Minesweeper

Beginner Screen

**Minesweeper** is a single-player puzzle computer game. The objective of the game is to clear a rectangular board containing hidden "mines" or bombs without detonating any of them, with help from clues about the number of neighboring mines in each field. The game originates from the 1960s, and has been written for many computing platforms in use today. It has many variations and offshoots.

Some versions of Minesweeper will set up the board by never placing a mine on the first square revealed.[1] Minesweeper for versions of Windows protects the first square revealed; from Windows 7 onward, players may elect to replay a board, in which the game is played by revealing squares of the grid by clicking or otherwise indicating each square. If a square containing a mine is revealed, the player loses the game. If no mine is revealed, a digit is instead displayed in the square, indicating how many adjacent squares contain mines; if no mines are adjacent, the square becomes blank, and all adjacent squares will be recursively revealed. The player uses this information to deduce the contents of other squares, and may either safely reveal each square or mark the square as containing a mine.

## History

Minesweeper has its origins in the earliest mainframe games of the 1960s and 1970s. The earliest ancestor of Minesweeper was Jerimac Ratliff's *Cube*. The basic gameplay style became a popular segment of the puzzle game genre during the 1980s, with such titles as *Mined-Out* (Quicksilva, 1983), *Yomp* (Virgin Interactive, 1983), and *Cube*. Cube was succeeded by *Relentless Logic*(or *RLogic* for short), by Conway, Hong, and Smith, available for MS-DOS as early as 1985; the player took the role of a private in the United States Marine Corps, delivering an important message to the U.S. Command Center. *RLogic* had greater similarity to *Minesweeper* than to *Cube* in concept, but a number of differences exist:

* In *RLogic*, the player must navigate through the minefield, from the top left right angled corner to the bottom right angled corner (the Command Center).
* It is not necessary to clear all non-mine squares. Also, there is no mechanism for marking mines or counting the number of mines found.
* The number of steps taken is counted. Although no high score functionality is included, players could attempt to beat their personal best sco   re for a given number of mines.
* Unlike Minesweeper, the size of the minefield is fixed. However, the player may still specify the number of mines.
* Because the player must navigate through the minefield, it is sometimes impossible to win — namely, when the mines block all possible paths.

The gameplay mechanics of Minesweeper are included in a variety of other software titles, including:

* The mini-game Vinesweeper implemented into the MMORPG *RuneScape*; in this iteration (written by Jagex developer Danny J), the Minesweeper gameplay is given a large multiplayer aspect and the "game board" adopts a continually resetting timer. This allows for a never-ending game of Minesweeper where the skill is assessed in points rather than "game completion".
* The PC game Mole Control (developed by Remode); in this game, the minesweeper mechanic is integrated into a puzzle adventure game based in a village called Molar Creek, which has been overrun with exploding moles. You play the local inventor's assistant, who is tasked with clearing the village of exploding moles, and you can also take part in the Molar Creek Annual Mole Control competition in a Time Attack Mode.