Minesweeper On Your iDevice With Various Tile Shapes In ultiMine Plus
ultiMine Plus ($1.99) by Lucid Oak is a recreation of the PC game Minesweeper, but with some added tile sets to play on. These include Honeycomb and Stone Floor, each bringing a new challenge to the classic game.
In the classic version, you're presented with a grid of blank tiles with a number of bombs randomly hidden underneath them.
The larger the grid, the greater the challenge. You can choose between a 9x9 grid (with 10 bombs), a 16x16 grid (with 40 bombs) or a 22x22 grid (with 102 bombs).
The aim is to mark the tiles that cover bombs with a flag while leaving every other tile exposed. The first time you tap on a tile protecting a bomb, it will explode and it will be game over.
To start off, randomly tap a tile. If you're lucky, it won't explode and will instead uncover some empty tiles. Some of those will display numbers, which refer to how many bombs surround that tile.
Using this information, you must mark bomb tiles with a flag. There are two ways to do this. Either hold a finger on the tile for half a second or hold the flag button and give the bomb tile a quick tap.
The flag button starts off on the top left (when holding your iDevice in portrait mode). By holding your iDevice upside down or in either of its landscape positions, you can change the flag button to suite you.
In classic mode, each tile is surrounded by eight other tiles. If you'd like less of a challenge, try out the Honeycomb tile set. They are hexagonal so each tile is surrounded by only six others.
Similarly, if you'd like a slightly harder challenge, you can choose the Stone Floor tile set. This is made up of both small and large squares fitted together. The result is that some tiles are surrounded by the usual eight while others are surrounded by only four.
As you can imagine, this takes a little extra thought. It's a nice touch, but my favorite is still the Classic tile set.
The grids you play on are much larger than the iPhone's screen, which can feel uncomfortable at times. There is the option to change the tiles' size, but the difference is quite small. It would have been much better to have the option to zoom in and out.
The ultiMine Plus app brings a classic PC game to iOS, but then so do many others. The main difference from other similar games are the extra tile sets.
If you would like to try it before making a full purchase, go for ultiMine first. It's the full game, but supported with ads.
