Rotten Egg Mines

Post date: 26-Aug-2016 22:06:21

Game By: Jari Komppa

Reviewed by: Simon Ferré

In this entry into the Keyword Challenge, which incidentally was received in early June after I hadn't provided a deadline for the challenge (I extended the deadline until the end of June), Jari has created a version of Minesweeper. His loading screen is quite simple:

Once the game has finished loading, you are presented with a pixelated and garishly coloured view of a ZX Spectrum keyboard. As the keyboard shown is the original rubber keyed Speccy, finding the right key and pressing it on a Plus, 128 or an emulator may cause you a few problems. The game might be better viewed on an old fashioned black and white telly:

Now the game starts. The bottom two lines of the screen show you information and I suppose the dots are some sort of time limit thing. There are only rudimentary instructions provided, and it is up to you to press various keys on your keyboard to reveal how many mines are adjacent to the key you have pressed. There are some rather enjoyable sound effects provided in the game. In true minesweeper fashion, you are told how many mines are adjacent, but here the definition of adjacent may have been relaxed a little. It is pretty hard to tell in what way the numbers relate to surrounding keys.

I'm a really good player of standard minesweeper, generally beating it most times. I even used to play a hexagonal version that was available in the days of Windows 3.11 and Windows 95. In this case, however, I failed to clear a single (key)board. The first of the two numbers below the 'keyboard' increment every time you choose a key, but (in the screenshot above) it doesn't really make it clear what the 34 represents. This number changes every time you restart too.

Once you do hit a mine, the attributes of the pixelated spectrum keyboard shimmer about, which is a quite nice effect, accompanied by more sound effects. Then you are back to an empty keyboard ready to have another go. There really isn't much more to say, other than it's a good idea. I haven't found the REM keyword in the BASIC portion of the listing, which is protected so I cannot LIST it properly, so it may have to be disqualified from the Keyword Challenge. Them's the rules, I'm afraid.

In a followup email from Jari it mentioned that he had found a bug, but it was "not critical". I'd be interested to find out what the bug is.

Anyway, it's quite good. Yes, there seems to be a few minor issues, but I'm it shows promise.

Score: 00h out of AAh