• Mines Manual

Mines is a puzzle game where you locate mines floating in an ocean using only your brain and a little bit of luck.

You start the game with a grid of covered squares and no idea what is in them. Clicking on a square reveals what is in it: either empty ocean or a mine. If you find a mine bad things happen and the game is over. If you uncover an empty square, you survive and get to try again. We do give you a bit of help; if you find an empty piece of ocean a number is printed there telling you how many mines are in the adjacent squares (or no number if there are no nearby mines). Once you find a few clear squares you can start to deduce which squares have mines in them and which don't. You win the game once you have revealed all the un-mined squares and marked all the mined squares.

Figure 1 The stages of the game: the start, playing, losing, and winning.

To mark a square as having a mine you right-click on it and a flag is placed there. If you click on a square with a number and you have placed precisely that number of flags on adjacent squares then the remaining squares are revealed. If you didn't mark the mines correctly then an explosion will occur and the game is over. Squares with no adjacent mines (i.e. blank squares) have their adjacent squares automatically cleared.

Figure 2 Important information.

You are being timed. To be good at this game you have to work both quickly and correctly. Once you have found all the mines and revealed all the un-mined squares the clock is stopped. Your score is the time you took; the shorter the better.

The time you have taken is displayed on the bottom right of the window. Beside it, on the left, is a count of the number of mines you have cleared and the total number hidden on the board.

Figure 3 The yellow face shows you how well you are going.