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Welcome to DungeonSweeper!

Capsule Art by Trejo Israel

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 recreation of DragonSweeper by danielben. Played the living crap out of that game and wanted more. So Christian and George made DungeonSweeper to push this formula further in a roguelike manner. What would you want to see added?


Features

5 Dungeons of roguelike Minesweeper action! 

19 (+3) Classes! Choose your starting class for each run!

100+ Items to customize your run!

150+ Achievements to fully master the game!

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One generic question, is there always a way to do a next move with reasoning (which I frequently don't see) or do you actually have to gamble sometimes?

Also, I've beaten the last level (I think?) with the adventurer. It was the level where the popup about scrolling first appeared. Is that the last level? Because after that the 'Load Game' button was gone. 

Also, the shop is not available after that run ends?

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I find that most of the time you can deduce some level of information to make an educated 'safe' guess. I'd say part of the game is managing 'safe' exploration to find the bonus items like chests, heals, etc. I will say that there is a tendency for the start of a dungeon to be the most RNG prone, where a bad generation could cause you to have limited options which halts progress sooner.

Yes, the large level (where you scroll) is the final level of the rogue-like. I was considering adding more but I felt like item builds were getting so good by that point that making more levels would be counter-productive to their difficulty curve. Instead, I opted to create challenges, and specifically the DungeonSweeper+++ set of challenges to amp up the difficulty/gameplay.

Awesome, thanks for confirming, I feel a bit less unqualified now ;-) I find myself restarting frequently at the start, whereas as you progress further, it becomes more deductive, like you said indeed.

What do the different colors of numbers mean? They resemble a certain creature type, right? But, what does a rat with a 1 in gradient from yellow to purple mean? I seem to miss a lot of rules making it a large part luck if I make the harder levels or not.

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Different colors are just for different numbers themselves. The game used to have all the numbers one color which you can still do in the options menu. The exception is yellow/turquoise/purple -- these colors signify an 'obscuring' enemy would have affected it had it not been revealed (usually showing a ?). When they are blended it means more than one enemy is affecting that specific tile. Yellow/Purple means there's a horizontal source and a radial source both affecting it.

90% of the enemies have a requirement for where they spawn. I'd say part of the fun of the game is learning these 'hidden' rules and using them to your advantage. There's some hints in the descriptions but some things are left to the user to discern. When you lose, take a peek at the board and try to reason some out. For example, a pair of Lovers are always facing each other on the same row.

Ah, right, thanks for the answer! And I indeed agree with you, it's fun to figure out all those interactions yourself. Some of them I already figured out indeed, which gives you a nice "aha!" moment :-) 

A different question btw, putting it here to make it easier to not spoil it for others. But why can't I kill the Elemental here? It gives the 'error beep' when I click it.

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Looks like a bug... similar to the same thing with the Balrog. By any chance did you mark this tile with a flag or ? at some point? 

Didn't encounter or read about the Balrog bug, but it might be that I flagged it as '200' early game (when it was still at 20 health), but I'm not entirely sure.

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Really love the game but the AI art is pretty distracting and terrible. Wish you could get a real artist involved to help the quality of the art match the quality of the gameplay!

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I feel ya, I wish too. Maybe I can spend a few years trying to learn how to draw myself but that probably isn't fast enough! Haha. Thanks for playing

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Aren't there other people on earth who draw too?

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Of course! And if I can find someone who's down to collaborate then perhaps this game can get a fresh coat. That's why I said I wish too :)

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Love the game ***** 
(except the graphique) maybe lookink for more replayability (the different classe feel the same) try to make them more unic.

Like your game so far! It's addictive. I was wondering though, is it purely thinking / strategy to win a game? Or is there also luck involved? 

And a suggestion: Enable marking of tiles with keyboard would save some clicks. E.g. press 'R' to mark a Red Flag on the highlighted tile, etc ...

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Thanks for the suggestion! You can already use CTRL+Left click to mark as tiles, but I do like the idea you can fast mark with numbers or letters.

There are definitely some board generations that are 'easier' so there is a bit of luck, but I'd say there is more skill/maths that can get you through to the end than not. There's a lot of patterns that let you make good choices, just got to look for em!

Really fun variant on minesweeper. Just thought I'd take a quick look, and it's been a few hours. Nice work!

Nice, hope you had fun. Thanks for playing!

WOOOOO!! That's awesome!!! Congrats :)

Thanks!  I read your 1.7 notes.  You fixed the balrog bug?  Well done.

Looks like there was a challenge impossible bug that casts doubt on my own achievement, too.  Heh, I may be tempted to play it through again...

Yeah the bug was that it should only trigger when doing the DungeonSweeper+++ challenge with the Ascetic, but it was possible to get it to happen without the challenge. Feel free to go at it again if you didn't do that DungeonSweeper+++ one :)

I've spotted an inconsistency: Why can I click a field marked with 200 but I cannot click a field marked with 300? The latter is protected like a field with a flag. Flagged tiles are unclickable is enabled.

My expectation would be that the 200 should not be clickable either given the fact that it represents an ubermine.

That's fair, I'll write it down for next patch. Thanks

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I appreciate the credit to Dragonsweeper! Having stumbled across both separately, I was wondering about the similarity

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Of course! I loved that game so much I had to spread the word. I wanted more so this game was born! haha. Happy sweeping :)

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Having trouble loading the game this morning, saw there is a recent update so maybe something is wrong? Great game love playing it!

Same here.  Got a black screen with a unity logo, as expected.  But the progress bar beneath it is empty and stays that way.

Yup, same problem as me exactly

Odd! I came back and saw the same thing -- simply reuploaded the build and it works again. Sorry about that! Happy sweeping :)

Thanks! Works fine for me now as well :)

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Great game but your character doesn't say his name when pressed upon. -1 for no "JORGE".

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This game is phenomenal. I just lost like 2 hours in the blink of an eye, and that never happens to me

Heya Christian, I've been playing the Flagellation Challenge.  The number of sacrificial whips is correct now, thanks!  

A couple of things:  I was able to destroy Balrogs with Rain of Fire, but I was not able to collect the experience reward afterward.  They just remained as Balrogs with a red X and a numerical experience value  over them.  Clicking them did nothing.  This happened 3 times, each with different Rain of Fire spells.  In the initial case, the Balrog was the last remaining enemy (so the Rain of Fire only had one enemy available to kill rather than 3).  The following Balrogs were on the next level.

Also, the game gave me a lot of healing potions.  The second dungeon started me with 3, the third gave me 6, the fourth 9, and the last 12.  Maybe some item was meant to start me with a healing potion and they kept stacking.  Unsure if you intended this.

I played the first dungeon of the challenge before your last update, and the other four afterwards.  Just mentioning in case that had some effect.  Excellent game, thanks.

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Hmm, Balrog issue is so odd I can't get it to happen in my test environment, but I'll make an extra note to keep an eye on it. Are you ever able to collect the Balrog's reward? Quite sad if it blocks the achievement too (might be related). Do you have the achievement already?

Edit: I tried reproducing the bug in editor and in the web build but I can get the 10 XP no problem. Any more info on  how you get it to occur would be helpful!

Ahh, the potions are probably a side-effect on how I'm loading back in the 3 whips (they give potions). I'll take a look at that too. Thanks a lot for the bug reports, it helps out!

Yes, in the past, I have been able to collect the reward.  I've had the balrog achievement for some time.

I just played through the elite enemies challenge.  At the end of dungeon 4, I was able to kill a single balrog (it was the only creature left) and collect the experience.  At the end of level 5, two balrogs remained.  A single Rain of Fire killed both.  I was able to collect one, but not the other.  When I try to collect the second, a buzzer noise plays.  I tried several times, cast Rain of Fire again, etc.  No success.

I *think* that I had revealed the collectible balrog with a bloodrose potion, and that the uncollectible balrog was just a square I had marked 300.  So that may be worth checking.

I checked the enemy list scroll and it showed x1 balrog.  This screenshot shows the uncollectible one

Here's a list of what I was carrying at the time of the error:

2 bloodrose potions, 1 rain of fire, 1 dice, 1 nature's sight, 1 bounty

2 lunar pin, 1 copper coin, 1 credit card, 1 vampire fangs, 1 egg, 5 gold coin, 1 fairie bait, 1 topaz amulet, 1 claymancy, 1 superior flute, 1 lich detector, 1 abacus, 3 silver coin, 1 reroll card, 2 chest detector, 1 gloves of healing, 1 treasure map, 1 candle, 1 bat bait, 1 meat grinder, 1 rat detector, 1 wishing well, 1 brick detector, 2 lantern, 1 crystal ball, 1 campfire, 1 pickaxe, 1 spiritual tattoos

I was wrong about the possible bloodrose potion / balrog connection.  Just ended a the final challenge with 3 balrogs, two had been revealed with bloodrose, one I'd simply marked 300.  Cast Rain of Fire and I couldn't claim experience from any of them.

Numbers written in black are difficult to read (the black border on the number makes them wide and fuzzy).  200 and 300 are easy, but 600, 800, and 900 all look pretty similar.

I've enjoyed your game.  Thanks again!

Um, yes. Really hard to read.




I just experienced the same in regular gameplay, fortune teller in the last level. No challenge, no sacrifical whip.

After killing the balrogs with rain of fire, I could not collect the reward. In the past it was working.

I'm not going to say this is peak, but this game f**ks. Like, this is real as hell. The only recommendation I have is keybinds. It is tedious to move all the way down to the character portrait to level up every single level, of which some boards has dozens. Maybe even a courser that can move around the map with the arrow keys or WASD. But as far as content, this is amazing, especially for a free game. So much to do and see, achievements to hunt, it has everything. We are eating with this one. Thank you for making it.

Thanks for playing :)

The three sacrificial whips in a challenge become one sacrificial whip on the second level of the challenge.  I did stop after the first level and load the second level later-- unsure if this is relevant.

Good find -- definitely not intended. I'll write it up and look into it, thanks :) 

Can't play the first level can't progress passed character screen

Hopefully the new update helped! 

Hello. The game looks broken since today. It can’t completely retrieve my saved progression.

Since recently, the game is able to adapt the language to my locale (my browser is in French). But it can’t show the achivements and the challenge I already did. I put the game back in English, but it did not change anything.

I’m a bit sad. I love this game and made lots of progress on it, but for the moment, I can’t continue.

The game is able to retrieve my whole progression when I have a current game in progress.

So, the current process is to start a simple game on level 1 with any character, quickly finish the level, then go back to the main menu.

Then you see all the achivements, challenges, etc.

That’s not very convenient but at least it allows me to continue playing.

Same error here, same fix.  Thanks.

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Dang, sorry! Weird bug, it seems to only happen on WebGL builds. I can recreate it. It seems to happen on first load of the game. Your workaround works; you can simply lose the game and go back for now

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A bug report:
When I use fireball on more than one Balrog, usually one or two of the golds left by Balrogs cannot be collected.

Fascinating bug, not sure why that would happen... thanks for the report, I'll look into it

During the challenge "Potion Overdose" I'd like to mark fields with a value between 10 and 20 (12 in my case) but the menu does not offer any suitable values. It's only 1 to 10, 200 and the flags and question marks. Before the latest update, all the values of the present enemies were available.


But I like the redesigned of the numbers. Readability has been improved a lot for me.

Oh that's really odd -- they should all be there. I'll look into it, thanks for the report

Just tried today: The field below the 126 is a Firelord, worth 20. But there's no 20 available for marking.

Good catch, need to add the 20 entry 

Interesting update. You want to keep us playing, hm?

Observation during "Oops, all beasts!" challenge: Clicking the first blood moon uncovered _all_ werewolves of the level, not only the "disarmed" ones related to the clicked blood moon. Is this intended?

Good eye! Ideally I would want the ones that it spawned to be revealed, not all, but the way I've coded it makes it difficult. It's definitely in my notes to change.

I'm still really enjoying this game!  I just keep playing it.

I did discover what I think is a bug, and also a typo.

Bug: the "Menu" for collecting "ingredients" seems to break if the next item it wants is the firefly, and you instead take out the firelord.  Once you do that, it seems that the "Menu" no longer recognizes the firefly, and won't accept it, or move on to another "ingredient".

Typo: In the Achievements the Novice Ascetic says to defeat the third dungeon, when it should say the first dungeon.  And the Intermediate Ascetic says to complete the fourth dungeon when it should say the second.

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Thanks for playing! An update is coming soon (in a few weeks, maybe?) to add a bit more content/ways to play so I hope you stick around for that.

Ah that's a good callout. It's a 'bug' in the sense that I didn't think of the scenario. I'll have to add some code to check for this, essentially the fireflies turn into another enemy entry, so you're stuck with the old one that no longer exists in the dungeon. Ideally this shouldn't happen, but technically 'working as intended' haha. I'll make a note for myself, thanks. This probably happens with Bounty Board as well.

And thanks for the achievement typos -- dangerous of copy-pasting data!

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Please do yourself a favor and review the sight effects, both revealing and obscuring ones. The point of this game should be the minesweeper aspect – ie figuring out whether the next step is safe or not. By offering too many reveal options, this is subverted into a boring counting exercise. By using too many obscuring options, you effectively create walls which the player cannot progress through safely. 


In the original game, the kraken enemy worked because you could pinpoint its position reasonably quickly and snipe it safely. Your obscuring enemies are both too varied, too frequent and in the case of the cyclops, too far away to find them naturally. I'd also say too strong in terms of HP, but as a seasoned Dragonsweeper player, I found the various shop items overpowered, to the point of letting me finish the final level with some 10-15 healing items left over. 

Or to rephrase it: minesweeper and dragonsweeper are puzzle games. The entire thrill about puzzle games is that you have to think carefully before making your moves. Designing a roguelike around this which reduces the difficulty through purchasable items is misguided; you won't make a Sudoku master happy by allowing them to make the puzzle easier, instead, you'd make them happy by providing new and interesting constraints they have to work with. 

As it is now, this game has Plants vs Zombies 2 vibes: while the core gameplay works, none of the added features really add to the experience, the opposite, in fact. As a result, this game is more boring and annoying than its predecessor.

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Thanks for the thoughtful comment. The next thing I would like to try is changing the contents of the dungeon and potentially the layout, to create new 'puzzles' instead of relying on items to change the experience since I do think items are too strong overall. Maybe limiting items in general to give have a more curated experience. Have you tried beating the game as the Ascetic? 

I agree with the sentiment that there was a bit too much obscuring going on. I have since changed the cyclops to 8 power and only obscure 8 tiles away. The 12 powered stone watcher has since replaced the cyclops role and is limited to higher level dungeons. We have also updated the obscure effect to be multi-colored so it's easier to identify where and which obscure enemy is nearby!

Not everyone is a hard core minesweeper logician and items are trying to cater to those people. We have gradually toned down items and made them more expensive. If you think the game is too boring and easy we have since added some challenge modes. Can you beat the game with the ascetic on DungeonSweeper+++?

Speaking of inventory: I noticed that potions do not really stack. Sometimes I have 2 yellow potions and another 2 yellows etc. Why not use one slot with 4 yellows?
Is this maybe caused by buying the potions at different prices?

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Mostly because I didn't originally make the code very well for stacking. I could spend some time refactoring to allow this for potions -- mainly because they get refilled by the fairy fountain so I'd have to make sure that works. I'll put it higher on my list though, I've heard this feedback a few times now.

Cheers, thanks for playing!

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For the record: Points stack properly now.

In one of the recent releases, you changed that the inventory closes after using a consumable.

Suggestion: Revert it or make it configurable. If you are in a later level and have several e.g. potions that you want to apply, you need to enter inventory again after using each potion. That's inconvenient.

That's fair -- I have it setup so that each item can determine to do that or not. I can add an option to override the default, but can you tell me which ones you use and expect to not close? I think right now it's only the ones that reveal stuff (so you can see it revealed).

Oops, I forgot to answer this one.

Yes, it's mostly noticable with the reveal potions. Personally, I do not care for what has been revealed with each potion individually. If I have five of them, I just want to see what has been revealed in total.

Fair enough -- It's been reverted for the majority of items, but there are some I've kept it for like Mass Teleportation or Polymorph

Thank you! This game made my day! A good version of the Dragonsweeper game with more to do and levels! Congrats. 

Thanks for playing! :) 

Item idea: Lucky 7: Revealing or updating a tile's value to 7 regains 1 HP.

Also, as it is the last level is way too easy as not the ascetic, and also honestly probably too big. Maybe the compromise would be to make it smaller to make it harder for non-ascetic?

Oh I like the idea of playing with 'lucky 7'. And yeah, right now I agree the last level is basically a victory lap of your run. Perhaps a rebalance is necessary as you said, reduce size and increase average monster value... I'll try some stuff out

I like that the last level is bigger than the previous ones. 

If you reduce the size and rebalance, this would be fine as well. Maybe 2/3 of the current size?

I managed to get all achievements - except one: Ascendant Ascetic.


Did anybody manage to beat level 5 as an ascetic? It's so hard...

No, I have gotten about half way but still can't 

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It's definitely the hardest one. Requires a good amount of luck in finding hearts/chests early, if I'm honest. I've only ever done it once to make sure it was feasible (not just mathematically possible, which I calculate on every level).

Also, if you've gotten everything else, wow! Thanks for playing so much it means a lot

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If you are taking requests, I would appreciate if the bug that crawls across the screen was either squishable or able to be turned off. 

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Haha, it's actually an artifact from the transition. I can definitely fix this, I keep forgetting about it. Thanks for the reminder.

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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?"

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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?"

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Interesting to see your take on dragonsweeper, it's definitely a cool concept to extend the gameplay like this! Also cool to see such an active community around your game. On the AI note, have you considered using some of the free game asset packs from other developers on Itch if you do not want / are not able to create art yourself? There's a huge variety, and you would be supporting other developers' creative work in the process, rather than supporting AI. Here's a link to assets tagged as free and pixel art as an example https://itch.io/game-assets/free/tag-no-ai/tag-pixel-art (edited my reply to add the no-ai tag to that url too!)

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Thanks for playing and for the actual constructive take on the AI use. I should say that I would LOVE to have real art instead. The main issue is that even with asset packs, it's hard (near impossible) to completely source art that I need so that it's all a relatively consistent style across the entire game. The ideal scenario is I find someone who can create it as a free/revshare contributor, as I work on this mostly for fun myself. I understand the reality, though, that I can't ask for so much time commitment like that of a stranger.

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People are already talking about this project as an ai slop version of dragon sweeper. Maybe consider that an inconsistent art style with free packs is still better for reputational reasons. and maybe later on you can either make your own art or find/afford someone who can.

Then they'll call it an asset-flip - you can't win with people on the internet. I'm just trying to make a fun game I enjoy because I played a game that was cool and wanted more.

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?

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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.

Is there a easy way to provide you with the dungeon data how it had been generated?

I understand that this could perfectly used for cheating.

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. 

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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?)

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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!

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Why do an exact copy of Dragonsweeper?  Unambitious.

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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!

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Good response.  Sorry to be disagreeable.

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So there is a level cap?

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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.

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