DexSweeper

  • Studio Fishagon LLC
  • Platforms Playdate, Steam, itch.io
  • Released Nov 4, 2025 (Steam)
  • Position Developer
See on Playdate

Game Description

Dexterity Minesweeper. In DexSweeper the cursor never stops moving: steer it with the Playdate's crank (or a joystick or mouse on PC), then time each tile reveal carefully, because one wrong move could be your last.

Dex Style combines the moving cursor with classic Minesweeper strategy. Classic Style is traditional Minesweeper without the crank mechanic. Each comes with Beginner, Intermediate and Expert difficulties, and online scoreboards track the fastest clears.

Development

DexSweeper started on Playdate, written in Lua on the Playdate SDK. The core game came together in about ten days in February 2025, and later updates added cosmetics and Playdate Catalog scoreboards. Music and sound effects are by Joshua Hunt.

For Steam I rewrote it in Unity rather than porting the Lua line by line, and recreated the Playdate's 1-bit look on PC with a custom full-screen shader. Mouse and gamepad steering stand in for the crank.

Steam
itch.io

  • Crank-Driven Cursor
    • The crank angle becomes the cursor’s velocity, and the cursor wraps around the screen edges
    • On PC, mouse movement or the analog stick steers the same way
  • First-Click Safety
    • Mines are placed only after the first reveal, around an irregular safe zone so openings don’t look identical
  • Hitch-Free Board Building
    • Tiles are created in small timed batches so the Playdate never stutters
  • Scoreboards & Achievements
    • 18 Playdate Catalog scoreboards, one per style, mode and difficulty
    • Steam achievements and leaderboards, with unlocks queued until Steam stats arrive
  • 1-Bit Look on PC
    • A custom URP renderer feature with a two-tone threshold shader and selectable color schemes
    • Runtime-generated Bayer dither patterns
  • Cosmetics
    • Animated and static tile styles, crosshair styles and a dark mode