I believe that it's possible to make a good roguelite Minesweeper, but after getting pretty frustrated with both Demoncrawl and Broomsweeper, I'm beginning to think that it must be more difficult than it seems.
The base you're starting from, with Minesweeper, already has procedurally generated levels, and the basic unit of movement through the roguelite is a single game of Minesweeper, which takes a few minutes to complete. You chain a bunch of those Minesweeper levels together to make a run. The Minesweeper puzzles have some variety to them somehow, and get more difficult over time, but the player is gaining perks of some kind along the way. There are lots of Minesweeper variants already! There are lots of obvious relics or perks or whatever! It should be easy!
The absolute worst part of Minesweeper, in my opinion, is when you've taken the logic to its natural conclusion and you're left with a coin flip to decide whether or not you win. Sometimes, this is several coin flips in a row, meaning that you have a fraction of a percent chance of winning, and it's completely luck based.
So the problem I've had with both Demoncrawl and Broomsweeper is that one of the ways they make the game harder is by amplifying the randomness. And I can almost understand the reason they go this direction, but it takes the fun part of Minesweeper (getting into a flow state of logical deductions and a nice seam of solves) and replaces it with the worst part of Minesweeper.
I'm writing this from a place of frustration, because Broomsweeper really did feel pretty fun to play ... for a bit, before the randomness took over and made it feel bad. But there's got to be a way to do roguelite Minesweeper correctly, I just know it.
