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Comment by hyperhello | Hacker News Reader

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

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...

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.

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

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.

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.

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