I had it set to 4gb in the startup disk creator.
can ntfs have more persistence? Or what would be the best for persistence?

No you have to have a seed for random numbers. I don't know how this works on calc just n comp, but that seed can define all the random numbers so you need to try again with a different seed to see if that was the problem

It'll be very interesting to see your final product. How many levels of grayscale will it be?

I still think there should be an auto end or go to the menu or something when you die. Somebody will forget they have to press the enter key and get really pissed at your game. I'm sure of that

Your going to want to add in code to end the game when you die. that is pretty important. there can be a delay but the game has to end at that point

It might be interesting if on game over you have the mines go off in some kind of a sequence

These are great ideas. I was thinking you might have some kind of bouncy pad liek boards on the side that give you a boost and maybe items to pick up along the way. I can not wait for the contest to be over so I can make a comp port of this. I'd use txt's or something like that instead of appvars then

I think you have a pretty good chance in this contest. You'll at least be top three I bet