Show HN: Reverse Minesweeper

Posted by pompomsheep 1 day ago

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Comment by Jaxan 12 hours ago

This is very similar to “Mosaic” on Simon Tatham’s puzzle webpage. There it is noted that: “This game is variously known in other locations as: ArtMosaico, Count and Darken, Cuenta Y Sombrea, Fill-a-Pix, Fill-In, Komsu Karala, Magipic, Majipiku, Mosaico, Mosaik, Mozaiek, Nampre Puzzle, Nurie-Puzzle, Oekaki-Pix, Voisimage.”

https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mosa...

Comment by bonoboTP 18 hours ago

Single click places an x instead of a sunflower. I solved the puzzle but placed those xes instead of sunflowers and was confused why it doesn't say I solved it. I would suggest making a single click be the main action, ie placing a sunflower.

Comment by rezonant 16 hours ago

But you have 3 mistakes you can make, and you spend one when you accidentally place a sunflower. I played through all the daily puzzles and have started into the master puzzles and I'm glad flower is double click, because a misplaced X is free, but a misplaced flower is not.

It would be far too easy to accidentally tap the screen and burn a Mistake, and if its your last one that would be frustrating.

Comment by bonoboTP 1 hour ago

Just allow me to put the things down without penalty and I then click a button like "Submit" or "I'm done" or "Check it", when I think I'm done.

Comment by jader201 13 hours ago

Rather than counting mistakes, just allow mistakes, and just not let the puzzle get solved until it’s complete without mistakes.

This is how most of Simon Tatham’s puzzles work, and that works well.

Comment by matsemann 12 hours ago

> This is how most of Simon Tatham’s puzzles work, and that works well.

They btw also have a feature that swaps main and secondary action when toggled, which could work here.

Comment by kelnos 11 hours ago

Sure, but then it's easier, and you can just keep clicking around by trial and error without thinking about it, which is a boring way to play.

Comment by jader201 2 hours ago

1. I feel like “trial and error” is often not a great way to solve puzzles. If you can brute force your way to a solution, that’s usually a sign of poor puzzle design. To be clear, I’m not saying whether this one is easy to brute force, just saying if it is, that’s a different problem.

2. Even if brute force was a viable option for solving, an easy fix is to have a “submit” button when you think you’ve solved it (and that can track strikes for invalid submissions).

Comment by amelius 8 hours ago

Yeah, I made a mistake figuring out the UI. But then I (correctly) solved the puzzle and it said "1 mistake" but it didn't say what that mistake was. This is confusing.

Comment by jeremyjh 7 hours ago

The X are like comments, you set those when you've determined a square cannot have a sunflower on it. If you made those double-click and flowers single-click, it would be easy to make a mistake like not double-clicking fast enough and lose to a mistake that isn't really a mistake.

Comment by Aardwolf 12 hours ago

It has the option to play a tutorial that explains the controls

Comment by bonoboTP 1 hour ago

This type of game should be intuitive out of the box. It's something to kill time for most people, not something to study in detail before you even know if you like it.

Comment by nirali-shekhwa 8 hours ago

I agree!

Comment by hyperhello 1 day ago

I don’t understand how this is reverse minesweeper when it’s just minesweeper with flowers instead of bombs.

Comment by pompomsheep 1 day ago

Yeah it's maybe not the best way to describe it, but my intention is all clues already visible at the start rather than exploration, and adding in flowers rather than avoiding mines.

The main difference is having all the clues visible at the start changes it to a search and deduction logic style rather than reveal and react

Comment by tracerbulletx 23 hours ago

It is the right way to describe it, that guy just doesn't remember how minesweeper worked.

Comment by imtringued 8 hours ago

The point of reverse minesweeper is that you're supposed to left click the bombs and right click the empty spaces. If you left click the empty squares and right click the bombs, it is literally just mine sweeper.

Comment by omoikane 1 day ago

In that sense, this game is similar to Mosaic[1] where the clues are all initially visible, except in Mosaic the count includes all 9 cells since black squares can be placed on the numbers themselves.

[1] https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mosa...

Comment by kevinwang 1 day ago

Another example is this Steam game which I play occasionally: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3083300/Proverbs/

Comment by aleph_minus_one 1 day ago

From the same developer

> https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/divide-the-plunder

I particularly like "Mosaic of the Strange"

> https://store.steampowered.com/app/3444650/Mosaic_of_the_Str...

You will in particular like this game if you are into conspiracy theories. If one switches the difficulty to the hardest one, HN readers might have some fun with this game. :-)

Comment by mamonoleechi 23 hours ago

linking my favourite sweeper variant: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=mamonosweeper&ia=web ;

try this one in html5: https://hojamaka.com/game/mamono_sweeper_h2/html5/en.html

Comment by pompomsheep 21 hours ago

Great thanks for sending these

Comment by Braini 1 day ago

This reminds me a bit of one mode (squared) from Picture Enigmas (https://picture-enigmas.com/#features) which I like to play from time to time.

Comment by saghm 12 hours ago

I agree with you that it's not quite minesweeper, but I also agree with the parent that it's not reverse either. It's sorta just expedited minesweeper

Comment by kevincox 1 day ago

In minesweeper you start with nothing visible and explore while avoiding the bombs. In this you start with all of the hints visible and place the bombs.

However in practice it is very similar since identifying where the bombs are to not click them is exactly the same logic as identifying where the bombs need to go. The only functional difference ends up being that all of the hints are visible upfront rather than needing to discover them.

Comment by Bimos 16 hours ago

You don't place the bombs, but still find the bombs. And you still explore by finding x.

Comment by kelnos 11 hours ago

It's reverse in the sense that you've been given the numerical hints, and instead of clearing the mines, you need to place them. That feels pretty "reverse" to me.

Comment by amelius 8 hours ago

But that's how minesweeper works (except that you have to click to get the first numerical hints but that's not really what would make it "reversed").

A reverse minesweeper would be: bombs are given, and you have to place the numberical hints.

Comment by toxik 5 hours ago

Well it is different, you can have multiple solutions in this variant. Classical minesweeper is not like that. Imagine a grid with just a 1 and the rest is empty. There are then eight different solutions. The same situation can't happen in classical, it is simply going to reveal everything except the predetermined mine.

Because of this ambiguity, the search space is much larger here. Source : I play A LOT of Minesweeper.

Comment by ryukoposting 19 hours ago

Because "contrapositive minesweeper" doesn't roll off the tongue.

Comment by testaccount28 1 day ago

it reverses right and left click

Comment by imtringued 7 hours ago

It doesn't. I first used left click to place the bomb and it told me I'm wrong, there's a bomb there, idiot. Then I started using left click to cross out where the bomb isn't and then I felt like this is just minesweeper, not even reversed.

Comment by ltsSmitty 22 hours ago

There were a few boxes in the game I just played that didn't have enough information; e.g. only one number pointed to them and you couldn't reason it out. I think it's the kind of thing in regular minesweeper where it would've auto-cleared it when I opened a box next to it. I didn't take a screenshot but I hope that makes sense - I suppose maybe once you play the game more you'd learn that these are safe x's, but I found it to lack real information. I looked around for a tip or something on it but didn't quickly find anything

Comment by pompomsheep 21 hours ago

Helpful feedback thanks.

But yes there is always a logical next step to be made that can be fully reasoned out. The hint (lightbulb) icon will show you this step when you are stuck.

Disclaimer the hint system is definitely not perfect yet but should at least point you in the right direction.

Please do send a screenshot if you find yourself stuck again it would be useful for me to improve the deisng

Comment by fallinditch 20 hours ago

I think i experienced the same thing: there appeared to be no logical next step and it was necessary to make a best guess. I probably just didn't see the next step, but I thought it's ok if you have to occasionally guess. Anyway, great game! Congrats, very entertaining, I reckon you have a good chance of going viral.

Comment by jaffa2 22 hours ago

it is possible in normal mine sweeper to have a postion where you cant determine 100% whether a square is a mine or not. In this cases you just have to guess. Try to identify them early as possible since they can ruin the game with an unlucky guess.

Comment by Retr0id 21 hours ago

It is also possible to implement minesweeper such that all positions are solvable unambiguously, see https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mine...

Comment by pompomsheep 21 hours ago

Yes this was possible in minesweeper but something I tried to eliminate in sunflowers. You never have to guess even at the hardest difficulty levels

Comment by MagicMoonlight 22 hours ago

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Comment by itherseed 15 hours ago

It is really good but it needs a dark theme. My eyes!

Comment by pompomsheep 11 hours ago

There is one hidden away in the settings menu if you tap the sunflower top left! Will make it more clear it exists

Comment by yammajr 23 hours ago

I did have to guess. If I'd have known how many mines there were, I wouldn't have though.

https://imgur.com/a/idfj1my

edit: I'm wrong. Thanks steve.

Comment by tgsovlerkhgsel 21 hours ago

For everyone: Whenever you think you have to guess, use the hint feature.

In the more advanced levels you essentially have to "guess" then check whether the guess (e.g. using "pencil mode") leads to a valid solution or a conflict.

Comment by Tepix 23 hours ago

First column, there's a 2 in the second row from below that already has two sunflowers. So the 3rd adjacent field must be empty.

Comment by MK2k 23 hours ago

The "4" clue forces the solution imho.

Comment by 23 hours ago

Comment by Steve6 23 hours ago

The "2" in col 1 row 5 already has 2 flowers, meaning the empty space in col 2 row 4 must be blank. So a flower belongs in the square above that one and the corner will be blank. No guessing needed.

Comment by sickcodebruh 18 hours ago

This is great! Did a few rounds, will come back.

A few months ago someone on HN shared Dragonsweeper and it completely hooked me and my wife to the point that we had to agree to break up with it. https://danielben.itch.io/dragonsweeper

Comment by alex-moon 11 hours ago

Hello Daniel! Do you have a landing page/portal for all these games so I can go through them one by one of a morning (a bit like the NYT games)?

Comment by 21 hours ago

Comment by adzm 1 day ago

Actually really fun

Comment by amanzi 22 hours ago

This is very similar concept to "0h h1" https://0hh1.com/ which I've been playing every day on Android for a couple of years now. I had never considered it to be a reverse minesweeper.

Comment by Jaxan 11 hours ago

I know it as binairo, which I have seen in paper magazines. On Simon Tatham’s puzzle collection it is known as unruly: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/unru...

Comment by TobTobXX 22 hours ago

Isn't that just like Binoxxo? I've solved Binoxxo's every time I came across a newspaper.

Online example for the curious: https://raetselwelt.online/en/puzzles/binoxxo/

Comment by amanzi 22 hours ago

That looks like an interesting game, I'll bookmark it. But no - it appears to be a different concept.

Comment by 21 hours ago

Comment by pillmillipedes 19 hours ago

this is great! very nice ui, and quite challenging on the high difficulties.

reminds me of 14mv a bit - and judging by the reactions to it on steam you're going to get so many false bug reports from people not used to the long deduction chains haha

(a suggestion to try the hints near the feedback form might help curb this a bit..)

one qol thing I missed is that clicking a number to fill in the neighbours only works for crosses and not sunflowers (and doesn't work for "0" clues)

Comment by 18 hours ago

Comment by LearnYouALisp 3 hours ago

Please enable RMB--the LLM instructions don't say anything about (x), and my button doubles on single often (and drops drag, but we digress)

Comment by 0x1ceb00da 1 day ago

Jumped from medium to insane and didn't notice any difficulty bump. Were the puzzles designed by AI, eg arc agi puzzles are trivial for humans but very difficult for LLMs.

Comment by mcmoor 17 hours ago

Strangely I also easily solve insane, then I try extreme. First I can solve with difficulty, second I almost gave up and it do need some whole board logic. Haven't tried third.

Comment by dyarosla 22 hours ago

Im curious how youve set up the multiple puzzle games you have to generate two daily puzzles each? It cant be entirely by hand or entirely AI driven?

Comment by tgsovlerkhgsel 21 hours ago

For any game that is able to procedurally generate a "random" puzzle, you can simply seed a deterministic PRNG with a seed derived from the date. No AI or hand-generation required.

Comment by dyarosla 8 hours ago

This is true hypothetically but doesn’t quite work to produce good puzzles like say in Zanagrams without sufficient heuristics/constraints

Comment by levanlevi 8 hours ago

the phrase "reverse" confused me (i see somebody pointed out the same)

how many dau you have?

Comment by Dwedit 15 hours ago

Maybe count perfect solves in a separate average than solves with mistakes?

Comment by gkfasdfasdf 1 day ago

I love it. Reverse minesweeper describes it perfectly.

Comment by ryukoposting 18 hours ago

Very fun. Shared it with my parents and they're into it too.

Comment by greazy 19 hours ago

I'm not a big fan of puzzle games but these are great.

Are the clues hand coded?

Comment by sneela 10 hours ago

Not to take away from the poster's work, but I believe this exists already (please correct me if I'm wrong): https://puzzlemadness.co.uk/minesweeper/hard

I've been doing these for a long time, which is why this game seemed familiar to me.

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by da-x 1 day ago

Awesome idea

Comment by pompomsheep 1 day ago

Thanks! Not perfect yet but I think it has potential. Would love any feedback

Comment by Kuinox 1 day ago

I jumped directly to insane and completed it on the first try. It's too easy.

Comment by pompomsheep 1 day ago

I've just tried to bump insane up a bit if you could test it to let me know what you think?

I'm struggling to play test the higher difficulties because it above my own skill level haha

Comment by vl 14 hours ago

I trained to play insane, usually a just bit slower than average, after using hints for couple times.

I suggest larger levels (yes, scrolling and zooming might be required). After all, minesweeper is the most interesting on the largest level.

Comment by kybishop 1 day ago

Insane is still far too easy. For the highest skill level it should be -really- hard. Was still able to solve one in under 3 minutes.

I -love- this idea though!!

Comment by pompomsheep 1 day ago

And if you find a puzzle you like the difficulty of could you tell me the puzzle id at the top left please

Comment by convolvatron 1 day ago

I guess I am mildly discomfited by the red flower. if the program is going to tell me every time I fail to think through things properly, then my role here is kinda limited to driving the mouse.

Comment by pompomsheep 1 day ago

Helpful feedback thanks. I am trying to make it a bit more forgiving for first time players to learn the logic.

Then in easy mode and above you are given max 3 mistakes similar to sudoku.com and other popular logic puzzles

Comment by geekgeekgk 9 hours ago

This is a really nice take on Minesweeper

Comment by ttmac 8 hours ago

I really enjoyed it, lost quite a bit of productive time in my work day though!

Comment by lioeters 1 day ago

It's cute and friendly, how it explains the rules. Maybe instead of a red box for making a mistake, the sunflower could "shake its head" to mean "no". Anyway the game feels well-designed with a focused scope, nice work!

Comment by onaclov2000 18 hours ago

Neat game! I enjoyed it!

Comment by mock-possum 12 hours ago

Cool idea but the page doesn’t scroll and the bottom of the puzzle is cut off on smaller res, so - broken for mobile

Comment by pompomsheep 11 hours ago

Could you let me know which device please and i will fix

Comment by npodbielski 6 hours ago

very addictive :) thanks!

Comment by Kuraj 21 hours ago

MSN MESSENGER HAD THIS!

I used to play this with a friend. You would take turns, that is, the mines would reveal themselves in real time, and your turn ended if you missed a mine.

Then the game would call you a slut when it ended, because my friend's MSN was in Swedish and that is the word for "end"

Comment by bonoboTP 18 hours ago

No, that was regular minesweeper. The difference in this new version is that all the clues are revealed in the beginning.

Comment by Kuraj 17 hours ago

Ah yes - my bad. I fixated on the part where you have to uncover the mines instead of avoiding them.

Comment by ymolodtsov 1 day ago

Honestly looks far more obvious than the original to me.

I like how ai agents make it possible to experiment with different game concepts.

I merged Go with Tetris while brainstorming some ideas.

https://goban.molodtsov.me/

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