14 Minesweeper Variants

14 Minesweeper Variants is an abstract logic game revisiting the rules of Minesweeper in multiple inventive ways. It’s still about flagging the mines on a grid based on numerical indications, but the exotic variant rules require you to develop new approaches. With its tough-but-fair design and its staggering number of puzzles, 14 Minesweeper Variants is a treasure trove of logic gameplay.

The variants are organized along two core principles: adding a new logic constraint to the vanilla rules, or changing the meaning of the clues. An example of the former is the Connected variant, which requires all mines to be orthogonally or diagonally connected. This can have wide-ranging consequences across the grid as you ensure that all mines can always be chained together. An example of the latter is the Liar variant, where each clue is either one more or one less than the actual value. So a clue of 3 means there’s either 2 or 4 mines around this cell, and it’s up to you to find out the only possible value out of these two.

The grids are entirely deterministic, meaning that you can always locate new clues based on pure logic, and you’ll never be forced into a blind guess. Each variant comes with hundreds of procedurally generated grids which often present novel and challenging situations. The “clickable clue” option allows you to auto-fill trivial consequences from single clues, eliminating most of the drudge to focus on complex deductions instead. There’s also a hint system you can use at any time in order to highlight relevant clues and reveal one cell you could clear based on them.

The variants aren’t available right from the start; they’re unlocked one after the other by clearing a few grids of each. The size of the grids ramp up from 5x5 to 8x8, ensuring you discover and learn about the variant-specific techniques in small setups before tackling the larger, more difficult grids. A stripped-down menu keeps track of your progression. The visuals are kept to a bare minimum, although like in Tametsi, the game includes drawing tools you can use to assist in your logical reasoning.

A good part of the fun comes from unlocking and getting familiar with new rules, and 14 Minesweeper Variants includes so many surprises in this regard that you may be tempted to believe it never ends. The game actually involves much more that 14 variants, with standalone bonus variants of varying difficulty, but also cross-variants that mix several rules at the same time. The postgame takes things to the extreme: the grid generation algorithm is tweaked to create even more convoluted puzzles, and the optional Ultimate mode adds a layer of optimization constraints to the locating of the clues.

This description was written by Oriane Tury.