“Minewsweeper” is a game with gameplay originating back to Ian Andrew’s “Mined-Out” released in 1983, but was revamped and popularized by Microsoft in the 1990s as a pack-in game with Windows 3.1. It has since captured the minds and hearts of many computer owners, but has also confused many more with its lack of a tutorial.
“Minesweeper” consists of a grid of squares the player can click on. Each square is either a safe space or a mine. Most safe spaces will have numbers on them, letting the player know how many mine spaces that safe space is directly touching in the eight directions around it. To remember where mine spaces are, the player is provided with flags that can be placed down with a simple right-click. If the player happens to left-click on a mine instead, they instantly lose.
Every gameboard is randomly generated every time the player hits play, so the player must use their deductive reasoning rather than muscle memory to win each game. This simple and yet endlessly fun gameplay loop leads me to conclude that “Minesweeper” is an almost perfectly designed game, with only fleeting moments of unfairness in how the spaces are situated bringing its score ever so slightly down.
Luckily, “Minesweeper” is also very accessible these days, with thousands of websites supporting a version of the game. Google even has its own quirky version of it that encourages players to beat it as fast as possible. This fact brings the score right back up to where it already was.
And all of that is not even the end of what I love about this game, as using my deductive reasoning rather than muscle memory is how I enjoy most games. The more my mind is engaged with the gameplay, the more enjoyment I will find out of it at the end of the day. Now, using muscle memory in games is not bad, but I prefer to reserve that for games meant to be mastered on the speedrunning charts like “Super Mario Bros” or “The Henry Stickmin Collection.”
Overall, the gameplay of “Minesweeper” is near perfect in my eyes, and it gets a perfect 99 out of 99 flags from Google’s hard mode difficulty of the game. Its prize is me devoting my life to educating as many people as possible on how to play the game.
