Minesweeper is a game ripe for some roguelike interpretations, and Infinity Sweeper turns it into a roguelike builder. Players are tasked with surviving 16 rounds of minesweeping in increasingly larger playing areas that are filled with additional traps. You can’t use pure Minesweeper logic to survive Infinity Sweeper, and that is where the unique twist comes in.
The goal of Infinity Sweeper is to mark all the safe squares, leaving just the enemy bombs behind. The first stage will be close to the original Minesweeper as you identify the bombs through grid logic and the numbers that pop up to tell you how many bombs are in the eight surrounding squares. At the end of the map, you’ll earn coins, which can be spent on a couple of upgrades. There are permanent upgrades that add points, flip tiles early, or combat traps. Then there are single-use cards that usually change the state of a level or set of tiles. These are useful to nullify traps or seek clarity when you aren’t sure which move is safe. You’ll also have collection cards that alter the grid of the level itself, bring more points, or generate trap fixers.
Traps are the main twist for Infinity Sweeper. They create chaos by adding new rules, mixing up the numbers on the board, hiding tiles from view, or generating new areas. These can be negated by collecting trap fixers, but the proportions are usually so far off that you’ll be left with traps to work around. In normal levels, this isn’t so much of an issue, as you can take your time, but boss levels turn your points into time, and those levels go by quickly. The boss always leaves a new set of traps in its wake that will be added on top of your existing woes, so Infinity Sweeper tries to kill you through cumulative juggling of problems. One thing that makes zero sense is how points are converted to time. It’s inconsistent and opaque, and often makes your score feel completely pointless when thousands of points difference may not give you any extra time.
Opaque is a great descriptor for Infinity Sweeper in general. Whilst the concept itself is fine, nothing is explained. Skills feel isolated and meaningless, and very rarely complement each other. Trying to build any synergy of cards and upgrades is futile because there are only a few slots and so many upgrades being chosen for you at random. They cost a lot of coins, so you’ll often have to prioritise one type of upgrade. I usually abandoned single-use cards as their effects were often so tiny that they felt wasteful to buy. The wiki that shows everything you’ve encountered, both upgrades and traps, doesn’t fully explain the consequences of their choices or what can mitigate them. This often leads to a jumbled, mismatched mess. Add to that the whiplash that, every four levels, a timed boss battle will force panic upon you, and you’ll feel like you are having a very uneven gaming experience.
None of these problems are insurmountable. A decent wiki and a way to guardrail traps and upgrades into some kind of synergy would fix a multitude of sins. Until then, Infinity Sweeper feels like it needs more time in the oven and strong playtesting to make the chaos it’s so desperate to show make sense. There are moments of fun, when the chaos of the traps kicks off like an unhinged machine. It just feels all too often that success is out of your hands and in the luck of the cards and upgrades you’ve been given in the shop. More player agency doesn’t mean timed levels. It means making decisions that support your deck in a roguelike deckbuilder. Let’s hope some post-launch tweaks can improve a neat idea.
Higher Plain Games is part of the Higher Plain Network. If you like what I do, please consider supporting me via Patreon for as little as $1/£1 a month. There are additional perks for supporting me, such as behind-the-scenes content and downloads. You can also share the website or use the affiliate buy now links on reviews. Buying credit from CD Keys using my affiliate link means I get a couple of pence per sale. All your support will enable me to produce better content, more often. Thank you.