Finally, the patch for less punishing higher levels is here! Currently, it’s in beta but I will roll it out to the public build as well soon, depending on the feedback.
After the patch notes follows an overview including pretty line diagrams of what was wrong with the release version and what I did to make the new and improved level progression work better.
Patch Notes 1.1.3.49
Changed:
- Completely new level progression algorithm (see announcement below)
- Slightly increased chance of Full Health Container pickup to spawn
Fixed:
- UTF-8 format of Turkish translation (please confirm)
- Incorrect Cyrillic glyphs in font (please confirm)
- "Out of Memory" error (please confirm)
- Mirrored glyph in Spanish font set
- Typo in language key
- eng.json now works properly
Added:
- Expert mode option to custom mode once expert mode has been unlocked by reaching level 30
The “old” Level Progression
[img=http://pixelprophecy.com/games/finesweeper/promo/announcements/2015-06-07-progression-old.png]
(for a bigger view of the images, right-click on it and select "View Image" in Firefox)
The diagram on the top shows the relationship between tiles on and hidden bombs. As it is obvious, around level 40, more than half of tiles would be bombs. At level 83, pretty much every tile is hiding a bomb (minus two because the game reserves one tile for the player’s first click and another for the first guess).
Not good.
More telling, however, is the lower diagram that also depicts the very important tile-to-bomb-ratio of a given level (green line). The algorithm of the release version was pretty simple, just increase the number of bombs by two with each new level. Since after level 10 the board couldn’t grow any further in size (red and yellow lines), the ratio of bombs increased linearly. I thought that Fine Sweeper would be played like an arcade game where at one point the levels got so hard that you would give up. Nothing wrong here, but the fatal flaw was that this happened way too early as you gals and guys pointed out. A big part of Minesweeper games is staying in the flow, and Fine Sweeper wouldn’t quite let you. It got pretty cruel around level 30 and deteriorated to a guessing game.
Considerations for the improved algorithm
To get an idea of how to fix it, I took a closer look at Minesweeper and how they approached difficulty there. The answer lies in the tile-to-bomb-ratio, of course.
Minesweeper’s “Beginner” and “Intermediate” boards both have a tile-to-bomb-ratio of 15.7%, the “Hard” game’s ratio is 20.6%. Applied to the original Fine Sweeper leveling system, it means you had an “intermediate” difficulty on level 6 and level 12 (the difficulty dips after level 1 and level 9). Level 17 would already be “hard” and everything got only worse from there.
People told me that the game lost its fun somewhere between level 25 and level 30, so once the tile-to-bomb-ratio went over 35%, the fun was out. So that was a threshold I wanted to reserve for much higher levels.
The “new” algorithm
[img=http://pixelprophecy.com/games/finesweeper/promo/announcements/2015-06-07-progression-new.png]
One glance already tells you pretty much everything, but still I want to point out a few little tweaks. Most noticeable is that with level 30 the playfield keeps suddenly getting bigger again. “But how?!” I hear you asking. The trick is that with level 30 the “expert mode” gets unlocked which halves the size of tiles. That also makes it possible to create boards that are even a little bigger than the maximum board size of the original Minesweeper.
Most importantly, the tile-to-bomb-ratio stays below 35% until level 66 and should give players a nice challenge as it increases steadily but not steeply with a little fluctuation. Only after level 60 and beyond it picks up linearly again, but the difficulty ramps up not as hard as before.
Since with every ten levels, players start out with an additional heart (plus full health on every 10th level), getting and staying in the flow should be much easier.
You also might notice that I dialed back a little of the maximum item drops per level because you don’t really need them. Still, I slightly increased the chances of a Full Heart Container drop for you achievement hunters. I did not touch anything between level 1 and level 6 because that would spoil the “Need 4 Sweep” achievement, but the following levels are a bit easier before picking up with level 13 again.
In short, Fine Sweeper should feel more rewarding and less cruel. I tested and tweaked it quite a bit to hopefully hit the sweet spot.
What it will change
First and foremost: Hi-scores. I didn’t touch the scoring system, so a hi-score beyond a million points is now possible. With the “old” version, there’s one masochist who bit the bullet and somehow managed to get past level 50, where the tile-to-bomb-ratio is at unforgiving 60%. In the new version, you have this density of bombs on level 91. I don’t expect anybody to make it to level 100, so you will be able to get all the game’s achievements without the impression of playing the lottery.
Please comment on the discussion board at the game hub. Thanks!