Amazing. Sat there for about five minutes listening to the dialogue, wasn't until I started hearing repeats that I realized it was actually interactive and not just an unnecessarily long opening cutscene.

Incidentally, as of Windows 8, Microsoft replaced OG Minesweeper with an overdesigned mobile game-inspired app with daily challenges and in-game purchases[1].

I've been carrying the orignal versions of Minesweeper and Solitaire from (checks Properties) Windows NT 3.51 in my "random bin" directory for years, chosen, I believe, because they're 32-bit, have none of the graphical changes introduced in later versions, and don't rely on any non-core system DLLs. They still run fine under Windows 11, though you have to jump through hoops to open their help files (namely, dig up a copy of winhlp32.exe and open them from within it, because modern Windows versions block the ability to add file associations for .hlp files, instead redirecting to a series of progressively less useful web sites).

[1] https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9wzdncrfhwcn?hl=en-US&gl=U...

So good.

Maybe lean into some of the metal gear solid dialogue by having a long back and forth about "What's a mine?" "What do you mean 'mark a mine'?" "How do I know when I'm done?" etc.

Pretty close but they forgot the part where I have to install anti cheat, update my drivers and reboot, create an account and link my email, check my email for a code, accept ToS, compile shaders, and wait for more patches to install before playing.

I have not seen any comment about the idea that you are being handholded through whole game without even needing to think about what to do next.

For me this is the biggest complaint about some games where instead of making a player think what to do and how to navigate game, player basically gets "click her" "go that way" "click that" "congrats you won"

so i think this is the parody aspect of this minesweeper.

Cant imagine current AAA games allowing player to be stuck for days trying to solve the problem like good old times of monkey island or leisure suit larry

Nice but the logos are skippable, which is not realistic.

36 goddamn seconds, mere moments are waking and, for what?! stabbed in the back again. i knew she wasn't good for it, why didn't i trust my instincts. all those people, so many goddamn people, and now this?! i ain't sweeping no more, i'm out.

There is also the classic "Minesweeper - The Movie"[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHY8NKj3RKs

AAA Mario (1m41s video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMh_APo2Xss

Does anyone know if the voices are AI-generated? I was a little surprised; I don't think I would have questioned it if I heard them in a real game or video but since this seems to basically be a joke, I'm doubtful real voice actors were used.

But I didn't need to install a publisher specific launcher to run it.

I was angry at the wasted 30 seconds of opening licensed 3rd party software listings, but I stayed through to the end of the credits roll, laughing until I cried.

This is Art.

This is exactly what I thought the Web was going to be like. Imagine the renaissance era of Classic Web if people could realize their clever ideas like this so easily.

My only criticism was the lack of shader compilation. I miss the time where I can go and make a sandwich without fear of missing out.

Bravo overall, nailed many tropes of modern gaming.

I lol’d when they said “there’s no time to waste”… after making me watch five splash screens.

Thank you for making this. Biting commentary on modern video games.

How did people in the 90s even manage to play Minesweeper without having a yellow marker to guide you?

Missing:

Sidequest to sweep 10 mines.

Achievement after sweeping 5 mines

The yellow diamond is nice but what if I don't notice the diamond? I need a colored scent trail leading from my cursor to the yellow diamond, and a pinging noise when my cursor is near a mine

Mocapped mines

Jack Quaid

$70

So good. Looking forward to level 2 so we can find out what happened in Singapore.

I was hoping for the thing where you play through like half of the game and only then it shows you the title against a dramatic vista.

I was absolutely hoping to see production babies in the credits. Can’t win ‘em all.

so, in case if you like minesweeper and doom ... https://dreadsweeper.franzai.com/

This seemed so pointless and uninteresting to me. It's obviously a blindspot for me, since it's so heavily upvoted and liked by many. But for me, mindlessly clicking the prompted location, after sitting through some pointless into logos, leading to absolutely no payoff at all, just ending credits, was distasteful. Can someone who enjoyed this experience articulate why, so that I can reflect on my own personal failing in this regard?

The author of the game posted on Bluesky:

https://bsky.app/profile/mikelacher.bsky.social/post/3mxepyw...

Pac-Man as a Modern AAA Game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaoUVVD-hUc

I like the part where it doesn't even matter if you hit a mine, you are on this train ride regardless of what you do.

Needs:

- Checkpoints after each mine

- DLC for rounded corners

10/10 story. I look forward to the forthcoming motion picture adaptation from Skydance directed by Michael Bay.

Funniest is, you can hit every single mine with no drawbacks.

I feel like there's some reference to the recent Wolverine game and it's unfailable driving sequences in that ...

Please expand this into a full open-world minesweeping game

LOL! I'm actually reasonably enjoying Netflix Games Minesweeper which is over-campained and over- in general, but not horribly (no ads/sells). The tweak there is a sea/islands setting with non-rectangular boards — it's actually adding some nice variation.

This is too good. And the main reason why I don't play games today!

Manufactured emotions and hand holding for 'an experience' instead of just fun.

I missed achievements and loading times! Some shader recompilation before the level load would have been tops :)

Felix Varga and Johanna Kowalski (Online Services Engineers) must have done a really good job - with all the traffic from the HN front page login servers didn't go down and queue was almost instant.

This is just stellar. My favorite HN submission this year. Excellent.

All it's missing is a "Focus, S!"

Edit: I was impatient. I got my "Focus, Sweeper." Life is good.

Edit 2: It's actually impossible to lose the game. This is art.

I guess I will be the sole person in this thread to admit that I really enjoy my hand being held while I play a video game.

I used to play a lot of games in high school but didn't find the time for them once I started working and now, after about a 15 year hiatus, got curious and have been playing God of War, Expedition 33, High on Life and enhanced editions of slightly older titles like GTA 5 and BioShock 2. The cinematic experience of God of War, the hints in the environmental lighting about what direction to go in Expedition 33, the popovers in GTA that remind you of what the left joystick does again, the repeated voiceovers that explain what each gun does in High on Life, exact directions to where you need to go in Cyberpunk 2077, never having to bother with save games because most games have copious checkpoints... it's great!

Maybe I'm a klutz, but I remember in the late 90s and early 00s there were plenty of titles where a typical night of gaming would go like this: you have to make sure the intergalactic terrorists don't blow up the power plant, but after half an hour it's clear that you will need to level up to have a chance, another half an hour later you resort to google and figure out that you really shouldn't have skipped that side quest because then you'd have that invisibility upgrade, you finally make your way past the baddies but after a toilet break get confused about what direction you were going in and suddenly find yourself back where you started, you retrace your steps, go on, press the Avoid Reactor Meltdown button but because you've clicked a couple of pixels too far to the left, then a couple of pixels too far to the right, it doesn't do anything, so now you're thinking, maybe I didn't complete all the prereqs so let's wander around some more, but you're getting annoyed so you repeatedly fall off of some walkway into lava... ultimately you make it to the end boss and after the 17th try you realize that their right eye is their weak point, but only for a window of five seconds after it has stopped glowing red. Too bad you didn't stock up on sniper bullets and entered the last room without full health, might have to load an earlier save game to fix that.

I'm sure a lot of people are nostalgic for that special feeling when you've beat a difficult game, but there are a lot of ways in which games used to be difficult that were incidental, through lack of affordances, instead of essential to the gameplay.

And which half of the staff gets fired day after release?

I love the parody. Is this a treatise on modern game development? I hope so.

No lootboxes?

the non-stopping narration makes it so hard to actually sweep the mines....

Do "AAA" games these days really have that much talking by default? Painful.

That was a perfect execution. I almost saw a Kojima Game by Hideo Kojima title. The only thing missing was the dialogue at the end of the credits, where Xero says that "Afghanistan is where the answer lives."

Not only is this completely hilarious, it's also arguably a better version of minesweeper. Completely awesome project. I love it.

I'm sad that SpeedTree and Havoc weren't in the intro logos though.

WHAT HAPPENED IN SINGAPORE?!

That was a great parody, but how much of those effects still worked even though you knew it was coming? The fade ins, blurring the outsides, the emotional voice talking to you... it definitely raised my interest more than just opening minesweeper!

I mean, it doesn't last very long without something else going on, but there is a reason.

I am mostly been lurking here but since we are talking about Minesweeper, a good opportunity to break the silence :)

I am also a big fan of the game and its variants and currently working on Rogue Sweeper, just another Minesweeper roguelike (beta name, finding an actual name is the hard part)

Still in early beta and iPhone only for now. If anyone wants to give it a try: https://testflight.apple.com/join/sjbNFZWH

Feedback always welcome.

Great, it would be super cool to remix it with https://danielben.itch.io/dragonsweeper

Heck yeah, it was great. But OMG the captions over the bottom of the play area almost drove me nuts! Still, it's quite a piece of art, even if I don't really understand it (typical).

Love this one with AAA Mario https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMh_APo2Xss

First time I've laughed out loud at one of these sorts of things in a while...

I was expecting it to open up on some WW2 style battlefield with smoke and explosions, but this was better.

Look! I swept all the mines! https://imgur.com/a/7OJxBy9

I'd buy it just to learn what happened in Singapore.

That's hilarious. Spot on.

Needs the epilepsy warning and Activision account login, plus TOS consent screen, network login failure warning, new DLC series content updates

Fancy playing the standard edition when the deluxe edition has a limited edition enhanced selection icon, a music cd and a small plastic mine.

Fun! The credits were probably the highlight for me.

Great parody - very "Focus, M"-esque. Often, it feels that we've lost sight of "If it's not fun, why bother".

The subtitles covering the board while the narrator keeps telling me to focus is painfully accurate. The credits were the best part.

I need to sweep these mines!

Needs an 'always online' requirement

What no 30 minute shaders compiling sequence?

Is it always wrong when it says "I think there's a mine here"? It seemed to to me on my playthough...

[edit]

Oh, it says "I think there's a mine here" when you mark a location, but the yellow-diamond is "click here because there's no mines" it's not related to what is being said.

I absolutely love the fact that it's impossible to lose. You can click every mine and still not lose.

I missed "compiling shaders"

icymi, we can also do this with Mario https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMh_APo2Xss

AAA Pacman is also a good one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVY_oJlv_Eo

It is missing a huge cut to a countdown timer for added suspense, a film isn’t a film without a cut to the countdown timer driving the story.

Apart from those films which do t have them.

Ok, but where are the microtransactions and subscribtions?

You need to add achievements/trophies! Definitely need to achieve a trophy for clicking on the very first square, finding the first mine, your first flag, etc.

Could someone recommend a well-organized book on this kind of direction? I'm curious how a small game like this pulls off this kind of direction.

Sweep (2026)

Wow the ending credits music was actually pretty awesome

For a monent I thought it's a parable of trying to focus on actual work in an AI-shoved-down-your-throat corporate setting.

I only wish there were more than happened if you died. Absolutely the best thing ever. Thank you for this experience.

This is hilarious

Performance is too good for the UE game.

Was expecting Hideo Kojima in the credits.

The part where the subtitles hide the mines is the best for me. Also talk with Ubisoft - they make AAAA games.

Should have done some shader compilation

Ok but like... Kojima vibes. 10/10 best trippppllleee AAYYyyyyy game to come out this year lol

I thought for sure a popup was going to appear asking me to log in with Games For Windows Live!

Where do I enter my credit card info for the Season Pass and the special operator skin?

I laughed way way way too hard

Not even a dlc and cosmetics?

Where is expert mode? Please introduce this! Or did I somehow miss it?

I need to sweep these mines.

Art

The names at the end credits cracked me up. Literally made my day.

I gave up before I read "Minesweeper" for the first time.

There might be a mine here

Despite all the stuff it's parodying, this is still a lot better than Bomberman: Act Zero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomberman%3A_Act_Zero

We need a day-1 patch to align the mines to the center of their tile.

Don't forget the "favorable" game reviews.

"Whose mines are these?" "Huh, just a flag."

Absolute Cinema

I have bigger fish to fry, Jack, get those mines defused

omg this is brilliant i was IMMEDIATELY tilting my face off

They really hyped it up with all the name drops.

Needs a 128GB RAM, 100GB free disk space requirement.

I'm eagerly awaiting the Chapter 2 DLC.

Damn I didn't even have to Press Start to begin

Well thanks, I had a short AAA experience. :)

I'm curious which TTS model was used for the "Nora" voice. I kept noticing vocal artifacts in her speech disfluencies. Which bothers me more than it probably should...

hahaha! That's pretty funny. That credit tho. Just how many engineers you need to make a minesweeper game?

Thanks for sharing! It made my day.

This made me laugh. The credits broke me haha

the whole point of mine sweeper is to be fast. Extra things is slowing it down. It is too complicated for a simple game.

Nice, ui doesn’t support “chording” ie click a number with all its mines flagged and all adjacent squares are clicked. It make clearing the board much faster.

Strong metal gear solid vibes… i love that

Brilliant. You nailed it! Still laughing.

Mine Sweeper: Tom Clancy's Sweep Job

Where do we get the soundtrack and merch?

Finally, a Minesweeper with a side quest.

The ending needed to force you to click on a mine so you die in the cutscene lmao.

Can I get an FPS overlay for this?

Is there a help card? Or, how do you turn off the CC captions? They obscure the bottom of the play field on my Mactop.

This is straight up brilliant.

I need to sweep these mines!

Incredible

Brilliant! You nailed it.

No micro transactions?

Sweep those mines!

Needs Debra Wilson

Intro is too long

This is amazing.

This was great, but honestly, I would have enjoyed a non-joke take on this. Like, but with a cinematic story around it.

That was awesome

This is fun.

Masterpiece

Perfection.

lol perfect execution. I cracked up with the smiley face lip sync.

this is aweful, thanks

Now do a perfect minesweeper that gradually (at your pace) onboards you without a single verbal message.

now add a kernel level rootkit and a monthly subscription which guarantees a set amount of loot-boxes a month.

What the hell happened in Singapore?

"Oof! A mine!"

Now I need to go to late.sh for the terminal version ;-)

What is the point of this?

Made me lol, thanks :D

Lmao

I guess there's a joke here somewhere? It's minesweeper but annoying?