App Profile: Data Cube : The 3D Minesweeper

Dan of Lindisfarne

Rating: 4/5

As far as 3DMS goes, Data Cube is, for want of a better phrase, the only game in town. And the UI has become much better, IMHO. The author may be working on obscuring the part that has already been played, making it genuinely playable. There are a couple of flaws. Getting into the back side of the cube is problematic. If you want to see from the inside, you basically have to zoom in, which has a stop limit and becomes rather awkward to deal with. The other flaw is kind of a conundrum: in order to make the cube initially playable, the randomizer creates a large gap when the first piece is cleared; thus, the player has something to work from, rather than, maybe, a tiny starting point; this would be great, except that the cube develops a bias toward one side, where more mines are clustered. One side is very sparse, the other side is very dense (this shows up especially on the very large cubes). So, the cost of having a game that starts out easily playable is that finishing a game successfully may turn out a toss-up (just *guess* what to clear, because there is no way to tell). Playing for 20 or 30 minutes on a big cube and losing on a bad guess may be worse than trying 5 or 10 times to get a decent start. Also, there are a few touch zones that respond oddly. The bottom of the screen keeps trying to pull up Game Center. Overall, it is a pretty darn good effort that promises to get better.

DJ RoBA

Rating: 4/5

An amazing adaptation of the favorite old school game, really fun. Needs a ticker for number of mines you've found and miss the old school's auto-complete regardless of all mines being flagged. Also miss diagonal counters although understandable in the dimensions. Big struggle with navigating the perspective inside and around the corners of the big cubes. A good puzzle on track to become a good app.

モリ・トラ

Rating: 5/5

This is minesweeper taken to the third dimensions. There are three main levels that very by number of mines and size of board/cube. There is also a custom level that you can set the size and number of mines. The controls are fairly good; one finger to move the camera, and two or more fingers to pan. You can also pinch to zoom, and you can zoom into the middle of the cube to select internal sub cubes.