Manic Minefields 1.1
Company: Addiction Software, Inc.
Shareware: $15.00
http://www.addiction.se
Ever played Minesweeper? How about Landmines? Ever played a game with the words “sweeper” or “mine” in it? Did you like that game? If so, you’ll love Manic Minefields. Manic Minefields offers so much more than other games like it. Great graphics, sound, interface, and 10 different playing fields to choose from make this game a winner!
Playing the game
The object of Manic Minefields is plain and simple: to mark all the mines with flags as fast as possible. Mines? Huh? Let me explain. A square containing a number from 1-8 indicates how many mines you can expect to find in the adjacent 8 squares. Combining the info from several numbers in an area will help you know which squares to mark with a flag and which squares you can clear. To clear a square, you simply click on the mouse with it. To place a flag on a square, you command-click on it, and you command-click on it again to remove it. This sounds simple, but it’s really not that easy. I still haven’t gotten very far in the game, but it’s still fun!
In the unregistered version, you have only 2 landscapes to pick from: “Army” and “Space Pirates.” But if you pay your shareware fee, you can choose from 10 different landscapes: “Army,” “Navy,” “Space Pirates,” “Skulls & Demons,” “Et Tu Brute,” “Killer Dinos, Inc,” “Dino World,” “Life on Mars,” “Zeros & Ones,” and “Rainbows.” Each has their own landscape and set of sound effects that fits the theme. Obviously, “Army” looks like land, and “Navy” looks like water. Some of the other ones are different, though, like “Et Tu Brute” which has a Roman era theme to it.
As with landscapes, some sound effects are obvious, and others aren’t. For example, in “Army,” stepping on a square that contains a mine will make a simple explosive kind of noise. But in “Dino World,” stepping on a mine will have an egg-hatching sound. This is one of my favorite parts of the game. (Most likely because I always step on mines!)
Flags and numbers also fit the theme of the game. In “Army,” there are simple numbers and flags, but in “Rainbow,” flags look like disks, and numbers are the number of colors in the revealed square, hence the name: “Rainbow.”
System Requirements & Availability
Manic Minefields requires a Mac OS compatible computer with a PowerPC processor and at least 16-bit (thousands) color. You can find Manic Minefields at Addiction Software’s homepage: http://www.addiction.se, or at the My Mac Software Library (https://www.mymac.com/software), in the games section.
The Summary
What an awesome, enjoyable game. A great concept, great graphics and sound, great interface, great themes. They all add up to an excellent game, and an excellent job by the team at Addiction Software. If you are looking for a new and different shareware game, download Manic Minefields. What do you have to lose?! If you like it, definitely pay the shareware fee, it’s well worth it. Great shareware games are hard to find, but Manic Minefields is definitely one of them.
Adam Karneboge (webmaster@mymac.com
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