This game taught me a lesson on Hype: Don't follow it, you'll only get dissapointed.

While I still find the combat and world enjoyable, I felt that the player lacked any sort of motivational drive to continue. A wordless narrative is a very tough thing to achieve and it felt like HLD couldn't figure it out. Which resulted in me getting to the credits and just feeling conflicted and bitter. The final encounter lacked any real immediacy and context for the player to chew on. I just defeated it and moved on....

I overhyped the game internally and as such subconsciously imagined and expected a completely, more grandiose experience than the developers were going for. Hype killed HLD for me.

I first started playing Minesweeper in school during the more boring lessons. This pastime activity quickly turned into a destructive habit that let me feel the pain of addiction without having to consume any psychoactive drugs. Every time I am in front of my screen and zoning out just a little bit, I catch myself pressing CTRL + N, typing "min" in the chrome tab, and pressing enter, all in the matter of a split second. Obviously, with this big of a habit, the gameplay changed a lot too. Now it wasn't about solving the minefield, but about doing it as fast as possible. At the time of writing this, my personal highscore lies at 65 seconds (I'll update my current pb's at the end of this review). Such a time isn't possible with logical thinking though. To accomplish such a thing, many possible constellations of colorful numbers and their solutions have to already be engraved in your brain, so you don't have to think about the clicks you're doing. This is the perfect setup for a never-ending flowstate. The only time, I am torn out of this parallel dimension is when my eyes are starting to burn from not blinking for ten minutes.

Overall great game, can't recommend it enough.
However, if your future plans are forming a family and having an actual career, don't even think about touching this game.


Minesweeper Personal Bests

Beginner - 2s (?)
Intermediate - 21s (19.07.2022)
Expert - 53s (15.12.2023)

Expert (No Flag) - 82s (19.07.2022)