Maybe lean into some of the metal gear solid dialogue by having a long back and forth about "What's a mine?" "What do you mean 'mark a mine'?" "How do I know when I'm done?" etc.
I really enjoy this trope. The "Zelda Ocarina of Time if it were a modern game" series has the MGS style discussion, and the whole series is incredible.
Unreal Engine and the Epic Games Store have nothing to do with each other really.
You can get some royalty fee's reduced by launching on Epic Games Store but that's it.
Most Unreal Engine games are distributed by Steam.
ALSO, fun fact while we're here.. to display the Unreal Engine logo on startup you're supposed to ask Epic Games for permission; but since it's the default project splash screen (meant to be replaced) people just assume that they want the publicity and that it's part of using the engine- Epic doesn't feel like enforcing this because they don't see the point.
So, feel free to remove it, and if you see it, just know that the developers very likely didn't read the agreement they signed when they started using the Engine :)
Source: the last unreal engine technical advisory board in Stockholm; I too didn't read this from the agreement ...
Does anyone know if the voices are AI-generated? I was a little surprised; I don't think I would have questioned it if I heard them in a real game or video but since this seems to basically be a joke, I'm doubtful real voice actors were used.
36 goddamn seconds, mere moments are waking and, for what?! stabbed in the back again. i knew she wasn't good for it, why didn't i trust my instincts. all those people, so many goddamn people, and now this?! i ain't sweeping no more, i'm out.
Heck yeah, it was great. But OMG the captions over the bottom of the play area almost drove me nuts! Still, it's quite a piece of art, even if I don't really understand it (typical).
I was angry at the wasted 30 seconds of opening licensed 3rd party software listings, but I stayed through to the end of the credits roll, laughing until I cried.
I think the opening logo sequence is too short. Also it's missing agreement to 2-3 EULAs that you have to scroll down all the way for the accept button to get enabled. And the epilepsy warning. And the disclaimer that it's all a work of fiction.
That will be coming in the first DLC in a few months, delayed because it is being developed by a new team after the original development studio was bought by Activision, retasked to making a mobile solitaire game, then laid off.
The yellow diamond is nice but what if I don't notice the diamond? I need a colored scent trail leading from my cursor to the yellow diamond, and a pinging noise when my cursor is near a mine
it took me an hour to realize that i needed to double click to start the game. i tried switching browsers, using a vpn/proxy, turning off ublock... nothing helped...
This is minesweeper 33. I'n out sweeping mines and I ran across one that looks different than the others. I'll keep investigating while mine sweeping. I'm recording this 30 second clip onto an entire recording device with a 64gb SD card. I'll leave it on this rock for others to find. Don't worry, I have 11 other devices to record my short messages. Wait, the mine, it's glowing! I can't--
Is it always wrong when it says "I think there's a mine here"? It seemed to to me on my playthough...
[edit]
Oh, it says "I think there's a mine here" when you mark a location, but the yellow-diamond is "click here because there's no mines" it's not related to what is being said.
That was a great parody, but how much of those effects still worked even though you knew it was coming? The fade ins, blurring the outsides, the emotional voice talking to you... it definitely raised my interest more than just opening minesweeper!
I mean, it doesn't last very long without something else going on, but there is a reason.
> That was a great parody, but how much of those effects still worked even though you knew it was coming? The fade ins, blurring the outsides, the emotional voice talking to you...
Worked?
The game takes a very long time to load. This is funny, but not desirable in an actual game.
There is voiceover dialogue as you start. You can listen to it, but at some point you'll want to start playing the game.
There is an indicator telling you which square to clear next. I ignored this for several reasons:
- I want to know if you're compelled to follow it (you aren't);
- It's pointing to the wrong square;¹
- Following it would defeat the entire purpose of playing the game.
Dialogue continues as you play. But you can't listen to it because your mind is occupied. Following the indicator would solve that problem...
¹ There is a game you can find called Hexcells that is supposed to be an "improved" version of minesweeper. The "improvements" are two:
1. It's a hex grid, not a square grid.
2. In general, there is only one hex known to be clear at any given time. This means that the structure of the game is that you mindlessly reveal whichever tile you just gained information about rather than suffering under any obligation to think about what you can tell from the board.
I'm not sure why this was supposed to be an improvement; the only effect is to remove the entire puzzle aspect from a puzzle game. But hey, Steam reviews are "overwhelmingly positive". https://store.steampowered.com/app/265890/Hexcells/
>First, the game takes a very long time to load. This is funny, but not desirable in an actual game.
In unrealistic fashion, you can in fact mash through the license logos once you load in. So thr game itself doesn't actually take long at all to boot up on a technical level; the delays were a design choice.
> In general, there is only one hex known to be clear at any given time. This means that the structure of the game is that you mindlessly reveal whichever tile you just gained information about rather than suffering under any obligation to think about what you can tell from the board.
That is not remotely an accurate description of Hexcells. Either you didn't play it, or you didn't play it more than the early levels. In Hexcells, you do not just have info on the tiles, but also along rows of hexes (telling you how many are in that row, and sometimes if they are contiguous or separate), as well as some hexes which tell you how many tiles you need to flag in a radius around them. It is fairly common that you need to combine multiple pieces of information about the board state in order to deduce what the next move is, with some of the later puzzles being so complicated at points that you practically have to bust out pencil and paper to work through the logic.
And all of that, while interesting, is not the improvement of Hexcells over Minesweeper (nor are the hexagon cells). The improvement is that you never, ever have to guess blindly and have the game tell you if you were wrong. Every puzzle can be worked out through sheer logic, though some do require you to guess at a hypothesis and then do a long chain of logic to prove or disprove if that would be a valid move (kind of like sudoku puzzles often do). The expanded mechanics are interesting too, but just the fact that you don't ever have to guess blindly is a massive improvement.
You need to add achievements/trophies! Definitely need to achieve a trophy for clicking on the very first square, finding the first mine, your first flag, etc.
Felix Varga and Johanna Kowalski (Online Services Engineers) must have done a really good job - with all the traffic from the HN front page login servers didn't go down and queue was almost instant.
I'm curious which TTS model was used for the "Nora" voice. I kept noticing vocal artifacts in her speech disfluencies. Which bothers me more than it probably should...
So good.
Maybe lean into some of the metal gear solid dialogue by having a long back and forth about "What's a mine?" "What do you mean 'mark a mine'?" "How do I know when I'm done?" etc.
I really enjoy this trope. The "Zelda Ocarina of Time if it were a modern game" series has the MGS style discussion, and the whole series is incredible.
Here is the forest temple video which is a short sample of what to expect: https://youtu.be/KC656o7_zVk
The game 'UnMetal' takes this trope as far as it can be taken. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1203710/UnMetal/
It's probably a bit too far, but nevertheless enjoyable for the comedic effect.
"Sweeper, press the X button to mark a mine."
"X... button?"
"Focus, Sweeper! Sweeper? SWEEPEEEER!"
I liked the triple-a minesweeper better than the windows original. First time i won the game.
Nice but the logos are skippable, which is not realistic.
Also, since it's an Unreal game, it's missing long load times, camera jitter, frame spikes, and dynamic resolution constantly kicking in.
but muh Steam's 30% cut, or something
Unreal Engine and the Epic Games Store have nothing to do with each other really.
You can get some royalty fee's reduced by launching on Epic Games Store but that's it.
Most Unreal Engine games are distributed by Steam.
ALSO, fun fact while we're here.. to display the Unreal Engine logo on startup you're supposed to ask Epic Games for permission; but since it's the default project splash screen (meant to be replaced) people just assume that they want the publicity and that it's part of using the engine- Epic doesn't feel like enforcing this because they don't see the point.
So, feel free to remove it, and if you see it, just know that the developers very likely didn't read the agreement they signed when they started using the Engine :)
Source: the last unreal engine technical advisory board in Stockholm; I too didn't read this from the agreement ...
I wished it was just all into logos and no actual game. That's the real AAA experience.
AAA Mario (1m41s video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMh_APo2Xss
Does anyone know if the voices are AI-generated? I was a little surprised; I don't think I would have questioned it if I heard them in a real game or video but since this seems to basically be a joke, I'm doubtful real voice actors were used.
they definitely sound ai generated yeah
The frontier of voice synth has reached roughly human parity. It’s also very inexpensive.
I’d be shocked if we don’t have mainstream games with AI voices soon.
There is also the classic "Minesweeper - The Movie"[1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHY8NKj3RKs
36 goddamn seconds, mere moments are waking and, for what?! stabbed in the back again. i knew she wasn't good for it, why didn't i trust my instincts. all those people, so many goddamn people, and now this?! i ain't sweeping no more, i'm out.
I'd buy it just to learn what happened in Singapore.
Heck yeah, it was great. But OMG the captions over the bottom of the play area almost drove me nuts! Still, it's quite a piece of art, even if I don't really understand it (typical).
But I didn't need to install a publisher specific launcher to run it.
And then be forced to download a 42GiB update.
And accept telemetry and marketing!
I was hoping for the thing where you play through like half of the game and only then it shows you the title against a dramatic vista.
I was angry at the wasted 30 seconds of opening licensed 3rd party software listings, but I stayed through to the end of the credits roll, laughing until I cried.
This is Art.
I think the opening logo sequence is too short. Also it's missing agreement to 2-3 EULAs that you have to scroll down all the way for the accept button to get enabled. And the epilepsy warning. And the disclaimer that it's all a work of fiction.
Failed certification because it didn’t warn you not to turn off when the save icon is spinning.
Also missing the redirect to your browser to connect to Epic Games and create a SweeperPro account with 2FA
I was absolutely hoping to see production babies in the credits. Can’t win ‘em all.
No pets credited either.
So good. Looking forward to level 2 so we can find out what happened in Singapore.
That will be coming in the first DLC in a few months, delayed because it is being developed by a new team after the original development studio was bought by Activision, retasked to making a mobile solitaire game, then laid off.
Missing:
Sidequest to sweep 10 mines.
Achievement after sweeping 5 mines
The yellow diamond is nice but what if I don't notice the diamond? I need a colored scent trail leading from my cursor to the yellow diamond, and a pinging noise when my cursor is near a mine
Mocapped mines
Jack Quaid
$70
Sorry, did you mean Achievement for Starting the Game for the First Time?
"Only 7.89% of gamers unlocked this".
it took me an hour to realize that i needed to double click to start the game. i tried switching browsers, using a vpn/proxy, turning off ublock... nothing helped...
There should be additional audio logs you can find under some squares that provide snippits of backstory.
This is minesweeper 33. I'n out sweeping mines and I ran across one that looks different than the others. I'll keep investigating while mine sweeping. I'm recording this 30 second clip onto an entire recording device with a 64gb SD card. I'll leave it on this rock for others to find. Don't worry, I have 11 other devices to record my short messages. Wait, the mine, it's glowing! I can't--
Those will be in the $50 DLC
Is it always wrong when it says "I think there's a mine here"? It seemed to to me on my playthough...
[edit]
Oh, it says "I think there's a mine here" when you mark a location, but the yellow-diamond is "click here because there's no mines" it's not related to what is being said.
Needs:
- Checkpoints after each mine
- DLC for rounded corners
The DLC is a hat for John Sweeper.
It really does need a store with skins, several kinds of currencies, and loot boxes!
so, in case if you like minesweeper and doom ... https://dreadsweeper.franzai.com/
This was incredibly enjoyable thanks for sharing.
Please expand this into a full open-world minesweeping game
10/10 story. I look forward to the forthcoming motion picture adaptation from Skydance directed by Michael Bay.
After Singapore, there just wasn't any choice.
I like the part where it doesn't even matter if you hit a mine, you are on this train ride regardless of what you do.
Should have done some shader compilation
I love the parody. Is this a treatise on modern game development? I hope so.
the non-stopping narration makes it so hard to actually sweep the mines....
Focus, M.
Don: Sounds like you're getting rusty. The Sweeper I knew in Singapore would never have choked like this from just a little background noise.
i could block that out. the subtitles covering the area were more annoying.
Great parody - very "Focus, M"-esque. Often, it feels that we've lost sight of "If it's not fun, why bother".
That was a great parody, but how much of those effects still worked even though you knew it was coming? The fade ins, blurring the outsides, the emotional voice talking to you... it definitely raised my interest more than just opening minesweeper!
I mean, it doesn't last very long without something else going on, but there is a reason.
> That was a great parody, but how much of those effects still worked even though you knew it was coming? The fade ins, blurring the outsides, the emotional voice talking to you...
Worked?
The game takes a very long time to load. This is funny, but not desirable in an actual game.
There is voiceover dialogue as you start. You can listen to it, but at some point you'll want to start playing the game.
There is an indicator telling you which square to clear next. I ignored this for several reasons:
- I want to know if you're compelled to follow it (you aren't);
- It's pointing to the wrong square;¹
- Following it would defeat the entire purpose of playing the game.
Dialogue continues as you play. But you can't listen to it because your mind is occupied. Following the indicator would solve that problem...
¹ There is a game you can find called Hexcells that is supposed to be an "improved" version of minesweeper. The "improvements" are two:
1. It's a hex grid, not a square grid.
2. In general, there is only one hex known to be clear at any given time. This means that the structure of the game is that you mindlessly reveal whichever tile you just gained information about rather than suffering under any obligation to think about what you can tell from the board.
I'm not sure why this was supposed to be an improvement; the only effect is to remove the entire puzzle aspect from a puzzle game. But hey, Steam reviews are "overwhelmingly positive". https://store.steampowered.com/app/265890/Hexcells/
>First, the game takes a very long time to load. This is funny, but not desirable in an actual game.
In unrealistic fashion, you can in fact mash through the license logos once you load in. So thr game itself doesn't actually take long at all to boot up on a technical level; the delays were a design choice.
> In general, there is only one hex known to be clear at any given time. This means that the structure of the game is that you mindlessly reveal whichever tile you just gained information about rather than suffering under any obligation to think about what you can tell from the board.
That is not remotely an accurate description of Hexcells. Either you didn't play it, or you didn't play it more than the early levels. In Hexcells, you do not just have info on the tiles, but also along rows of hexes (telling you how many are in that row, and sometimes if they are contiguous or separate), as well as some hexes which tell you how many tiles you need to flag in a radius around them. It is fairly common that you need to combine multiple pieces of information about the board state in order to deduce what the next move is, with some of the later puzzles being so complicated at points that you practically have to bust out pencil and paper to work through the logic.
And all of that, while interesting, is not the improvement of Hexcells over Minesweeper (nor are the hexagon cells). The improvement is that you never, ever have to guess blindly and have the game tell you if you were wrong. Every puzzle can be worked out through sheer logic, though some do require you to guess at a hypothesis and then do a long chain of logic to prove or disprove if that would be a valid move (kind of like sudoku puzzles often do). The expanded mechanics are interesting too, but just the fact that you don't ever have to guess blindly is a massive improvement.
What no 30 minute shaders compiling sequence?
No lootboxes?
There aren't even any skins I can buy with my mom's credit card.
It's also missing a tutorial.
Despite all the stuff it's parodying, this is still a lot better than Bomberman: Act Zero.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomberman%3A_Act_Zero
And which half of the staff gets fired day after release?
That's hilarious. Spot on.
You need to add achievements/trophies! Definitely need to achieve a trophy for clicking on the very first square, finding the first mine, your first flag, etc.
Needs an 'always online' requirement
Felix Varga and Johanna Kowalski (Online Services Engineers) must have done a really good job - with all the traffic from the HN front page login servers didn't go down and queue was almost instant.
icymi, we can also do this with Mario https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMh_APo2Xss
Wow the ending credits music was actually pretty awesome
Needs a 128GB RAM, 100GB free disk space requirement.
We need a day-1 patch to align the mines to the center of their tile.
Was expecting Hideo Kojima in the credits.
I need to sweep these mines!
I need to sweep these mines.
Is there a help card? Or, how do you turn off the CC captions? They obscure the bottom of the play field on my Mactop.
Sweep (2026)
Where do I enter my credit card info for the Season Pass and the special operator skin?
Incredible
First time I've laughed out loud at one of these sorts of things in a while...
I was expecting it to open up on some WW2 style battlefield with smoke and explosions, but this was better.
There might be a mine here
I need to sweep these mines!
Ok but like... Kojima vibes. 10/10 best trippppllleee AAYYyyyyy game to come out this year lol
Pac-Man as a Modern AAA Game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaoUVVD-hUc
I should follow those pac-dots...
The ending needed to force you to click on a mine so you die in the cutscene lmao.
This is hilarious
Not even a dlc and cosmetics?
Art
I laughed way way way too hard
Needs Debra Wilson
That was awesome
The part where the subtitles hide the mines is the best for me. Also talk with Ubisoft - they make AAAA games.
Damn I didn't even have to Press Start to begin
omg this is brilliant i was IMMEDIATELY tilting my face off
Made me lol, thanks :D
now add a kernel level rootkit and a monthly subscription which guarantees a set amount of loot-boxes a month.
This is fun.
lol perfect execution. I cracked up with the smiley face lip sync.
Lmao
I'm curious which TTS model was used for the "Nora" voice. I kept noticing vocal artifacts in her speech disfluencies. Which bothers me more than it probably should...