DungeonSweeper
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Welcome to DungeonSweeper!
Delve into the Dungeon to take on the mighty Dragon that has taken the kingdom's treasures. Take on enemies in a minesweeper-style combat to gain experience, level up, and eventually take on the Dragon. Every encounter with the dragon you will delve deeper into the dungeon and encounter a merchant offering bonus items to help you on your quest. Keep going until you finally vanquish her in the final dungeon room to claim victory!
This is a (poor) recreation of DragonSweeper by danielben. Played the living crap out of that game and wanted more. The intent is to push this formula further in a rouge-like manner. What would you want to see added?
Features
5 Dungeons of roguelike Minesweeper action!
19 (+2) Classes! Choose your starting class for each run!
100+ Items to customize your run!
125+ Achievements to fully master the game!
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- v1.41 Notes3 days ago
- v1.4 Notes3 days ago
- v1.33b Notes44 days ago
- v1.33 Notes50 days ago
- v1.32 Notes54 days ago
- v1.31 Notes55 days ago
- v1.3 Notes57 days ago
- v1.28 Notes75 days ago
Comments
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Really, really cool game. It kept popping back into my head, which is why I’ve already played it several times.
I didn’t play Dragonsweeper, but I really like how enemies interact with the world here. The roguelike approach and building your own build (revealing them, increasing XP, etc.) is something I found very cool.
I’m personally not a big fan of characters only differing by their starting item.
What I do really like is that you can see enemies early that you can’t (or don’t have to) defeat yet, and then encounter them later and understand their purpose.
Sometimes it was a bit frustrating to me, similar to Minesweeper. One moment of inattention and booom, game over. I think that has its charm (with mimics, bombs, etc.) and i liked it, But as an exampel, attacking a revealed enemy with 5 HP when you only have 3 lives left, just because you weren’t paying attention, feels unnecessarily punishing. (Maybe a small confirmation pop up would help)
Also: why isn’t XP collected automatically after defeating an enemy?
Anyway… this turned into half a bible😅
Cool game, I had a lot of fun! :D
P.S.: I’m absolutely not a fan of Ai art; "Are we players really worth being presented with cheap, soulless Ai art?"
Hey thanks for playing and for the suggestions. I'll keep them in mind.
As for the AI art - all I can say is that I'm not an artist and I believe that because of it you got to play my idea. I like to think my 'soul' was in the code/design of the game. I'll rephrase it as you have -- "As a developer, is my worth only how well I can draw?"
The new counters for the menu and tinkerer overlap with the map:
Bounty and tinkerbox together overlap too.
How about aligning those displays vertically left of the dungeon?
Yeah good idea, I'll jot this down and do that next. In theory you can have all 3 of these 'special' items at once. If I make substantial amount more I might have to rethink how to display these (in the item UI, perhaps).
Quirk found: Although I had the clamancy item "turns all bricks into lesser clay golems", two bricks still showed up in my dungeon.
And here the second one, next to a gorgon:
Odd, I'll take a look at it, thanks for the report.
The mimic chest is so frustrating. Having it be 11 means it is basically instant death until there are only a few hidden spaces left on the field. There's no way to predict when they'll show up. The only way around it would be to skip over some pretty necessary chests until you're strong enough to risk it.
I do not agree. You should be able to tell from the sums whether it is a mimic or a regular chest. If in doubt, keep that chest until you levelled up. If the sum is below 11, it's a chest.
I agree with this -- the mimic is intended to be an inherently risky monster but with enough information (what's around it) you should be able to tell if its a safe chest or a mimic. It's intended to make you rethink the chest as a perpetually safe tile. It's most deceptive when you unveil it with no surrounding knowledge, that's for sure.
It might be better to cut back on the number of playable characters and to try to make them more distinct experiences. Right now you can happen upon almost any of the items and then it's the same as if you had that class.
Yeah I tend to agree on this statement the more I add. Maybe to make them feel unique I can make the starter items not appear in the shop, but it does sorta take away from some current combinations.
This is great! But the achievements are cluttered by how many variations of each there are. Some things you could do include different tabs for different achievement types or compressing the versions for different levels into a single box (maybe with little checkboxes for each level?)
Thanks for playing! I agree, I want to redo the achievement screen to stack the progressive ones better. I'll put it higher on my list after this comment!
Edit: It's implemented in 1.41, cheers!
Why do an exact copy of Dragonsweeper? Unambitious.
Hey thanks for playing. I did mention that this was heavily inspired (started as a clone) because I played so much DS that I wanted more. I feel like there's changes and a lot more content here now though! Good luck on your projects!
Good response. Sorry to be disagreeable.
So there is a level cap?
There is no level cap technically, but there is an HP cap after a certain point. You can still level up and fully heal. But at this point you're basically invincible lol
There IS a way to kill the Balrogs, though!
I have a problem with the scaling (probably using a browser screen witdth) so I have to zoom my browser to 170%.
Also, the achievements window should be easier to scroll through, it is way too slow now
Could you make it so that the levels fit onto the screen, rather than going off it? I'm on a level with the dragon, having 30hp, and I literally couldn't see all the tiles.
The tiles would be too small. You can scroll the dungeon by dragging outside of it
Thank You!
Almost got top 5, it was fun to play although I couldn't successfully do one sweep. I like mine screeper a lot, so adding these dungeon aesthetics is pretty cool. I think it's going to be pretty popular, just please get a real artist!
Great game! I like how there are different characters that increase/decrease the difficulty. The merge between roguelike and minesweeper is really smooth.
This is a really cool game but I'm struggling with two aspects:
1. How hard is it to support a SHIFT key modifier for placing marks? I have arthritis and right-clicking is challenging for me. I'm constantly triggering squares and dying instead of placing a mark. The setting to not trigger already-marked squares helps but for me it's the initial placement that's hard.
2. Once you get far enough to get 2+ Ourobouros' it's basically just a guessing game. They're SO far-reaching that they really unbalance the game if you get an unlucky layout. I just died on a board where I had like 25 "?" squares and it was just random chance on what to click.
As for point 1, I added two new secret hotkey buttons. Shift and Ctrl will change the behavior of left clicking tiles. Middle mouse is now equivalent to right clicking.
Playing the 1.33 version and if I click on a monster while the bomb exploding animation is playing, ending the game and starting a new map, the next map will have the bombs exploded on it.
Can you rework the achievements ui? A scroll bar would be nice for example.
I second that.
A scrollbar would also help in the shop.
slop detected
The AI is CRAAAAAAAZYYYY
LOL art is REALLY bad. Don't quit your day job!
Since I also played the heck out of Dragonsweeper, this game is exactly what I was waiting for.
However, I wish the UI were easier to read. Some numbers blend into their icons, like the Minotaur 6, Dragon 11 or Rat 1. Could you make these more distinct or just make all numbers bright white? Being able to quickly recognize all the numbers is an important feature in a game like this.
Also, the diamonds for experience points are hard to distinguish at a glance (whether they’re active or not).
Anyway, thanks a lot for this game. :D
Hey thanks for playing, and good callouts. There might be some better way to represent #/enemy combos to choose better coloring, or offer a monochrome option
Having played Dragonsweeper and knowing the rules already, having so many unskippable tutorials pop up every time I click anything annoyed me to the point I just gave up.
If it helps, those are for first helping time users, and they only appear once each, ever. Basically once you do a run or two (depending on how far you get) they should be all through.
Maybe we can add a button to skip all tutorials in the settings, though.
art rework when
For the sequel we can update the art.
license to kill is broken, but tends to get you carried away until you eventually make a mistake.
Broken as in not working as intended, or broken as overpowered? It's definitely really strong haha. Power creep is real
I had some a few cases:
Unfortunately not reproducible so far. Anything I can put an eye on if it happens again? Any additional info I could provide?
That's helpful! If it ever gets 'stuck' on a bounty, like you didn't kill it, let me know if (1) you got the bonus XP, and (2) which enemy it got stuck on. Recently some changes went in to fix the problem with sometimes not having an initial bounty, but I haven't seen the other issue yet
literally any upgrade that grants money w a downside needs to be nerfed except maybe the magic fountain one.
this is becoming a sub-genre...
That tends to happen when the base game is so good! Look at Vampire Survivors, etc. I truly believe DragonSweeper has that genius
The 5 is a beholder. But the shape of the hidden tiles has been modified by removing a cyclops and an ouroboros earlier in the game.
Is it intended that earlier removals reveal tiles that could be still affected by another monster?
No, not intended. Each obscure source adds to a counter so this seems odd. Thanks for the report.
Just installed 1.29.apk and somehow the text and menus are upsidedown. Clicking on things is also upsidedown. Clicking on the new game clicks the button below it. Flipping the phone around didn't help.
Woah that's a new one... what phone do you have? Could be specific to some models
Pixel 9 Pro xl
are the patterns still here? if so, theres a pattern where heart scrolls dont spawn within 2 spaces of eachother.
We retained a lot of Dragonsweeper's patterns but not all. Some on purpose, some cause we don't know them! Haha. I didn't know about the heart scrolls one -- it might make less sense when there's more than the original though since they'd cluster in a small area of the dungeon.
why, did you make mhp cap, I mean, I could get around 100 mhp, if no cap
good game tho I really like it
and can you do something with shields if its more that 40, they just off my screen, and i can't see how much i got, but I guess around 80
Good iterating on one of the best games ever made. The end levels have this weird difficulty issue where it's super tedious and probably too easy with items but with Ascetic it's so insane that it requires a hundred restarts to get the proper starting RNG. Overall though a worthy and well-designed successor for people who want more Dragonsweeper.
Hey thanks for playing! The kind words mean a lot :)
Yeah I agree there's a weird dichotomy with the later levels potentially being so much easier than the start because of the items. In general they seem to be too strong but they make the game feel different. In the end I wanted them to make you feel powerful but then some of the challenge goes away for sure.
If there was a way to force landscape mode for this, that’d be great. That or if it could detect portrait mode and change the UI to fit accordingly. Just a suggestion.
You mean on mobile? I thought I had forced landscape... maybe there's a setting missing
Maybe it’s my problem, but I have to keep my phone rotated in landscape mode so if it even slightly goes more vertical the whole orientation changes and the level resets or sometimes the game crashes.
I am not sure why, but I am on the second level of the Ranger (10x13 grid). I have completed this level twice, once even completing the 3rd level too, but it keeps resetting to make me complete the 2nd level again. Just mentioning so you can look into it.
Definitely enjoying this version. Great job.
otherwise good but last level doesnt fit on screen
I added a tutorial for that, but maybe it's not obvious. You are supposed to scroll the dungeon by dragging outside it from the top/bottom
Are you working on android? Would love it. I play the game daily.
Last update is nice.
Good work!
Yeah there's an apk you can download but the performance is not quite there. Towards the end of the game the menus seem to freak out. Would love any reports on your device and how it performs for you as I only have my phone :)
Yeah gotta rework the slot stuff, not intuitive. just lost a last level ritualist that I usually play just for fun
Start Game -> [Slot 1 - Ritualist DG5] - [Slot 2 - New Game]
[clear] [continue] - [start]
Do you mean the save/load? Because there are no "slots" right now, it's just one save that you can load back into if you didn't finish the run. Slots is something we can add, perhaps!
yes, having options 1 and 2 gave me that impression. now it only shows New Game, and doesnt have the load game option anymore, perhaps was overwritten. previously I could load the game any day and play the last level to the end, it kept the last level state. having only New Game and Load Game, no 1 and 2, like before, would also work
Ah I see the confusion. The number is actually a "skip to this level" button, not a save slot system. Hmmm I wonder how we can make that more clear.
Can you display the dungeon level?
In the library, the dragon will describe which level he is guarding.
MAKE A MAIN MENU BUTTON IN THE SETTINGS MENU OF THE DUNGEON PLEASE
you can alternatively just click outside the menu.
Sure thing
I'm used to the icons covering the tiles in the rightmost column. But this time I could not even identify the last digit of the twentysomething:
Either the margin or padding on the right side should be a larger or the icons should be smaller.
Thank you!
BTW: I increased browser scaling to 120% or 133%.
It's a good concept to expand upon, but I seriously hope that there will actually be human-made visuals added soon, I just feel a bit icky playing anything with AI generated assets...
Hey thanks for playing. I'm not an artist and I'd rather make games/systems than make art. IMO nothing wrong with gen AI assets for little free games like this, especially when it's explicitly stated.
ah, crap
Master Matchmaker seems broken
I'll take a look, thanks
I just finished shopping and now there's no dungeon to sweep anymore. Even if I reload the page and choose "Load game", I will see the banners for each of my items but no dungeon.
I've read the comment with the abacus but I don't have one.
See my list of items in the inventory.
happens to me, too.
If you can provide the item list you have, or a crash report log that would be helpful to track down the issue!
I think it happens when i spent exactly all my gold.
idk how to get a crah report log.
Edit: happened again, with money left. idk
Interesting... this is definitely a bug occurring with some item combination. Your current list doesn't show anything too obvious of a problem -- I'll try to recreate it, thanks for the report.
THIS IS AMAZING! For months I was waiting for additional features and updates to Dragonsweeper! THANK YOU for doing this!
No problem! Please leave me suggestions if you have any :)
will there be plans to make a downloadable version?
Oh yeah I guess I never figured of making a PC build. I can do that soon, shouldn't be a big issue other than saves. I might want to make a save export/import first!