I noticed was that sometimes the timing/durations of the texts was a bit long that I had already assumed that there won't be a follow-up dialog coming up, and then accidentally clicked on the screen to continue, but ended up dismissing the dialog instead.

After learning to account for that, play was smooth!

Good writing :)

This is a masterpiece! :)

I wonder about the level selection: it is possible to choose levels 1-16, but it looks like 16 is not the last level, but the game does get harder even after that? If one starts at level 16, it looks like there will be two birds and two balconies, but after a few levels, the number of balconies will go up to four.

I wonder if there is a level limit after which all the levels will be of equal difficulty, or will the game get harder indefinitely some way? (max bird speed seem to be a little bit faster also in after level 16)

Definitely 5/5 arcade game mechanics, great work!

Really cool game for the C64! So many good things about the game, the atmosphere and the pacing is fun, and the music is great.

As for weak points, the fighting is a bit tedious, as is the searching for missed items as the game map gets bigger. The repetitive music exaggerates the tediousness a bit. And it was really hard, only few lives and instant death traps did not mix well :( I was unable to finish it on a C64 after several tries, and eventually frustrated and reverted to playing it on an emulator with save scumming.

Although, feels odd to write so much about the negative points, since the game was definitely an entertaining experience! Got a little bit of C64 Treasure Island vibe to it with the structuring, and ending atmosphere somehow reminded of Pitfall 2. Looking forward to playing your other titles!

Very nice, enjoyed playing!

Nice arcade mechanics!

Nice! Enjoyable boss fight :)

Very cool! Although could not get past the enemy in the first screen :( Awesome job capturing the atmosphere!

Phew still got the Pong skillz! Nice one :)

Yay for CGA color option! :)

Haha, this was really cool! Died 51 times. :)

Oddly I was unable to run the game again a second time, but when returning got a black screen with "uncaught exception: abort(101). Build with -s ASSERTIONS=1 for more info." message in the console. (got stuck in the first walljump part the first time and was not able to figure out what to do there)

Really well done! Nice game design, and well put together. One issue was that after the game had started and when I got grip of how the game plays, I had trouble figuring out which corner was my goal, and ended up figuring that out by observing the three other corners that the other dogs kept running into, and excluding those. Points for design and originality!

Nice entry! Points for originality - have not played a freeform moving snake game before using mouse lookat scheme. Also points for using Comic Sans! It's the font of choice, never leaves anyone cold. :)

Liked this, nice theme and music!

Oddly got lost in the second 2 + 3 /5 level where if I push two to the plus, it became a two, and if I pushed + to the 3, it also became 3. There must be some trick there, but not sure what :) (or should it have become 2+ and 3+, not sure)