As the young disciple of Wuzan, the great Mine Fu master, brave ninja Ranju must hunt down the Seven Demons of Bom-Bom to save the world!
Previously sealed by the master, the Demons must be defeated once and for all!
Use your knowledge in laying down mines to blow up every Monster Cement tile specially made by the Demons! Walk over each tile before leaving the stage to beat the puzzle, but only once! Otherwise you will blow yourself up with your own arsenal!
Swing your sword, throw some shurikens and use other ninja gear to topple your opponents!
Laying down mines and beating enemies increase Score and Extra Lives!
Aim for the highest Score possible!
Great perils await Ranju in the 9 puzzle-filled and monster-occupied stages!
Fight your way through sandy beaches, murky swamps and boiling volcanoes!
Use your rock-pushing, pit-jumping and move-timing skills to reach the boss at the end of every stage!
Previously sealed by the master, the Demons must be defeated once and for all!
Use your knowledge in laying down mines to blow up every Monster Cement tile specially made by the Demons! Walk over each tile before leaving the stage to beat the puzzle, but only once! Otherwise you will blow yourself up with your own arsenal!
Swing your sword, throw some shurikens and use other ninja gear to topple your opponents!
Laying down mines and beating enemies increase Score and Extra Lives!
Aim for the highest Score possible!
Great perils await Ranju in the 9 puzzle-filled and monster-occupied stages!
Fight your way through sandy beaches, murky swamps and boiling volcanoes!
Use your rock-pushing, pit-jumping and move-timing skills to reach the boss at the end of every stage!
Mine Fu is a puzzle game where our ninja will automatically mine all the "demon tiles" (some square with a face that change after it's mined) just standing on them. The problem is that he cannot walk twice on the same tile after mining it, so it's important to plan a path that will mine all the demon tiles and let our hero exit the area. To make the things easier there is the presence of normal ground (that isn't mined when the ninja walk on it) and the ability to jump one tile (while this is explained later, the ability is immediately available), while some enemies will make instead everything more complicated.
The little ninja can attack with his sword, but pay attention that every enemy has a different behaviour, some just move following fixed patterns, others run towards the ninja, some instead do not move and use ranged attacks.
There are gadgets that can be found hidden inside some breakable containers: shurikens and flaming swords that permits to attack from distance, a log that gives a couple of seconds of invulnerability, the grappling hook that lets the ninja cross huge gaps and the extra life that is always handy!
But pay attention that you can also find the black demon, that resets the level (you have to restart it but without losing a life, so take note of the container and avoid breaking it again!).
There are gadgets that can be found hidden inside some breakable containers: shurikens and flaming swords that permits to attack from distance, a log that gives a couple of seconds of invulnerability, the grappling hook that lets the ninja cross huge gaps and the extra life that is always handy!
But pay attention that you can also find the black demon, that resets the level (you have to restart it but without losing a life, so take note of the container and avoid breaking it again!).
Random Fact: the game doesn't take itself seriously at all, and makes reference to all kinds of standard boss-ranting and senseless plots.
Final Verdict: the game is in my opinion pretty original and well done. I love how new element are progressively introduced like the rocks, the use of the grappling hook and the pink exploding tiles. Sometimes the bonuses are rather useless (it happened to find the invulnerability bonus in a level with no enemies!), in other places they are instead brillantly used (like the level with three enemies and a large gap between them and the ninja. Here you find a grappling hook and several shurikens to kill them before traversing the large pit), and I also find a couple of bugs like restarting a level and see some enemies dying without even touching them, and some levels being skipped (happened a couple of time, I just could see them briefly, and I remember playing them before... but sometimes the game decided to skip to the next level! Uh ok!).
There are also some minor problems that aren't bugs, like the fact that some opponents are extremely fast and for this reason hard to fight due to the slow moments of the ninja, and the lack of a message if you exit a level without completing it. I mean, when I first encountered the shooting enemies I believed these were considered traps and I just had to avoid them... but no, you must kill them too! Anyway yes, the game said "kill EVERY hostile" but it was way earlier, and I forgot!
In the end this is a puzzle game I enjoyed a lot. There are some rough spots and little problems but I think that the difficulty is for the most part well balanced and required the use of logic and some planning in most levels.
