Show HN: Reverse Minesweeper(sunflowersgame.com)
87 pointsby pompomsheepJul 26, 2026

11 Comments

da-xJul 26, 2026
Awesome idea
pompomsheepJul 26, 2026
Thanks! Not perfect yet but I think it has potential. Would love any feedback
convolvatronJul 26, 2026
I guess I am mildly discomfited by the red flower. if the program is going to tell me every time I fail to think through things properly, then my role here is kinda limited to driving the mouse.
pompomsheepJul 26, 2026
Helpful feedback thanks. I am trying to make it a bit more forgiving for first time players to learn the logic.

Then in easy mode and above you are given max 3 mistakes similar to sudoku.com and other popular logic puzzles

KuinoxJul 26, 2026
I jumped directly to insane and completed it on the first try. It's too easy.
pompomsheepJul 26, 2026
I've just tried to bump insane up a bit if you could test it to let me know what you think?

I'm struggling to play test the higher difficulties because it above my own skill level haha

kybishopJul 26, 2026
Insane is still far too easy. For the highest skill level it should be -really- hard. Was still able to solve one in under 3 minutes.

I -love- this idea though!!

pompomsheepJul 26, 2026
And if you find a puzzle you like the difficulty of could you tell me the puzzle id at the top left please
hyperhelloJul 26, 2026
I don’t understand how this is reverse minesweeper when it’s just minesweeper with flowers instead of bombs.
pompomsheepJul 26, 2026
Yeah it's maybe not the best way to describe it, but my intention is all clues already visible at the start rather than exploration, and adding in flowers rather than avoiding mines.

The main difference is having all the clues visible at the start changes it to a search and deduction logic style rather than reveal and react

omoikaneJul 26, 2026
In that sense, this game is similar to Mosaic[1] where the clues are all initially visible, except in Mosaic the count includes all 9 cells since black squares can be placed on the numbers themselves.

[1] https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/js/mosa...

BrainiJul 26, 2026
This reminds me a bit of one mode (squared) from Picture Enigmas (https://picture-enigmas.com/#features) which I like to play from time to time.
kevinwangJul 26, 2026
Another example is this Steam game which I play occasionally: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3083300/Proverbs/
aleph_minus_oneJul 26, 2026
From the same developer

> https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/divide-the-plunder

I particularly like "Mosaic of the Strange"

> https://store.steampowered.com/app/3444650/Mosaic_of_the_Str...

You will in particular like this game if you are into conspiracy theories. If one switches the difficulty to the hardest one, HN readers might have some fun with this game. :-)

mamonoleechiJul 26, 2026
tracerbulletxJul 26, 2026
It is the right way to describe it, that guy just doesn't remember how minesweeper worked.
kevincoxJul 26, 2026
In minesweeper you start with nothing visible and explore while avoiding the bombs. In this you start with all of the hints visible and place the bombs.

However in practice it is very similar since identifying where the bombs are to not click them is exactly the same logic as identifying where the bombs need to go. The only functional difference ends up being that all of the hints are visible upfront rather than needing to discover them.

testaccount28Jul 26, 2026
it reverses right and left click
adzmJul 26, 2026
Actually really fun
lioetersJul 26, 2026
It's cute and friendly, how it explains the rules. Maybe instead of a red box for making a mistake, the sunflower could "shake its head" to mean "no". Anyway the game feels well-designed with a focused scope, nice work!
ymolodtsovJul 26, 2026
Honestly looks far more obvious than the original to me.

I like how ai agents make it possible to experiment with different game concepts.

I merged Go with Tetris while brainstorming some ideas.

https://goban.molodtsov.me/

gkfasdfasdfJul 26, 2026
I love it. Reverse minesweeper describes it perfectly.
0x1ceb00daJul 26, 2026
Jumped from medium to insane and didn't notice any difficulty bump. Were the puzzles designed by AI, eg arc agi puzzles are trivial for humans but very difficult for LLMs.
yammajrJul 26, 2026
I did have to guess. If I'd have known how many mines there were, I wouldn't have though.

https://imgur.com/a/idfj1my

edit: I'm wrong. Thanks steve.

MK2kJul 26, 2026
The "4" clue forces the solution imho.
TepixJul 26, 2026
First column, there's a 2 in the second row from below that already has two sunflowers. So the 3rd adjacent field must be empty.
dyaroslaJul 26, 2026
Im curious how youve set up the multiple puzzle games you have to generate two daily puzzles each? It cant be entirely by hand or entirely AI driven?
ltsSmittyJul 26, 2026
There were a few boxes in the game I just played that didn't have enough information; e.g. only one number pointed to them and you couldn't reason it out. I think it's the kind of thing in regular minesweeper where it would've auto-cleared it when I opened a box next to it. I didn't take a screenshot but I hope that makes sense - I suppose maybe once you play the game more you'd learn that these are safe x's, but I found it to lack real information. I looked around for a tip or something on it but didn't quickly find anything
jaffa2Jul 26, 2026
it is possible in normal mine sweeper to have a postion where you cant determine 100% whether a square is a mine or not. In this cases you just have to guess. Try to identify them early as possible since they can ruin the game with an unlucky guess.
amanziJul 26, 2026
This is very similar concept to "0h h1" https://0hh1.com/ which I've been playing every day on Android for a couple of years now. I had never considered it to be a reverse minesweeper.