Good news, everyone! The new enhanced version of Fine Sweeper is now live for everybody who subscribed to the game’s beta channel! (See this post if you want to get into the beta as well). There’s quite a bit of polish missing but I wanted you gals and guys to test the new stuff before the scoreboard reset happens.
Here’s a little video I made just for you in case you don’t feel like reading the next few paragraphs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mdo8c1tg-c
What’s new?
Version 1.2.0.830 introduces a new scoring system (see this announcement for details) where the time it takes you to solve a board factors into your score. In short: The faster you are at finishing a level, the more points you get. Additionally, there’s also a score reward for not placing any flags if you are looking for a challenge.
The other new mechanic is the Bank of Hearts™ (as outlined here). Now you can choose what you want to do with dropped hearts on the playfield:
- Left-click to add it to your extra lives (just like before)
- Right-click to add it to the Bank of Hearts™ that’s displayed in the lower left.
The more hearts you deposit there, the bigger and better your rewards become.
- 3 hearts in the bank give you one heart for free.
- 5 hearts in the bank grant you one SecuriBlast, a safe click on any tile. If it’s a bomb, you lose neither a life nor points.
- for 7 hearts you get a field of 2×2 tiles to securely open.
- 10 hearts grant you an even bigger field for a SecuriBlast, 3×3 tiles. Additionally, you’ll get a heart dropped in the middle.
- A full bank, 15 hearts, lets you safely open a 3×3 field also, additionally all tiles in same row and column as the selected tile get automatically opened or flagged
How does it work?
As soon as you collected enough hearts in the bank, it will spawn the corresponding reward on the top. Just click it there and select a tile you want to apply the effect to. If you change your mind, just right- or middle-click and it returns to the bank. Any selected rewards will also jump back there, when you attempt to safely open tiles that are already opened or on the start of a brand new level.
Why beta?
Because I want to have you folks try it out before the “official” introduction of the new features that will happen concurrently with the scoreboard reset. Also, there is a bit of polish missing on the new features (art, sound, effects) and despite my testing, I can’t guarantee a 100% glitch-free experience with the new features yet.
Beware!
Leaderboards will reset in early March (4th of March 2015) but the game will tell on the title screen when this happens. The leaderboard wipe will also be the moment I push the beta to the default channel, provided everything goes as planned.
Your save game from any version lower than 1.2 will be overwritten once you try to “Resume” your old game, because of internal changes to the save file layout. Saved games from the beta, however, will work with the release version later.