Hundreds of games get to market each year while we expect for fresh surprises or faithful remakes but if we take a step back to those classic games that marked deep in the minds of those born in the 90s we can find old challenges. Today we’ll talk about a milestone in the history of strategic and logic games that surprisingly it’s alive and continues to give headaches to those who try to overcome their levels and records.

Windows Minesweeper

This game simply asks us to search for safe places around the board, dodge explosive mines and thus overcome the level, should be simple right? However, this game will slap your face easily with its three difficulty modes being the first one almost impossible to pass it quickly, at least not having the following in mind:

-The number in the safe boxes: When clicking some of the safe boxes will be marked with a digit that guides us to detect how many bombs there are around it, isn’t a perfect science but you can predict better over time and avoid destruction.

- Use of the flags: After being sure that right next to your safe box you will find a bomb or several, you can use your right mouse click to it and paint a flag on it, very useful if you want to avoid click on it later by accident.

- Patterns: Each level has patterns that vary according to the difficulty, but if you memorize them, they can help you finish the level in a shorter time.

- Efficiency: To be really efficient in this game you must not only finish finding all the safe squares in the shortest time possible but also with the least amount of click – so if you are already an experienced player and read numerical patterns properly you may want to spare use the flag and increase your speed and time.

- Clones: This old game had to adapt due to technological advances, bugs or changes for new operating systems, so if you are going to try to break any record, check you have an official –and legal- version because, according to professional players, vanilla game had some easy to detect patterns and bugs that allowed you to win the game in a single click.

Minesweeper into the E-Sports

When a video game come with great amount of challenges regular players perform perhaps half of them. However, obsessive players – like me *cough*- can spend hours trying to accomplish one: finish with shortest possible time. This was precisely what triggered the incursion of the Minesweeper into the competitive.

Minesweeper.info had players around the globe fighting to beat their own time after knowing ranking. So, in order to create an honest and impartial competitiveness, some clones as 'Minesweeper Clone', 'Minesweeper Arbiter', 'ViennaSweeper' or 'Minesweeper X' appeared with special options for this competitive environment, allowing to do things like recording videos, share them and get validation from "certifying juries".

This ranking was created 20 years ago and it’s still managed to this day by Damien Alex Moore – impressive huh?

Better time solving a MineSweeper game in expert mode.

Overcoming best time it’s hard in any field but with effort nothing is impossible. Today’s record leader for the game in expert mode is 31.133 seconds by Kamil Muranski in 2010, followed by the chinese competitor Dan-Zhou who made it in 31.90 seconds in June 2018.

31.133 seconds by Kamil Muranski in 2010

It seems that this classic game refuses to die and Minesweeper.info it’s an active official website that continues giving strategies and real time data of the records. If you want to know more you can visit and extend the information I shared with you today with this tribute to the game that made me both suffer and enjoy for a long time.

Extra: This game and Solitaire were created with a secret mission: To find the smartest and fastest. Ok, no. They were created to help users to learn how to use the mouse trough windows intuitive interface settlement.

Did you also played this legendary classic? Leave your comment down below as fast as you can but be careful of hidden mines.

Sayonara, my retro gamer crew.

eSports / minesweeper

Minesweeper never dies

Minesweeper never dies

Minesweeper never dies