Games Like Minesweeper: Eight Logic Puzzles Built on the Same Thinking

What makes a puzzle feel like Minesweeper

Three things. The clues are numbers, each number limits what can be true nearby, and every move should follow from what you can already see. When the puzzle is built well, no speed, trivia or luck is needed.

In Minesweeper, a 3 means exactly three of its up to eight neighbors hold mines, and a 1 with only one hidden neighbor leaves no doubt about that neighbor. Reading the numbers is the whole skill. The puzzles below swap that clue for something else, such as the sides of a cell or the length of a run, but the question stays the same: given what this number allows, what must be true?

The shortcuts carry over too. Minesweeper players learn patterns such as 1-2-1 so they stop working cell by cell, and almost every puzzle here has its own pattern vocabulary.

Number clues you read locally

Slitherlink

You draw a single closed loop along the lines between dots. A number inside a cell says how many of that cell's four sides the loop uses.

This is the closest cousin in spirit: a small number counts something around it, and a 0 or a 3 tells you a lot at once, like an empty cell or a high number in Minesweeper. A 0 means none of the four sides is used. A 3 in the corner of the grid must use both outer edges, because a loop cannot dead-end at the corner dot. The twist is that all the lines must join into one ring, which adds a second kind of reasoning on top of the counting.

Hexcells

Hexcells is a puzzle series played on a honeycomb of hexagons. Revealed hexagons carry numbers that count how many of the surrounding cells belong to the hidden pattern, which is Minesweeper's neighbor count on a different grid.

Some clues add a second kind of information, such as whether those cells sit together in one connected run. That extra clue type is the main reason it feels fresh to a longtime Minesweeper player.

Puzzles where you place things under rules

Star Battle

You place stars on a grid so that every row, every column and every colored region holds the same small number of stars, usually one or two. Stars may never touch, not even diagonally.

The link to Minesweeper is elimination. A placed star crosses out its eight neighbors, the way a satisfied number tells you its remaining neighbors are safe. Good Star Battle solving is a chain of those crossings-out until only one placement is left.

Tents

Every tree needs its own tent right beside it, to the left, right, above or below. Tents cannot touch each other, even diagonally, and the numbers on the edges say how many tents each row and column holds.

The edge numbers behave like Minesweeper clues stretched along a line. A row marked 0 is simply empty, the same quick win as an opened zero.

Battleship puzzles

A hidden fleet sits in a grid. Numbers on the edges tell you how many ship segments are in each row and column, ships never touch each other, and a few cells are revealed to start.

You count hidden things in a group of cells and rule cells out. The group is a row instead of a neighborhood, but the deductions feel familiar: this row needs three more segments and only three cells can still hold them, so all three do.

Puzzles that fill in or divide a grid

Nurikabe

Each number marks an island of that many connected cells. Everything else is one connected sea, with no two-by-two block of water and no two islands touching.

Each cell is land or water, much like mine or safe. The key move is combining two numbers: a cell that sits directly between two different numbered cells cannot belong to both islands, so it must be water. That is the same idea as comparing two neighboring numbers in Minesweeper.

Nonograms (Picross)

Numbers beside each row and column list the lengths of the filled runs in that line. You fill or cross out cells to reveal a picture.

Again every cell is filled or empty, and a single clue can settle cells outright. In a row of ten, a run of eight must cover the middle six cells wherever it sits. Spotting overlaps like that is the Nonogram version of a pattern.

Sudoku

Sudoku is the furthest relative here. There are no neighbor counts, only the rule that each digit appears once in every row, column and box. What carries over is elimination: you keep asking what a cell can no longer be until one answer remains.

The one big difference: guessing

Minesweeper boards are usually generated randomly, so logic sometimes runs out and the only move left is a guess. That comes from how the boards are made, not from a flaw in your reasoning. Our guide to avoiding guesses in Minesweeper covers how to play so you meet fewer of them.

Most of the puzzles above are made differently. A well-made Slitherlink, Star Battle, Nurikabe or Nonogram is designed to have one solution that you can reach by logic alone. If you like Minesweeper's reasoning but not its occasional coin flip, these are the natural place to go.

Minesweeper Worlds Online keeps the classic rules, and its maps come from a seed, so some situations can still come down to a guess. A mine only locks the area you were working in, and the rest of your world stays as it is.

From the same studio: Slitherlink and Star Battle

Minesweeper Worlds Online is made by nineclove, which also publishes two logic puzzle apps that fit this list. They are our own, so weigh the mention accordingly. Plenty of other versions of both puzzles exist.

• Slitherlink - Number Loop: draw one closed loop by connecting dots, with numbers showing how many sides of each cell the loop uses. Difficulty runs from a 3x3 tutorial up to 10x10 Very Hard, and there are tips, a time attack mode and a leaderboard.
• Star Battle - Logic Puzzle: place stars so each row, column and colored region holds one star (Queens) or two (Two Not Touch), with no stars touching. Every puzzle has one solution reachable by logic, so no guessing is needed. It has hints, a solving guide and three difficulty levels.

Both are free on iPhone and Android, and both are listed on nineclove.com.

Which one to try first

• You love counting what surrounds a number: Slitherlink or Hexcells.
• You love the moment one placement makes its neighbors safe: Star Battle or Tents.
• You love marking a cell as certain and watching a shape appear: Nonograms or Nurikabe.
• You want something quiet and low-pressure: Sudoku, or a Battleship puzzle for something in between.

Pick the easiest size first. These puzzles pay off the way Minesweeper does, once a few small deductions click into a larger one.

Then come back to the mines

When you want the original, play Minesweeper in your browser with nothing to download, or read what Minesweeper Worlds Online adds to the classic game.

The grid is an infinite map split into 8x8 areas. In the Shared World, other pioneers dig the same map as you, and the free apps for iPhone and Android connect to the same world.