Minescape review - you'll still fail eventually
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iOS
| Minescape

Minescape, in keeping with its name, is a quaint little puzzler that seems to amuse as much as it infuriates. Tangled in a web of circles, you need to use the numbers to guide you to a hidden mine’s location before it goes off.

As a puzzler-loving nutcase it's simple to say I assumed I would enjoy this like a cold cider on a hot day but truthfully it was hard-going and way too stressful for such a limited game.

Slowly does it

You start off slow, given 14 seconds per level to complete the first handful of challenges.

14 seconds isn’t long to begin with, and once the complexity of the levels start increasing your time starts decreasing, shifting down from 14 seconds to 13 seconds to 12 and so on.

That doesn't sound too hard, but when you're attempting to choose the correct path in the later levels, having less than 11 seconds makes your brain do weird things.

Minescape performs nicely, until the occasional pop-up ad sends the game into a bit of a fit. While the gameplay may be challenging the simple controls do allow you to concentrate on the tests at hand.

Granted some people will absolutely love the challenge the game presents, but there'll also be some that aren’t cut out for its speed.

Don’t mine me

This quick puzzler could fit onto your list of brain training apps alongside the likes of Sudoku and Word Fit. However it needs a little more flexibility.

The way it stands at the moment, what you see is what you get. Minescape doesn’t offer up any options to alter the gameplay, like extending the time a little or adding difficulty options from the get-go.

It's a simple game that gets really hard really quickly. It'll take a fair few times before you start making any progress at all and even then, with its randomised levels, you’ll still be destined to fail much more than you'd like.

Minescape review - you'll still fail eventually

A somewhat entertaining puzzler with little to offer and lots of headaches to give
Score
Emily Sowden
Emily Sowden
Emily is Pocket Gamer's News Editor and writes about all kinds of game-related things. She needs coffee to function and begrudgingly loves her Switch more than she lets on.