Just wanted to share a surprisingly addictive free browser game I discovered recently.
If you’ve played Minesweeper, you know the basic concept - you’re clicking on boxes to try to clear a tile-based map without stepping on a mine. This game, however, adds a new dimension - you’re playing a stereotypical fantasy knight and the ultimate object is to kill a dragon in the center of the map. Instead of the numbers on empty tiles telling you how many mines are adjacent to that tile, they tell you the combined level of the monsters hiding under them. You start the game with 5 HP. Clicking on a monster kills it and deducts a number of HP equal to its level from your health and gives you the same number of XP. If you get enough XP you can level up, which refills your health and gives you an extra hit point every other level. You’ll need to level up 26 times to kill the dragon.
There’s more than just monsters hiding behind the tiles. You’ll find a limited number of scrolls that can restore your health, and you’ll need to manage them carefully, because before too long you’ll start needing more XP to level than HP that you have, so you need to figure out the ideal times to use them to maximize your grind. There are chests which can contain free XP or scrolls which reveal enemies - but they can also be a mimic with high HP that can end your run prematurely if you aren’t careful. Certain enemies drop special scrolls when they die that can be a major boon. There are also, of course, mines. Mines have 100 HP and are instant death - unless…
The map is randomly generated every playthrough, though there are certain constants you’ll be able to identify if you play it enough. I’ve probably put 10+ hours into it since I discovered it, and I’m getting to a point where I can beat it most of the time as long as I survive the first few levels, but I haven’t managed a perfect score yet.
Just wanted to share and inflict the same addiction upon y’all.
It looks like every grid always has the same number of each kind of monster/treasure. So it should always be winnable, if you click in the right places. Of course, it won’t always be possible to deduce what the right places are.
Is there ever any reason to not pick up XP immediately when you find it? Timing level-ups is important, but you can do that no matter how much XP you’re banking.
And is there ever any reason to break walls? It costs 3 hearts and only gives 1 XP, a worse return than any monster. I guess maybe if you have one or two hearts left, no weak monsters discovered, and you’re about to level up or use a heal? But that still seems like a result of poor play.
It looks to me like the biggest determiner of success is finding the rat-revealer early. That gives you a lot of flexibility in optimizing your heart usage, and a lot of (almost) safe spots you can start exploring from.
What, if anything, do the question marks indicate? Just mysterious spots in the dungeon that you can’t learn from, for some random reason, or is there some monster near them that causes them?
And the Dungeon King (strength 10) is always in one of the corners, presumably to mitigate the advantages of starting in a corner.
OK, I just got 355 (max 362), and I’m not sure how I could have done better. All that was left was one single rat, and I don’t think I ever clicked a wall, nor used a heal or level-up when I had any hearts.
Two other mechanics to note: Defeating the Dungeon King defuses all of the mines, and turns them into safe XP. And I’m not sure, but I think, that defeating Romeo or Juliet (both strength 9) reveals the other.
The most I’ve been able to get is 356, and that’s with every single monster on the board dead including the dragon and the mimic, so I’m thinking that having enough hearts left over to crush at least six wall tiles is the only way to get a perfect score.
I assume it’s a combination of luck and skill. I figure in order to maximize your score, you need to;
Find both the free XP chests and the gnome early enough that you can use them to level up before using a health scroll
Find the rat king and the slime wizard as early as possible so you can locate those creatures and use them to level up more efficiently
NEVER level up or use a health scroll until you’re down to zero HP
Identify all the mines as early as possible
Kill the lich as soon as you get to 10 HP so you can pop all the mines for extra HP and maximize the HP value of the remaining health scrolls
Yeah, that occurred to me overnight, too, that you get greater efficiency by using the heals when you’re higher level and have more HP, and that the perfect score would thus require you to find all of the chests (or at least, most of them; there might be some leeway where the last chest still won’t level you up) before using any of the heals.
Oh, and one last unknown: Do the sprites have any significance at all, other than being a colorful way to show an empty square? They don’t seem to cost anything to click, and don’t seem to leave anything behind.
OK, two more things I’ve discovered:
1: The lovers don’t directly reveal each other… but they do indirectly. They’re always in mirror-image positions on the map, so if you find one, you know where the other is. This is actually better than revealing on death, because they’re the only 9-power monsters, so if you can mark one spot as 9, you can mark the other.
2: The slime wizard is always on an edge (but not a corner), and thus always has five adjacent squares. Which are always the five purple slimes (strength 8 each). And since the purple slimes are among the strongest monsters, a square two away from the wall with a very high power count probably indicates that they’re near.
I’ve noticed that if a minotaur is visible when you open one of the chests with free XP inside he’ll turn to face it, though I’m not sure whether that means anything or if it’s just cosmetic.
Clicking on the knight avatar when he’s not ready to level him up makes him say his name out loud, which is cute. “JORGE!”
Not for the first time I got to level 13* (or higher), I just got to level 15 but the problem was there were no level 1 or 2 monsters (and no heals left) so I just went for the dragon – no where near a perfect score but at least I didn’t die.
My most common mistake is probably forgetting about the mimic.
My stupidest mistake was probably killing the Mine Lord but neglecting to hit the “destroy mines” space then immediately clicking on a mine…
I will still play, but now that I have “won” I feel less compelled…
Brian
* last time I got to 13, I tried to clear the board and made some mistake and died
Yeah, there’s not a ton of depth I don’t think. You can chase the perfect score but that feels mostly like luck. You need to get the 3 free exp squares, disarm the mines, and then clear all the mines before you need to use any hearts.
I’ve managed to get 357 and I was very lucky with the squares. The disarm being in a corner means there’s some strategy around the mines, but is there one wrt the other exp squares?