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Cruel Mines
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About the game
Cruel Mines is a minesweeper with an unusual idea: the mines are not placed when the game starts. Instead, the game keeps track of everything that is still possible, and it decides where the mines are only as you play. As long as the numbers tell you something for certain, you are on your own, the usual logic of the genre. But if you guess, the game will always make that guess wrong, choosing the layout that is worst for you.
That sounds unfair, and it would be, if there were no safeguard. There is one: the moment you are really forced to guess, because no square on the board can be proved safe, the guess is guaranteed to be safe. So you are never punished for the random part of the genre, only for a guess you did not need. The result is a minesweeper with no luck in it. Either you can prove your next move, or you are told, in effect, that this is the one you may take for free.
Pawel Marczewski built it with a SAT solver (MiniSat, compiled to JavaScript) that works out, after every move, which squares can still hold a mine. It is an unusually clean piece of puzzle design, and it also has a hint button that shows a safe move, a Countdown mode that shows how many mines are still to be found around a number, and a Safe mode that asks for a double-click before a reveal. The page text is in English.
Playing it here
Click Play. Press New game for a board of the size written in the width, height and mines boxes, or pick one of the four ready-made levels: Easy (8 by 8 with 8 mines), Medium (10 by 10 with 20), Hard (15 by 15 with 50) and Expert (10 by 10 with 50). Left-click a square to reveal it. Right-click, or press and hold on a touchscreen, to put a flag on a square you think holds a mine. Double-click a revealed number when you have flagged as many squares around it as it says, and the game reveals the rest of its neighbours. By default you may only guess next to the revealed squares; tick Allow guessing anywhere to change that. Give me a hint shows a move, and Undo works once you have died.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| left-click | reveal a square |
| right-click, or press and hold | flag or unflag a square |
| double-click a number | reveal its neighbours, if enough flags are around it |
| New game | start a board with the width, height and mines in the boxes |
| Easy, Medium, Hard, Expert | start a ready-made level |
| Allow guessing anywhere | let you guess far from the revealed squares |
| Safe mode | require a double-click to reveal a square |
| Countdown mode | show the number of mines left around a number, counting your flags |
| Give me a hint / Undo | show a move / take back the last move after dying |
A few things worth knowing
Do not guess if you can reason. The game only lets a guess through when it has no other choice, so if you have a proof, take it before you try anything else.
Guessing next to the edge is a guess. The rule for a forced guess is strict: only when no square can be proved safe anywhere on the board is a guess free.
Use the hint to learn. The hint button shows a move that is safe, and it is a nice way to see what you missed.
Credits and licence
Cruel Mines was created by Pawel Marczewski (pwmarcz), who called it Kaboom, and is released under the MIT licence; the licence text is linked from this page. It uses Bootstrap 4.3.1, MiniSat compiled to JavaScript and the long-press-event library, all under the MIT licence with their notices kept in the files. This version has been changed by FredyGames: the name and the level names were replaced, and the links to other sites were taken out of the page.