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.”
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.
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
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.
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. :-)
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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"
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mosa...
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.
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.
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
[1] https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mosa...
> 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. :-)
try this one in html5: https://hojamaka.com/game/mamono_sweeper_h2/html5/en.html
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.
A reverse minesweeper would be: bombs are given, and you have to place the numberical hints.
Because of this ambiguity, the search space is much larger here. Source : I play A LOT of Minesweeper.
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
https://imgur.com/a/idfj1my
edit: I'm wrong. Thanks steve.
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.
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
how many dau you have?
Online example for the curious: https://raetselwelt.online/en/puzzles/binoxxo/
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)
I've been doing these for a long time, which is why this game seemed familiar to me.
Are the clues hand coded?
I'm struggling to play test the higher difficulties because it above my own skill level haha
I suggest larger levels (yes, scrolling and zooming might be required). After all, minesweeper is the most interesting on the largest level.
I -love- this idea though!!
Then in easy mode and above you are given max 3 mistakes similar to sudoku.com and other popular logic puzzles
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 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/