MineSweeper3D The ultimate version of Minesweeper! (2024)

You've probably played the old game called minesweeper. It's beenincluded with each of Microsoft's operating systems since before Windows95, andis very addictive! The idea is simple, but it's a challenge to master.

Here is a 3D version of minesweeper. The 3D graphics enhances theexperience and the different tilings used for the different boards introducesnew challenges of logic and adds a lot to the gameplay. There's a lot morevariation in this game than in the original Minesweeper!

Also, you can compete against others around the world by trying toget onto the online world records board!

The board is covered with tiles. You play by clicking to reveal whatlies beneath each tile. Some tiles have mines (or bombs) hidden beneaththem, so you must not click on those tiles! Other tiles will reveal a number,which indicates how many neighbouring tiles contain mines. Tiles areneighbours if they touch, either along an edge or just at a corner. Use thesenumbers to find all the tiles that don't contain mines. You win when all suchtiles have been revealed. If no neighbouring tiles contain mines, then nonumber is given (it would be zero), and all neighbouring tiles are alsorevealed (recursively if they too have no neighbouring mines!). This helps youclear large empty areas.

Since this version is three-dimensional, you also need to rotate the boardto access all the tiles. This is also controlled with the mouse. You can evenzoom in and out.

• Controls are fully compatible with the original game, so you canstart playing straight away.
• 48 board shapes to choose from, each with4 levels of subdivision and4 levels of difficulty. Compared to the original game,the smallest board is smaller, and the largest board is much larger!
• Exciting new tilings, not just squares. New tilings require newstrategies. Many boards even have various different types of tiling within theone game!
• An integrated solver lets you watch the computer play on its own.Can also be used to ask for a hint. See below for more info on this.
• Nice graphics effects when you win or lose. The winning effect is moreimpressive depending on how difficult the board is, so you need to keep tryingto solve more and more difficult boards!
• Statistics are given: 3BV and number of clicks of each buttoncombination. Statistics are also stored with entries in the best-times list.
• Not only is the first tile opened guaranteed not to reveal a mine, but noneof the surrounding tiles will contain a mine either, so you don't generallyhave to start guessing immediately after the first click. If the first clickrevealed was a number, you wouldn't be able to figure out where to go next!(Sound familiar?)
• You win by revealing all the tiles that don't contain a mine, but now youcan also win by flagging all the tiles that do! This takes out the guess workat the end of the game when you occasionally get an ambiguous situation. Youcan try flagging both possibilities to see which one wins.
• Since there are no "edges" to the board, you don't get as many ambiguoussituations, where it is impossible to know what to do next. Such situationswere more common in the original Minesweeper because at the edges, tilesweren't surrounded by neighbours so there wasn't enough information.
• Timer has two extra digits, for those really big boards!
• Timer is accurate to a tenth of a second, so you really know who deservesto be in that best-times list!
• Best-times are stored separately for all 768 possibleboards! 768 = 48 board shapes X4 levels of subdivision X 4 levels ofdifficulty.
• World record times are also stored, so you aren't just competing withyourself anymore! The latest world records are downloaded automatically fromwithin the program (or you can do it manually), and if you beat the worldrecord for a board, you can submit your new time. Best-times files areencrypted to make cheating difficult! There are lots of boards though, andsome haven't even been solved yet, so there's plenty of opportunity to get onthe world record list!
• The program automatically informs you when one of your world records hasbeen beaten by someone else!
• Countdown bars show you how much time is left if you want to beat apersonal or world record. Another countdown bar shows how many mines are leftso you can compare the two side-by-side to see whether you're on-track for anew record.
• The original Minesweeper had sound effects, but they were too annoying tolisten to, beeping every second! My approach to sound effects is more sparce.My home-made sound effects are kind of humourous, but fit into the game well,giving it a kind of retro feel somehow!

The game has a built-in auto-solver. Watch the computer play MineSweeper3D allby itself! You can also use this feature to ask for a hint when you get stuck.If you do use the integrated solver, the timer will be disabled and you can'tget a world record (that would be cheating!).

The solver can rotate the board to show you what it's doing, and highlighttiles to show what information it used to figure it out. Download the freedemo and check it out! The solver can always find a safe move to make if oneexists, and it can calculate exact probabilities of each tile containing a mineotherwise. Probabilities are shown on the screen as percentages and bycolour-coding the tiles.

So how does it work? It uses various rules. First it looks for any movesthat can be made using just a single open tile. For example, if an open tilehas the number "1", and it already has a flagged tile touching it, then allother neighbours must be safe to open.

Then it looks for moves that can be made based on two tiles. Then three.And then it considers all the tiles at once and counts the possiblecombinations. If tiles don't contain mines in any valid combination, then theyare safe to open. If they do contain mines in all valid combinations, thenthey are safe to flag. Otherwise the counts are used to figure out exactprobabilities of each tile containing a mine, and a guess is made by choosing atile with the lowest probability.

There are lots of user-settable options which control the auto-solver. Youcan tell it to stop when it finds certain situations. You can change the speedat which it plays on the screen. There is even a stats mode, where itplays off-screen and collects statistics about how many games were won, and howmany of each type of rule were used to solve the boards.

Start by downloading the free demo version byclicking here. If you want to buy the fullversion click here.

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