Polimines begins with the familiar rules of Picross – a grid of tiles with numbers to the left and above the rows and columns. Polimines, and its very brief set of 25 puzzles, belongs in their number, if only it would carry on. Of course, Hexcells is the best of the bunch, but there’s also the sublime Tametsi(a game whose 150-ish puzzles I have played through perhaps ten times), Hexceed, Geocells Quadcells, and various other runners up. However, inside it there are nuggets of ideas that others have used to splendid effect. Games don’t have contiguous pathways of logic from start to finish, but instead rely on the player clicking and hoping. It’s a game of random luck, with some moments of deduction scattered within. I get very fed up of people conflating Minesweeper with a puzzle game. But not today! Polimines, brief though it is, is a whipsmart puzzle game that fuses Picross with Minesweeper. In my endless quest to find something else to fill the hole left in my life by the end of Hexcells, (and indeed SquareCells and CrossCells), I am met with such frequent disappointment.
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