Minesweeper is a single player puzzle game, where the player uses logic to determine which tiles of a grid contain mines. The goal of each level is to uncover all the tiles except those that contain mines.
In the Windows version of Minesweeper, players can either click on a square to flag it as containing a mine (revealing and marking it with a small red X), or possess the square by clicking and holding the mouse button over it (which will reveal all neighboring squares that contain mines, including diagonal neighbors).
Players can use this information to deduce whether an un-flagged square contains a mine; if an unmarked square (or one marked with a green checkerboard pattern) is surrounded on all sides by flagged squares, then it does not contain a mine.
On the other hand, if an unmarked square is surrounded on at least one side by unmarked squares, then it most likely does not contain a mine.
Players score points on a per-square basis; the maximum number of squares on each level is 81. Points are awarded for quickly completing levels; more points are awarded for solving levels with few incorrect (unmarked and unflagged) squares.
Players can also earn bonuses (ranging from 5000 to 30,000 points) by finding all the hidden bombs (which are marked with a small dot) in the level.
Minesweeper has three difficulty levels: Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert. Each difficulty level has nine subdivisions that contain different numbers of mines to uncover. Records achieved at each difficulty level can be saved.
The game was created by Robert Donner and Curt Johnson for the Windows 3.1 operating system which was released in 1992.
So this is how to play Minesweeper.
