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Show HN: Reverse Minesweeper

sunflowersgame.com

267 pointspompomsheep96 comments

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.

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.

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...

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

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. :-)

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

Great thanks for sending these

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.

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.

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.

Thanks for the feedback would love to talk more with someone that plays a lot of minesweeper if you have the time?

Sunflowers still only ever has one valid solution across all difficulty levels, but would like to understand more why that is not clear to a veteran player

I have noticed this too. I have been playing it quite a bit. There is no reason to have one unique solution per board though.

Some thoughts:

Insane is not harder than Hard. Often times the opposite seems true.

Scratch mode auto-committing on win is a bit too nice.

Dark mode is whack, terrible contrast.

I would like a player profile with stats and so on.

Random Insane seems to play like one of 50 levels. I recognize them often. Seems not so with hard. Now I just enter the puzzle IDs in turn...

Some puzzles seem to have no prior solutions as my time is often exactly the global average.

I would like to know how many solved a puzzle. Also if I did.

Overall great job and I love this. I would like it to be an app or something that can be bookmarked.

Have been playing it quite a bit since the submission as well.

I have to echo the pencil mode being able to win feedback which absolutely ruins it for me - some sequences require penciling quite a bit to find the failing condition which leads to me winning by accident in pencil mode which just feels horrible and sort of cheat-y (I just happend the pencil the winning solution but I didn't solve it as intended)

Overall the game is great and I have been enjoying the daily masters and some of the insane puzzles.

P.S. the submit feedback does not work, something about needing the confirm the form or similar.

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.

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...

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.

> 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.

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.

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).

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!

I really enjoy this, but it would be great if it defaulted to the daily puzzle.

And I could swear there was a share button, where did it go?..

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

Is there only one solution per game?

yes

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

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.

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)

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)?

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

Actually really fun

I find it a bit confusing, in terms of the name, but reading the comments, I get the point of it being reversed as well. I mean, the game name in terms of reverse minesweeper ,but I like the game :) Even my 12 year old son understood how it works. Also good with dark theme! ;)

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

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...

Awesome idea

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

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.

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

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

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

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!!

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.

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

Did you use something like Z3 to solve/create the problems ?

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.

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)

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.

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

iPhone SE - it’s a lil guy - on iOS 26.5.2

Workaround: reduce font size on iPhone SE

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

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.

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!

I enjoyed this game. Well done!

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

how many dau you have?

Neat game! I enjoyed it!

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.

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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