Postmortem: Prototyping Let’s! Revolution! to transform Minesweeper into a turn-based strategy roguelike

gamedeveloper.com:

Game Developer Deep Dives are an ongoing series with the goal of shedding light on specific design, art, or technical features within a video game in order to show how seemingly simple, fundamental design decisions aren’t really that simple at all.

Earlier installments cover topics such as educating players on the potential of renewable energy with Green New Deal Simulator, how the writers of Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly transformed their DLC plans into a full-fleshed game, and mastering minimalism and layering complexity with the strategy game Thronefall.

In this edition, Michael Highland, creative director at commercial animation studio BUCK, walks us through the journey his team took through the tedious process of shipping their first commercial game, a take on Minesweeper called Let's! Revolution!.

Hi, I'm Michael Highland, creative director at the animation studio BUCK. At the start of 2022, a small team of four dedicated game developers was given a year to finish a commercially viable game at BUCK. If they failed, the future of making games at this global creative company was uncertain at best.

You may not have heard of BUCK, the reigning heavyweight in commercial animation and design, but you have most certainly seen our work. The games team at BUCK operates much like an indie studio, collaborating with artists, animators, and designers borrowed from BUCK’s core business of providing creative services to prominent clients like Apple, Meta, AirBnB, and Riot Games, as well as contributing visual direction and animation to major IPs like Love Death + Robots and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. While BUCK has an illustrious 20-plus-year track record of animation and design, shipping an original game