Show HN: Zsweep – Play Minesweeper using only Vim motions

Hi HN,

I’m the creator of zsweep. It’s a keyboard-centric Minesweeper clone where you play entirely using Vim motions (h, j, k, l to move; w/b to skip words; etc.).

The Backstory: I wanted to build a project to get my hands dirty with Svelte 5 and the new Runes system. I also wanted a way to practice Vim muscle memory that wasn't just typing code.

Tech Stack:

Frontend: Svelte 5 (Runes) + SvelteKit

Styling: Tailwind CSS

State: Custom Finite State Machine (FSM) for the game logic

The Challenge: One of the hardest parts was getting the "chording" logic right (where you clear multiple squares at once) while keeping the keyboard navigation feeling instant and "vim-like."

It’s open source, so if you’re curious about how Svelte 5 handles game state, feel free to poke around the code: https://github.com/oug-t/zsweep

I’d love to hear your feedback on the controls or any edge cases you find!

A friend of mine back in college was a minesweeper addict - he'd play it all the time on the computer lab staff machine (where he worked) when it was quiet but the manager eventually took all the games off all the machines.

https://github.com/rwestlund/freesweep was the result.

As he was learning how to program at the time, he decided to undertake writing minesweeper that he could play from a telnet session from the library or one of the vt100 terminals in the lab. And yes, he also had difficulty with the chording logic. He called it "super click" (that code is in clear.c). Part of the initial challenge was since he was taking this as his first project and before really reading the K&R everything was a one dimensional array (>.<) and there was a lot of multiplication and addition (and division and modulus).

Movement code is in play.c

For reference, here are the supported motions:

    case '0': return { type: 'ZERO' };
    case '_': return { type: 'START_ROW' };

    // --- SEARCH ---
    case '/': return { type: 'START_SEARCH' };
    case 'n': return { type: 'NEXT_MATCH' };
    case 'N': return { type: 'PREV_MATCH' };

    // --- MOVEMENT (WASD Removed) ---
    case 'h': case 'ArrowLeft':  return { type: 'MOVE_CURSOR', dx: -1, dy: 0 };
    case 'j': case 'ArrowDown':  return { type: 'MOVE_CURSOR', dx: 0, dy: 1 };
    case 'k': case 'ArrowUp':    return { type: 'MOVE_CURSOR', dx: 0, dy: -1 };
    case 'l': case 'ArrowRight': return { type: 'MOVE_CURSOR', dx: 1, dy: 0 };
    
    // --- SKIPS ---
    case 'w': return { type: 'NEXT_UNREVEALED' };
    case 'b': return { type: 'PREV_UNREVEALED' };

    // --- ACTIONS ---
    case 'i': case 'Enter': return { type: 'REVEAL' };
    case ' ': return { type: 'SMART' };
    case 'f': return { type: 'FLAG' };
    
    // --- ADVANCED MOTIONS ---
    case '$': return { type: 'MOVE_CURSOR', dx: 999, dy: 0 };  
    case 'G': return { type: 'GO_BOTTOM' }; 
    case 'g': return { type: 'GO_TOP' };  

No macros or block select yet, still fun! probably for the best that /mine doesn't work yet

Thanks all for the feedback and upvotes!

Motivated by the response, I just pushed a cleanup of the repo to make it easier to build and run locally.

I am now opening issues for the specific requests mentioned here--like adding the `e` motion, improving `w/b` logic, and preserving the board state when game over.

Thank you again, PRs are very welcome!!

Repo: https://github.com/oug-t/zsweep

Love games like this. I used Vim Snake to make the muscle memory for hjkl finally stick in my brain. (I wish you could disable the insert mode toggling -- it's cute but didn't help when I was trying to break the habit of moving my finger up to press W or Up Arrow and remember that everything is in a straight line.)

https://vimsnake.com

This was fun!

It would feel a little more intuitive if w/b worked on groups of unrevealed tiles instead of just moving 1 space when you were already on an unrevealed tile. i.e. unrevealed = words, revealed = spaces. That way, you could also use them to meaningfully navigate around unrevealed groups better than using h/l. I also found myself missing "e" to go to the end of a word, apparently I use it more often than "w".

I really appreciated the attention to detail though, I was delighted when I realized that gg/G/0/$ all worked as expected.

This is a fun idea and the implementation works pretty well.

The only complaint I have is that enter for clearing feels awkward in conjunction with hjkl movement; maybe add (d)elete and (f)lag as alternatives to enter and space to keep everything on the home row without requiring stretching?

It is common in traditional roguelikes to support vi keys as an alternative to arrow keys. I use that all the time when playing Brogue. Have a great vi keys muscle memory now thanks to that, but I use Emacs and only rarely vi, so it's not doing me much good.

Very nice, only feedback I have rn is you should keep the board state displayed after you hit a mine. I like to look around the board to see what I missed after making a mistake.

Reaching RET to open a block is too far from the home row, very unpleasant. C-m (Control-M) is much better and supported by both vim and Emacs.

Remember to exclude vimium from the site!

Play at: https://zsweep.com

Very useful as someone who's trying to use Vim motions more often, thanks!

This is nice! love this

Too bad it doesn't display the keyboard on mobile :-(