Ahhhh, I did misunderstand the scenario. Makes much more sense now


I agree, the defuse-the-mines idea would take some work to make it interesting, but I think it could have a lot of potential. Lode Runner sounded pretty darn easy on the face of it, but that was one of the most incredibly complex games I think I''ve ever played.

"real-life" minesweeper.
there could be more than one mine in a grid square,

or what if there are several different types of mines? ones

which could only be manually diffused,

ones which DON''T explode when other mines are exploded (so you don''t know if the area IS clear? however, wouldn''t your metal detector tell you one was there?)

Ones which explode with a wider shrapnel radius? (if there is shrapnel how about providing cover?)

Ones that have to be found with your knife? (ie. plastic) this would slow the game pace down.

From sourceforge.net: Mines-Perfect not only has a feature that guarantees that when you have to guess you never guess wrong, and a feature that guarantees that when you guess wildly when you don''t need to you guess wrong, also comes with assorted unconventional boards (tesselated triangles, hexagons, pentagons (irregular), 3D grid, assorted other irregular tilings)

A different variant a friend wrote played on a conventional grid. Uncovering a non-mine square earns cash to the face value of the square. Cash can be used to purchase various civilians who then wander around the grid until they hit a mine or escape. If you uncover a mine square, then your cash is set back to zero. Points are scored every time a civilian gets blown up. Civilians are: Small Child (250) which reveals a single mine; Fat Man (500) which clears a two square radius crater around his death (as the Civilization city radius); School Bus (1000) clears a single square but adds 20 children to the surrounding squares (same area as Fat Man uses); Ice Cream Van (2000) only clears a single square, but whilst on the grid, it attracts children and fat men who appearon the edge of the grid and move in straight lines towards the van (when the van explodes/escapes, any remaining civilians revert to random motion)