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Just finished it completely! The last things I unlocked were the Light Strike Chain Mastery and Double Damage Ritual. Turns out not speccing into Light Strike in the early game made that quite the grind, lol.

It’s quite a fun game, both because of its visual charm and solid gameplay loop, and has plenty of tricks to keep you interested for its full runtime. Towards the end, though, there were some weird quirks that broke its “well-polished” streak such as repeatedly unlocking potions I had already unlocked, not unlocking the Bomb Clicker ritual when I should have, and the entirety of Paradise Island being useless (seems like some things were planned that got scrapped?)

But none of this stopped me from beating the game 100%, even though I inadvertently had made myself a long grind of purposefully not attacking the plants and letting one of my more underpowered spells get hits in, because I suppose the game got me hooked, and I had fun. So kudos for that!

I have by far the most time in Bombe, which I consider the quintessential game for minesweeper lovers. It’s a game where you create abstract rules that form a minesweeper solver engine and iterate it to perfection as puzzles get more complex. It can be a bit daunting but once you get comfortable with it it gets really satisfying, and you unlock QOL tools as you solve puzzles.

I’ve occasionally pondered giving Bombe an extension, but I won’t be making anything like it this time. Mine will be closer to 14MSV or Dragonsweeper. It’ll be a logic-focused game about identifying a set of enemies with unique behavior and patterns. I’m thinking of making the enemies aliens and making a bunch of wacky looking alien designs.

I’ve been playing minesweeper variants like mamono sweeper, dragon sweeper, bombe, and 14MSV for ages and have wanted a reason to make my own. Happy to have caught this jam. I don’t have a brilliant idea in mind but I’m sure something will come of it.