Show HN: I made a live multiplayer Minesweeper game
58 comments
·March 18, 2025Arnavion
If the rate limiter buffered your action instead of just reverting it entirely, with some indication like a faded out ghost to indicate that the action will be played out later, it would be much better. Otherwise it's too frustrating to have to click everything three times because the game keeps undoing what you did.
dimava
If you didn't heard of it yet, there's a Minesweeper game where you try to solve it Algorithmically
I.e. you make rules like "If there are 2 free cells around number 2 them flag them" and the game recursively applies them to the board
Except simple levels solve fast and in ten minutes you are on monstrosities like
?2??
?32?
23x2 x-bomb
x?3? ?-unknown
Arnavion
For me Bombe was fun, but I lost interest once rules needed to be complicated enough that I would have to run them for multiple hours to solve further levels. You either end up needing rules with four or five variables to apply fully generally, or you break down and define a combinatorial explosion of rules with some of those variables specialized. The priority system doesn't work reliably either; I frequently see a new rule I just added with max priority not running while other slower rules keep running for thousands of ticks.
It's not the dev's fault because Minesweeper is inherently hard for a solver (the game uses Z3) to solve in this way, but it took the fun out of it for me. But the amount of fun I got until I reached that point was well worth the sale price. (Also I can never be too negative about a dev who supports Linux first-class as brejc does.)
andrewla
There are a couple of cooperative multiplayer minesweeper games around -- of note is [1], which is an infinite (or very large) persistent minesweeper world where you can just start solving subsets of the board, and move up leaderboards, etc.
[1] https://m3o.xyz
johnisgood
You need to sign up to play it though. :(
slig
You can play without signing up, just tried.
johnisgood
I get "Sign in to open and flags cells not adjacent to already opened and flagged cells".
Other than that, it does work, you are right.
airstrike
that is such a peaceful experience... good stuff
Paturages
played as "birch", here's my first impressions and feedback
- my play style was definitely limited by the "2 actions per second" limit (I had to actively control my pace), and also disrupted by the info tooltip appearing over the cells I want to click when those extra fast clicks happen to be towards the bottom
- placing a mine counts as an action, which incentivizes farming hunting mines while letting others explore for you if you're aiming for points, this also is counterintuitive to how high-level minesweeper efficiency works (you usually ignore mines that are obvious to let the autofill work in the end to save time)
- I agree that the point system (especially the 2x round win bonus) steers the game towards competitiveness rather than cooperation
- mistakes, specifically left-clicking mines, could be more punitive: maybe outright switch the player to a different room if they "explode", which could encourage "safer" gameplay
- otherwise pretty fun! I think it's a solid foundation to build more modes and features on
Matthias247
Besides whats called out by others: It would be nice to have the usual action of "press both mouse buttons" on a number to open all non flagged fields around it. That reduces the amount of required clicks a bit.
But maybe its intentional to avoid one player scoring too many points at once?
apsv
Played a bit as "oxer", agree on all notes about the gameplay being steered towards observing and competing rather than collaboration. A few notes:
- Maybe flagging shouldn't trigger correctness checks: in traditional minesweeper, placing a flag is just a marker of "I believe there is a bomb here.", but to actually know you need to check.
- Chording doesn't seem to be fully taken into account: sometimes clicking a single empty spot will open up a large area, but still only counts as one point. Maybe if flags aren't checked, chording can become "dangerous" as it'll check multiple possible bombs.
- Not a fan of the action limit, but it serves as a skill leveler of sorts. With a ranking system in place it probably wouldn't be necessary from a gameplay perspective.
- If the objective is a collaborative experience, maybe taking a spin on the game, like adding turns or planning, would be nice
Really fun
yangman
Neat! Takes me back to highschool... https://lostmediawiki.com/Minesweeper_Flags_(lost_Windows_Li...
latexr
> Scoring system rewarding correct moves
I felt this entirely undermined the stated goal. You didn’t make cooperative minesweeper but the exact opposite—competitive minesweeper—because despite playing in the same board you’re both competing for who is faster and can get more individual points.
True cooperation would be something like only one person being able to reveal numbers and the other only being able to place flags. Or each player having one turn at a time and all working together to not lose (currently a wrong move is nothing but a point loss, effectively removing consequences from the game).
Also, if it is possible at all, it wasn’t clear how to place flags on mobile.
avodonosov
Another cooperation approach - something like voting for each decision. E.g. majoriry must open a cell for it to really open.
bluelegacy
This is a fair point! It is a competitive multiplayer minesweeper rather than co-op. but where everyone is rewarded for their correct contributions to clearing the board. I'm correcting the game descriptions related to this. Thanks!
Flag placements are touch & hold on mobile and right-click on PC.
B7wY90Zu3Z
btw, those flag placements are not working for me.
Retr0id
Alternatively, you could have the grid be a checkerboard. Player 1 can only interact with black tiles, Player 2 can only interact with white tiles.
oneeyedpigeon
One person revealing and the other placing flags is a really nice twist — I'd love to see how that works in practice.
kenrick95
This looks great and well polished!
Brings back memory to the hackathon project that's quite similar to this that me and my friends did back like 9 years ago!? https://github.com/SpanishArmada/Minesweeper-Battle?tab=read...
vladde
This is super fun!... until you meet someone who is just sweeps (pun intended) the floor.
There is no way for me to even play with some players. I wish I could "block" them, because the fun is gone when every tile is gets completed before I can even react.
My best game was my first, where I played against people my skill. Whenever the user "rapidash" is in the lobby, I might as well just quit, since I won't be able to get in more than one or two correct placements.
aswerty
I just assumed they were bots since they seem to be clicking at the rate limit.
kqr
I felt like a good strategy was to react quickly to when other players revealed large parts of the board, and immediately mark the "obvious" mines in there even though I was looking at another part of the board. Though now that I think about it, marking those mines is just as much a "correct" move as revealing the numbers that come out of such marking activity, but I still have a sense that it is a quick way to gain a few points.
csmattryder
Ok, that was fun. Pipped Ginko to the win by one point, they should've calculated the last square was a flag faster than I did.
It'd be cool to be able to put your own name in though, without signing in. Just a suggestion.
Hi everyone! For several months now I've been stuck on the idea of a Minesweeper game that isn't just single player. This is what I came up with:
• Live games allowing several people to play at the same time
• Scoring system rewarding correct moves
• Grid size, mines count, and players count set to make games as balanced as possible