rabbit

I'm really loving Bombe. It's Minesweeper, except you can't mark tiles as mined or clear - you have to write rules to build an autosolver to mark tiles for you. So you can make a rule that says that for a two-tile region with two mines in it, all the tiles should be flagged. Or if there's three tiles with two mines somewhere in there, but a subset of that is two tiles with just one mine in there, you can write a rule to flag the remaining tile.

What's great about it is that all your rules carry over to the next puzzle and are automatically applied. So you're essentially reducing each puzzle to a puzzle that has already been solved. Later levels add more Hexcells-y constraints to the puzzles (e.g. you'll know there are less than 3 mines in a region, but it could still be 0, 1 or 2) to force you to think about what's always going to be true. It's very satisfying when you figure out how to generalise a rule, so that you know that all tiles with such-and-such a property must be mined or clear regardless of how many tiles there are. There are thousands of levels in the demo alone, but once you get going you won't see 90% of them because your autosolver will rip through them. I'm not great at figuring out the formal logic behind things, and I'm doing well enough - I bet people who really understand their Minesweeper theory will tear this game apart.

There's a bit of a learning curve to the interface which might be off-putting. The game starts easy enough that you can just start with making simple rules and work out what the other buttons do as and when you need them, but you might feel like you're fighting the game to do what you want once or twice (if there's a "if size of region equals number of mines in it" condition, I would love to find it someday). Also the game can get visually cluttered once you have a lot of rules and you've learned how to define regions - you might end up crowding puzzles with lots of regions which may have helped in another puzzle, but not here. Also also your Steam display name and how many puzzles you've solved gets put on a leaderboard and I don't think you can opt out, so be warned if you don't want that.

Other than the clunkiness, though, I'm really enjoying Bombe. The demo is very generous (I'm at 4 hours, and about halfway through the puzzles) and once you learn your way around the interface, it's really addictive. I'll bet this is tons of fun if you're good at mathematical logic.

so, hmm. Maybe wait for bug fixes first, actually

I couldn't stay away forever, Bombe is just such a good idea for a game. Apparently you can get variables, and I can't wait to unlock those in 8000 more levels

I'm really loving Bombe. It's Minesweeper, except you can't mark tiles as mined or clear - you have to write rules to build an autosolver to mark tiles for you. So you can make a rule that says that for a two-tile region with two mines in it, all the tiles should be flagged. Or if there's three tiles with two mines somewhere in there, but a subset of that is two tiles with just one mine in there, you can write a rule to flag the remaining tile.

What's great about it is that all your rules carry over to the next puzzle and are automatically applied. So you're essentially reducing each puzzle to a puzzle that has already been solved. Later levels add more Hexcells-y constraints to the puzzles (e.g. you'll know there are less than 3 mines in a region, but it could still be 0, 1 or 2) to force you to think about what's always going to be true. It's very satisfying when you figure out how to generalise a rule, so that you know that all tiles with such-and-such a property must be mined or clear regardless of how many tiles there are. There are thousands of levels in the demo alone, but once you get going you won't see 90% of them because your autosolver will rip through them. I'm not great at figuring out the formal logic behind things, and I'm doing well enough - I bet people who really understand their Minesweeper theory will tear this game apart.

There's a bit of a learning curve to the interface which might be off-putting. The game starts easy enough that you can just start with making simple rules and work out what the other buttons do as and when you need them, but you might feel like you're fighting the game to do what you want once or twice (if there's a "if size of region equals number of mines in it" condition, I would love to find it someday). Also the game can get visually cluttered once you have a lot of rules and you've learned how to define regions - you might end up crowding puzzles with lots of regions which may have helped in another puzzle, but not here. Also also your Steam display name and how many puzzles you've solved gets put on a leaderboard and I don't think you can opt out, so be warned if you don't want that.

Other than the clunkiness, though, I'm really enjoying Bombe. The demo is very generous (I'm at 4 hours, and about halfway through the puzzles) and once you learn your way around the interface, it's really addictive. I'll bet this is tons of fun if you're good at mathematical logic.

so, hmm. Maybe wait for bug fixes first, actually

I'm really loving Bombe. It's Minesweeper, except you can't mark tiles as mined or clear - you have to write rules to build an autosolver to mark tiles for you. So you can make a rule that says that for a two-tile region with two mines in it, all the tiles should be flagged. Or if there's three tiles with two mines somewhere in there, but a subset of that is two tiles with just one mine in there, you can write a rule to flag the remaining tile.

What's great about it is that all your rules carry over to the next puzzle and are automatically applied. So you're essentially reducing each puzzle to a puzzle that has already been solved. Later levels add more Hexcells-y constraints to the puzzles (e.g. you'll know there are less than 3 mines in a region, but it could still be 0, 1 or 2) to force you to think about what's always going to be true. It's very satisfying when you figure out how to generalise a rule, so that you know that all tiles with such-and-such a property must be mined or clear regardless of how many tiles there are. There are thousands of levels in the demo alone, but once you get going you won't see 90% of them because your autosolver will rip through them. I'm not great at figuring out the formal logic behind things, and I'm doing well enough - I bet people who really understand their Minesweeper theory will tear this game apart.

There's a bit of a learning curve to the interface which might be off-putting. The game starts easy enough that you can just start with making simple rules and work out what the other buttons do as and when you need them, but you might feel like you're fighting the game to do what you want once or twice (if there's a "if size of region equals number of mines in it" condition, I would love to find it someday). Also the game can get visually cluttered once you have a lot of rules and you've learned how to define regions - you might end up crowding puzzles with lots of regions which may have helped in another puzzle, but not here. Also also your Steam display name and how many puzzles you've solved gets put on a leaderboard and I don't think you can opt out, so be warned if you don't want that.

Other than the clunkiness, though, I'm really enjoying Bombe. The demo is very generous (I'm at 4 hours, and about halfway through the puzzles) and once you learn your way around the interface, it's really addictive. I'll bet this is tons of fun if you're good at mathematical logic.