Let's! Revolution! is a prog rock Minesweeper roguelike
And it's great!
Let's! Revolution! is another of those games that takes Minesweeper and turns it into something a little more elaborate. When I play, I'm pursuing an evil king across a range of different levels, growing more powerful as I go and firing off spells, but also taking damage, making mistakes, and trying to avoid mistakes I can see coming.
It's brilliant, and it's actually pretty easy to get one's head around. Each level offers up a bunch of tiles, most of which have their contents concealed. Some of these tiles will be safe to step on, but some of them will contain road tiles, and some of the road tiles will contain enemies who attack if you trample on them unawares.
So what do you do? You look at the numbers printed on empty tiles, which tell you how many road tiles they share a border with. It's Minesweeper! Except instead of looking for mines, you're looking for roads, which have a higher percentage chance of containing something dangerous.
They also have a higher chance of containing treasure, though: loot or a shop to spend loot in. As a roguelike, on each run of Let's! Revolution! you pay for character traits that make things easier. Maybe I pay for something which means I regain health at the start of a new level, or do more damage. Maybe I buy a new kind of attack, which allows me to reveal a different kind of nearby square.
This is the second part of the game. You can reveal squares by performing attacks, such as a whirlwind move that reveals all the squares around you, and also does damage to anyone on it. Spells cost stamina, and stamina is regained by uncovering tiles, so there's a neat connection between attacking and exploring. Want to attack more? You need to explore more.
Throw in a bunch of other clever stuff - the king who lurks in each level who must be uncovered for you to progress, the fact that all uncovered enemies have timers, some ingenious loot - and you've got something rather special. But there's something more, too: Let's! Revolution! is beautiful, which candy-coloured art and a lovely prog rock sense of world-building to the haunted deserts and birthday cake cities you visit. And the soundtrack kind of sounds like mid-'70s Floyd? What a treat.