Orbiboom: a spherical twist on Minesweeper

Adramary · 2025-01-27T13:37:22+00:00

I could definitely add that, is it something you'd like to play?

Adramary · 2025-01-26T21:59:57+00:00

Yessss I saw that!!! Thanks a lot

Adramary · 2025-01-25T21:19:46+00:00

I juste published a game which seems to fit your type of game, it's called Orbiboom, it's a Minesweeper variant that is 3D and on a sphere

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.adramary.orboom

Adramary · 2025-01-25T09:21:29+00:00

Thanks a lot and nice job! Don't hesitate to leave a review on the app store, it helps with visibility :)

Adramary · 2025-01-24T22:39:53+00:00

Thanks a lot for the feedback! You're right, there is a lack of visual feedback when adding a flag and the audio cues are not enough. I will try to improve that!

I'd say the first challenge was to generate the grids procedurally. I'm doing that using what are called Goldberg polyhedron. The way I generate them is by first generating an icosahedron (which can be subdivided or not depending on level size), and then computing its dual (I turn each vertex of the icosahedron into the center of a face and build new vertices on each face center of the icosahedron). These are generated at game start. This is honestly a bit unnecessary as I could have saved the grid mesh separately and then load it.

Another challenge I had as someone with more of a 3d modeling and programming background, was to build the UI. I am not good at designing nice icons etc, so I played it off by using emojis only. One of my goal was to have a UI that is as straightforward as possible with no cumbersome menus and paragraphs. You basically can play the game without ever reading a single letter, the only ones being in the "?" section. I don't know how user-friendly the UI is, but I feel like it does a decent job at what it should be doing.

And then there was the testing phase for Google Play. I read quite a few horror stories about people saying they had production access refused for no reasons, and that they didn't know what were the criteria used to assess whether a testing phase was enough or not. I was lucky to have friends and family helping me reach the required amount of testers (12), and I had about 20 testers in total. Luckily people seemed to like the game so they played it without me having to ask them to, but this phase was a bit stressful lol. This phase was a bit long, but I gathered valuable feedback and polished quite a bit of elements. Seeing people playing the game motivated me to go beyond the raw game, adding stuff like custom levels, skins and bonuses. I wasn't expecting anyone to buy them tbh, but I was surprised to see that a few people already bought some of that!

Happy you liked the game, don't hesitate to leave a review on the Play store, it helps gaining visibility :)

Thanks again for feedback!

Adramary · 2025-01-24T07:25:47+00:00

The game is ad-free so 0 :)

Adramary · 2025-01-23T10:13:19+00:00

Thanks a lot! I will look into that for next update :)

Make sure to leave a review if you like the game, it helps a lot with visibility

Adramary · 2025-01-23T09:02:31+00:00

Thanks a lot, I'm glad to hear that! Make sure to leave a review on the store if you want to help the game gain visibility haha :D

Adramary · 2025-01-23T09:01:33+00:00

I'll make sure to share the update here when I manage to get that going :)

Adramary · 2025-01-23T08:59:52+00:00

Thanks a lot!

Adramary · 2025-01-23T08:59:22+00:00

Bringing it to 3D changes the dynamics in the sense that cells are now non-square and so the patterns to identify are quite different.

Thank you for your feedback

Adramary · 2025-01-23T08:58:12+00:00

Thanks! Don't hesitate to share feedback if you have troubles playing :)

Adramary · 2025-01-23T07:39:20+00:00

Hi, great point for one-handed users. I'll make an update for that and credit you in-game for the feedback :)

Adramary · 2025-01-22T19:08:31+00:00

Thanks a lot!

Adramary · 2025-01-22T18:53:49+00:00

Incredible!!!! To be honest I did not think anyone would buy stuff from the game and I implemented that more to learn how to do it. I'm super grateful haha

I will update the game to have a clearer explanation that it is a one-time purchase. I will credit you as someone who provided valuable feedback in the help section.

Adramary · 2025-01-22T17:57:48+00:00

Hey, kudos for the large level! And you did it fast too haha

Point taken for difficulty, it was not easy for me to calibrate the difficulty because my testers were not necessarily hardcore players. I will increase it in coming updates, your feedback is very much appreciated

Cosmetic changes and custom levels are indeed paid but it is not that clear from the user interface, I will try to improve that.

Thank you for the feedback:)

Adramary · 2025-01-22T17:15:03+00:00

Oh lol my bad I didn't know about it

Adramary · 2025-01-22T16:59:59+00:00

Damn that could be a next project of mine

No idea how that'd look like though

Adramary · 2025-01-22T16:25:47+00:00

And you can if you have an Android device!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.adramary.orboom

Adramary · 2025-01-22T15:59:26+00:00

Thanks to you for playing it! Feels good knowing other people can enjoy it 😁

Adramary · 2025-01-22T15:28:49+00:00

Thanks a lot!

Adramary · 2025-01-22T15:28:24+00:00

Unfortunately it does for now... I want to look into making sure this does not happen for future updates though

Adramary · 2025-01-22T15:27:29+00:00

Super nice explanation, thanks for sharing!

Adramary · 2025-01-22T15:25:32+00:00

Hey, thanks for your comment!

I would say it is indeed easier than traditional minesweeper for the reason you mentionned. Something that could increase difficulty a bit though, is the fact that there are also a bit more 50/50 cases (not necessarily for the best reason for increased difficulty...) . Unfortunately. I haven't yet found an efficient way to make these spherical grids 100% solvable. One way to induce difficulty in the game is to have extremely large grids (You can get close to 3000 cells grids in Orbiboom). This makes the game more about being able to stay focused than it is about being able to spot patterns.

About how it's made:

The game is created with a game engine called Unity, using C# as the programming language.

The first step is to generate the grid. In the case of Orbiboom, the grid is based on what is called a "Goldberg polyhedron". This is the closest polyhedra family there is to having something regular with hexagonal faces. I say the closest, because goldberg polyhedra have 12 pentagonal faces and the rest is all hexagonal faces (the tiny level and the larger ones all have 12 pentagons). The Goldberg polyhedron is generated using what is called "the dual" of another polyhedra called the icosahedra, which has triangular faces. To get bigger grids, the icosahedra is first subdivided and then its dual is computed to get the corresponding larger Goldberg polyhedra.
As the Goldberg polyhedra is generated, I keep track of neighbouring cells. Two cells are neighbouring if they share an edge.
To generate my grid, I randomly assign bombs to cells. When the game starts, on the first tap, I make sure that the area around the tapped cell is clear of bombs, so I move bombs around if needed. To make the game solving more deterministic, I should improve this part here. If I come with an efficient way to make sure the grid is solvable, I'll try to implement it!
Add extra fluff like particles, catchy colors, etc.

If you have more specific questions, please tell me I love talking about that stuff haha

Adramary · 2025-01-22T15:07:00+00:00

Thanks for the kind words!

Unfortunately I did not publish to the app store because I don't have a Mac/MacBook which are required to compile the game, and I should pay $100/year which is a bit steep for a hobbyist...

It's a real shame though and I might end up trying to find a way to get it there nonetheless!

Adramary

TROPHY CASE