Despite slight grind and repetitive play to unlock new stages, minesweeper mechanics are fun enough to get you to the ending.
Your objective is to reach the exit stairs by walking across tiles and avoiding black holes. Gameplay is easy because you only need to take steps across the floor and mark risky tiles. This is accomplished by utilizing minesweeper mechanisms. As you walk, you will either expose multiple tiles because you walked on an empty tile, or a number tile that indicates how many black tiles surround you.
Most are situated right on the path you need to walk on, so you can flag them and make them harmless. If you make a mistake and tread on one, you will lose one of your three hearts. When you lose them all, you will wake up in your room and be forced to restart the entire stage.
Rhythm plays a role during enemy confrontations. All you have to do is watch for arrows and press the button when one lands on one of the four markers. Projectiles come in a variety of types, and some can even heal you or force you to press the opposite button, but precision is not essential. The only difference between "bad" and "perfect" is how much damage you cause.
Your skill level, or lack thereof, is not an issue because the game may be tailored to your preference. Aside from the overall difficulty, which increases the quantity of bombs and room size, you can also adjust the rhythm difficulty, which may be appropriate for people who are not as quick.
Flagging all holes each floor and defeating enemies will earn you the game's cash. This can be used in a shop to purchase one-time items that make life easier. Some of them are keys that unlock chests containing additional money and books that restore a heart. While objects are designed to solve the classic minesweeper problem, this does not always work. There are still too many occasions where you must guess which tiles are safe. This becomes brutally obvious at the highest difficulty level, resulting in impossible scenarios and forcing you to rely on luck.
This feature isn’t very useful because you can find a lot of items all over the stage. Although you can only carry two goods, this is not a major issue because they do not disappear. Accessories are another aspect that is not really useful. While you can only have one equipped, you can fast switch between them to use their effect. Accessories are more like modifiers in that they can make things simpler or harder; for example, you can add or remove an extra heart.
Stages are random, so you can be lucky and locate an exit right away. However, you will still have to clear a few rooms because exits are frequently sealed and require a particular number of stars (a star is awarded for defeating all enemies in an area or flagging all tiles). One annoying bug is that the game changes from full screen to window mode each time you play a new stage. You either have to press Alt-Enter each time, or simply play in window mode.
You are encouraged to clear as many tiles as possible in order to earn rewards. The better you do, the more you will fill the bar, which unlocks new furniture for your room, music, new items that may come in the game, and, most importantly, next worlds.
The game consists of four worlds, with each new world increasing the amount of stages required to complete a world. The reward is a dream sequence that offers more information on the entire story, as well as the world's infinity mode, which allows you to play for as long as you wish or until you run out of hearts.
The grind to open new worlds is the only criticism. Beating a world doesn’t give you enough, so you need to play the infinity mode. Luckily, you can play at the lowest difficulty and quickly clear a floor.
