Triple-A Minesweeper
408 points by robin_reala 7 hours ago | 87 comments

devin 4 hours ago
So good.

Maybe lean into some of the metal gear solid dialogue by having a long back and forth about "What's a mine?" "What do you mean 'mark a mine'?" "How do I know when I'm done?" etc.

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mkobit 4 hours ago
I really enjoy this trope. The "Zelda Ocarina of Time if it were a modern game" series has the MGS style discussion, and the whole series is incredible.

Here is the forest temple video which is a short sample of what to expect: https://youtu.be/KC656o7_zVk

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siva7 12 minutes ago
I liked the triple-a minesweeper better than the windows original. First time i won the game.
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dormento 3 hours ago
"Sweeper, press the X button to mark a mine."

"X... button?"

"Focus, Sweeper! Sweeper? SWEEPEEEER!"

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NSUserDefaults 3 hours ago
Nice but the logos are skippable, which is not realistic.
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LugosFergus 3 hours ago
Also, since it's an Unreal game, it's missing long load times, camera jitter, frame spikes, and dynamic resolution constantly kicking in.
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easterncalculus 2 hours ago
but muh Steam's 30% cut, or something
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dijit 6 minutes ago
Unreal Engine and the Epic Games Store have nothing to do with each other really.

You can get some royalty fee's reduced by launching on Epic Games Store but that's it.

Most Unreal Engine games are distributed by Steam.

ALSO, fun fact while we're here.. to display the Unreal Engine logo on startup you're supposed to ask Epic Games for permission; but since it's the default project splash screen (meant to be replaced) people just assume that they want the publicity and that it's part of using the engine- Epic doesn't feel like enforcing this because they don't see the point.

So, feel free to remove it, and if you see it, just know that the developers very likely didn't read the agreement they signed when they started using the Engine :)

Source: the last unreal engine technical advisory board in Stockholm; I too didn't read this from the agreement ...

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guyzero 51 minutes ago
I wished it was just all into logos and no actual game. That's the real AAA experience.
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Youden 51 minutes ago
Does anyone know if the voices are AI-generated? I was a little surprised; I don't think I would have questioned it if I heard them in a real game or video but since this seems to basically be a joke, I'm doubtful real voice actors were used.
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EleKtr1X 18 minutes ago
they definitely sound ai generated yeah
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MYEUHD 2 hours ago
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grumbel 3 hours ago
There is also the classic "Minesweeper - The Movie"[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHY8NKj3RKs

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fidotron 4 hours ago
But I didn't need to install a publisher specific launcher to run it.
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ravenstine 4 hours ago
And then be forced to download a 42GiB update.
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ASalazarMX 2 hours ago
And accept telemetry and marketing!
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xbar 4 hours ago
I was angry at the wasted 30 seconds of opening licensed 3rd party software listings, but I stayed through to the end of the credits roll, laughing until I cried.

This is Art.

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nottorp 4 hours ago
I think the opening logo sequence is too short. Also it's missing agreement to 2-3 EULAs that you have to scroll down all the way for the accept button to get enabled. And the epilepsy warning. And the disclaimer that it's all a work of fiction.
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jameshart 3 hours ago
Failed certification because it didn’t warn you not to turn off when the save icon is spinning.
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adamanonymous 3 hours ago
Also missing the redirect to your browser to connect to Epic Games and create a SweeperPro account with 2FA
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Toutouxc 2 hours ago
I was hoping for the thing where you play through like half of the game and only then it shows you the title against a dramatic vista.
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theroadnotbacon 4 hours ago
I was absolutely hoping to see production babies in the credits. Can’t win ‘em all.
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jameshart 3 hours ago
No pets credited either.
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cootsnuck 29 minutes ago
I'm curious which TTS model was used for the "Nora" voice. I kept noticing vocal artifacts in her speech disfluencies. Which bothers me more than it probably should...
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lapetitejort 5 hours ago
Missing:

Sidequest to sweep 10 mines.

Achievement after sweeping 5 mines

The yellow diamond is nice but what if I don't notice the diamond? I need a colored scent trail leading from my cursor to the yellow diamond, and a pinging noise when my cursor is near a mine

Mocapped mines

Jack Quaid

$70

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rf15 4 hours ago
Sorry, did you mean Achievement for Starting the Game for the First Time?
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buran77 3 hours ago
"Only 7.89% of gamers unlocked this".
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jandrese 4 hours ago
There should be additional audio logs you can find under some squares that provide snippits of backstory.
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lapetitejort 4 hours ago
This is minesweeper 33. I'n out sweeping mines and I ran across one that looks different than the others. I'll keep investigating while mine sweeping. I'm recording this 30 second clip onto an entire recording device with a 64gb SD card. I'll leave it on this rock for others to find. Don't worry, I have 11 other devices to record my short messages. Wait, the mine, it's glowing! I can't--
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RobotToaster 2 hours ago
Those will be in the $50 DLC
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donkey_brains 4 hours ago
So good. Looking forward to level 2 so we can find out what happened in Singapore.
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jameshart 3 hours ago
That will be coming in the first DLC in a few months, delayed because it is being developed by a new team after the original development studio was bought by Activision, retasked to making a mobile solitaire game, then laid off.
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testycool 13 minutes ago
Was expecting Hideo Kojima in the credits.
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LunicLynx 4 hours ago
Needs:

- Checkpoints after each mine

- DLC for rounded corners

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thesuitonym 2 hours ago
The DLC is a hat for John Sweeper.
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hiccuphippo 55 minutes ago
It really does need a store with skins, several kinds of currencies, and loot boxes!
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MisterMunchkin 4 hours ago
Please expand this into a full open-world minesweeping game
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TheAtomic 32 minutes ago
Is there a help card? Or, how do you turn off the CC captions? They obscure the bottom of the play field on my Mactop.
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1970-01-01 21 minutes ago
Needs a 128GB RAM, 100GB free disk space requirement.
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franze 4 hours ago
so, in case if you like minesweeper and doom ... https://dreadsweeper.franzai.com/
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mlekoszek 49 minutes ago
Needs an 'always online' requirement
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xoxxala 4 hours ago
10/10 story. I look forward to the forthcoming motion picture adaptation from Skydance directed by Michael Bay.
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test6554 4 hours ago
After Singapore, there just wasn't any choice.
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m_w_ 2 hours ago
Great parody - very "Focus, M"-esque. Often, it feels that we've lost sight of "If it's not fun, why bother".
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jandrese 4 hours ago
I like the part where it doesn't even matter if you hit a mine, you are on this train ride regardless of what you do.
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ben_w 2 hours ago
Despite all the stuff it's parodying, this is still a lot better than Bomberman: Act Zero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomberman%3A_Act_Zero

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progforlyfe 2 hours ago
You need to add achievements/trophies! Definitely need to achieve a trophy for clicking on the very first square, finding the first mine, your first flag, etc.
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derac 2 hours ago
What no 30 minute shaders compiling sequence?
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NSUserDefaults 3 hours ago
And which half of the staff gets fired day after release?
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larrydag 2 hours ago
I love the parody. Is this a treatise on modern game development? I hope so.
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isoprophlex 4 hours ago
No lootboxes?
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ravenstine 4 hours ago
There aren't even any skins I can buy with my mom's credit card.
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361994752 4 hours ago
the non-stopping narration makes it so hard to actually sweep the mines....
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nvme0n1p1 4 hours ago
Don: Sounds like you're getting rusty. The Sweeper I knew in Singapore would never have choked like this from just a little background noise.
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MitPitt 4 hours ago
Focus, M.
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jordigh 2 hours ago
icymi, we can also do this with Mario https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMh_APo2Xss
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hiccuphippo 59 minutes ago
We need a day-1 patch to align the mines to the center of their tile.
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wredcoll 4 hours ago
That was a great parody, but how much of those effects still worked even though you knew it was coming? The fade ins, blurring the outsides, the emotional voice talking to you... it definitely raised my interest more than just opening minesweeper!

I mean, it doesn't last very long without something else going on, but there is a reason.

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thaumasiotes 3 hours ago
> That was a great parody, but how much of those effects still worked even though you knew it was coming? The fade ins, blurring the outsides, the emotional voice talking to you...

Worked?

The game takes a very long time to load. This is funny, but not desirable in an actual game.

There is voiceover dialogue as you start. You can listen to it, but at some point you'll want to start playing the game.

There is an indicator telling you which square to clear next. I ignored this for several reasons:

- I want to know if you're compelled to follow it (you aren't);

- It's pointing to the wrong square;¹

- Following it would defeat the entire purpose of playing the game.

Dialogue continues as you play. But you can't listen to it because your mind is occupied. Following the indicator would solve that problem...

¹ There is a game you can find called Hexcells that is supposed to be an "improved" version of minesweeper. The "improvements" are two:

1. It's a hex grid, not a square grid.

2. In general, there is only one hex known to be clear at any given time. This means that the structure of the game is that you mindlessly reveal whichever tile you just gained information about rather than suffering under any obligation to think about what you can tell from the board.

I'm not sure why this was supposed to be an improvement; the only effect is to remove the entire puzzle aspect from a puzzle game. But hey, Steam reviews are "overwhelmingly positive". https://store.steampowered.com/app/265890/Hexcells/

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johnnyanmac 3 hours ago
>First, the game takes a very long time to load. This is funny, but not desirable in an actual game.

In unrealistic fashion, you can in fact mash through the license logos once you load in. So thr game itself doesn't actually take long at all to boot up on a technical level; the delays were a design choice.

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magnat 3 hours ago
Felix Varga and Johanna Kowalski (Online Services Engineers) must have done a really good job - with all the traffic from the HN front page login servers didn't go down and queue was almost instant.
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codeulike 2 hours ago
I need to sweep these mines.
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dllrr 4 hours ago
That's hilarious. Spot on.
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cgannett 58 minutes ago
Ok but like... Kojima vibes. 10/10 best trippppllleee AAYYyyyyy game to come out this year lol
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lafalce 60 minutes ago
I need to sweep these mines!
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Lucasoato 37 minutes ago
Incredible
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ixo 3 hours ago
Sweep (2026)
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pianoben 2 hours ago
I need to sweep these mines!
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colordrops 42 minutes ago
First time I've laughed out loud at one of these sorts of things in a while...

I was expecting it to open up on some WW2 style battlefield with smoke and explosions, but this was better.

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forgotTheLast 4 hours ago
Where do I enter my credit card info for the Season Pass and the special operator skin?
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Razengan 5 hours ago
Pac-Man as a Modern AAA Game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaoUVVD-hUc
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kennywinker 4 hours ago
I should follow those pac-dots...
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UtahDave 4 hours ago
This is hilarious
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avereveard 3 hours ago
Not even a dlc and cosmetics?
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cckolon 4 hours ago
There might be a mine here
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etchalon 5 hours ago
I laughed way way way too hard
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jjmarr 3 hours ago
The ending needed to force you to click on a mine so you die in the cutscene lmao.
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duhballs 4 hours ago
Needs Debra Wilson
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b3lvedere 4 hours ago
That was awesome
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ReptileMan 3 hours ago
The part where the subtitles hide the mines is the best for me. Also talk with Ubisoft - they make AAAA games.
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viccis 4 hours ago
Damn I didn't even have to Press Start to begin
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bbeonx 4 hours ago
omg this is brilliant i was IMMEDIATELY tilting my face off
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serf 3 hours ago
now add a kernel level rootkit and a monthly subscription which guarantees a set amount of loot-boxes a month.
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bentt 4 hours ago
Art
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justmaris 7 hours ago
This is fun.
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fHr 2 hours ago
Lmao
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IshKebab 2 hours ago
lol perfect execution. I cracked up with the smiley face lip sync.
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peterramsing 5 hours ago
[dead]
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iwontberude 4 hours ago
[dead]
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