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.”
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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"
I enjoyed this game. Well done!
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...
I don’t understand how this is reverse minesweeper when it’s just minesweeper with flowers instead of bombs.
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
It is the right way to describe it, that guy just doesn't remember how minesweeper worked.
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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...
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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
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.
You don't place the bombs, but still find the bombs. And you still explore by finding x.
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.
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.
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Because "contrapositive minesweeper" doesn't roll off the tongue.
it reverses right and left click
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
It has the option to play a tutorial that explains the controls
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.
I agree!
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
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
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.
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.
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...
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
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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.
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.
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.
The "4" clue forces the solution imho.
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.
It is really good but it needs a dark theme. My eyes!
There is one hidden away in the settings menu if you tap the sunflower top left! Will make it more clear it exists
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
Actually really fun
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)?
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.
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/
That looks like an interesting game, I'll bookmark it. But no - it appears to be a different concept.
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...
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)
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.
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.
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?
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.
This is true hypothetically but doesn’t quite work to produce good puzzles like say in Zanagrams without sufficient heuristics/constraints
I love it. Reverse minesweeper describes it perfectly.
Awesome idea
Thanks! Not perfect yet but I think it has potential. Would love any feedback
Did you use something like Z3 to solve/create the problems ?
I jumped directly to insane and completed it on the first try. It's too easy.
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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.
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Maybe count perfect solves in a separate average than solves with mistakes?
the phrase "reverse" confused me (i see somebody pointed out the same)
how many dau you have?
I'm not a big fan of puzzle games but these are great.
Are the clues hand coded?
Very fun. Shared it with my parents and they're into it too.
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.
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)
This is a really nice take on Minesweeper
I really enjoyed it, lost quite a bit of productive time in my work day though!
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!
Neat game! I enjoyed it!
Cool idea but the page doesn’t scroll and the bottom of the puzzle is cut off on smaller res, so - broken for mobile
Could you let me know which device please and i will fix
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"
No, that was regular minesweeper. The difference in this new version is that all the clues are revealed in the beginning.
Ah yes - my bad. I fixated on the part where you have to uncover the mines instead of avoiding them.
very addictive :) thanks!
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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