How to play Minesweeper: rules, controls and solving tips

Minesweeper modes

• Play solo (ひとりで遊ぶ): choose Beginner, Intermediate, Expert or Custom and go for your personal best and the leaderboard
• Random Match (ランダム対戦): find an opponent online and race to solve
• Room Match (ルーム対戦): play with 2–4 friends using a room ID

Basic rules of Minesweeper

• When you open a square, a number shows how many mines are in the 8 squares around it (up, down, left, right and diagonally). If a square has no mines around it, the squares around it open all at once.
• If you open a square with a mine, the game is over.
• You can plant a flag on a square you think hides a mine, as a marker.
• You clear the board when you have opened every square without a mine.
• No mines are placed on the first square you open or on the squares around it, so you can never lose on your first click.
• Pressing a number that already has that many flags around it opens the rest of the squares around it at once. If a flag is in the wrong place, you will open a mine, so be careful.

How to play on Asobi Lounge

• Click (tap) a square to open it. To plant a flag, right-click on a computer; on a phone, long-press or use the Open/Flag switch (開く/旗) at the bottom of the screen.
• On large boards, zoom in with + and drag with your finger to move around. If you hold your phone upright, even the Expert board turns vertical.
• Turn on "Boards solvable by logic alone" (推理だけで解ける盤面) to play boards that never leave you a 50/50 guess.
• In versus play, everyone solves their own board of the same size, and the first to open every safe square wins. If you open a mine, you cannot do anything for 5 seconds.

Board sizes and mine density

The difficulty depends much more on what share of the squares are mines than on how big the board is. Dividing the number of mines by the number of squares gives the following.

• Beginner: 9×9 squares, 10 mines (about 12%)
• Intermediate: 16×16 squares, 40 mines (about 16%)
• Expert: 30×16 squares, 99 mines (about 21%)
• Custom: 5–24 squares tall and 5–30 squares wide, and you also set the number of mines. Each board has a maximum number of mines so that your first click can open a wide area. Custom games do not count for the leaderboard and cannot be used in versus play.

Records and the leaderboard

When you play solo, the number of games played, the number of clears and your fastest time for each difficulty are saved in this browser. If you are signed in, your clear times on Beginner, Intermediate and Expert also go on the leaderboard.

After a clear, you also see "3BV", the minimum number of clicks needed to solve the board, how much of it you got through per second (3BV/s), and "efficiency", which shows how few wasted actions you made. You can look back not only at your time but also at how precise your play was.

Tips

• If a "1" has only one unopened square around it, that square is certainly a mine.
• If a number equals the number of flags around it, all the other squares around it are safe. Opening them all at once speeds you up.
• In a "1-2-1" pattern along a wall, the mines are next to the two 1s, and the square next to the middle 2 is safe.
• Open the squares you can be sure of first, and guess only as a last resort.
• In versus play, the 5-second freeze after opening a mine makes a big difference. Quickly opening squares you are sure of wins more games than guessing in a hurry.
• Plant flags only where you need them to open squares all at once from a number. You make fewer actions, and your "efficiency" after a clear goes up.

Frequently asked questions

Is it a game of luck?

With "Boards solvable by logic alone" turned on, every board can be solved to the end using only the number clues (versus play always uses these boards). With it off, as in ordinary Minesweeper, you may be left with a 50/50 guess at the end.

How do I plant a flag on a phone?

Long-press the square. You can also flip the Open/Flag switch at the bottom of the screen so that a tap plants a flag.

Does everyone get the same board in versus play?

The board size and the number of mines are the same, but the mines are in different places for each player. Every board can be solved by logic alone.

Is Minesweeper free to play?

Yes, it costs nothing. Games against the CPU and solo modes work right away without signing in. Online play (random matches and private rooms) and saving stats or leaderboard scores require signing in with a Google account. To play with a friend, your friend also needs to create an account and register as your friend.

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