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.

• mkobit

  today at 6:29 PM

  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

  • jorisd

    today at 10:31 PM

    The game 'UnMetal' takes this trope as far as it can be taken. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1203710/UnMetal/

    It's probably a bit too far, but nevertheless enjoyable for the comedic effect.

• dormento

  today at 7:47 PM

  "Sweeper, press the X button to mark a mine."

  "X... button?"

  "Focus, Sweeper! Sweeper? SWEEPEEEER!"

• siva7

  today at 9:58 PM

  I liked the triple-a minesweeper better than the windows original. First time i won the game.

Is it always wrong when it says "I think there's a mine here"? It seemed to to me on my playthough...

Nice but the logos are skippable, which is not realistic.

• LugosFergus

  today at 7:47 PM

  Also, since it's an Unreal game, it's missing long load times, camera jitter, frame spikes, and dynamic resolution constantly kicking in.

  • easterncalculus

    today at 8:59 PM

    but muh Steam's 30% cut, or something

    • dijit

      today at 10:04 PM

      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 ...

• guyzero

  today at 9:19 PM

  I wished it was just all into logos and no actual game. That's the real AAA experience.

AAA Mario (1m41s video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMh_APo2Xss

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.

• geraldwhen

  today at 10:17 PM

  The frontier of voice synth has reached roughly human parity. It’s also very inexpensive.

  I’d be shocked if we don’t have mainstream games with AI voices soon.

• EleKtr1X

  today at 9:53 PM

  they definitely sound ai generated yeah

There is also the classic "Minesweeper - The Movie"[1]

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

But I didn't need to install a publisher specific launcher to run it.

• ravenstine

  today at 6:43 PM

  And then be forced to download a 42GiB update.

  • ASalazarMX

    today at 8:56 PM

    And accept telemetry and marketing!

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.

• nottorp

  today at 6:51 PM

  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.

  • jameshart

    today at 7:34 PM

    Failed certification because it didn’t warn you not to turn off when the save icon is spinning.

  • adamanonymous

    today at 8:01 PM

    Also missing the redirect to your browser to connect to Epic Games and create a SweeperPro account with 2FA

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.

I was absolutely hoping to see production babies in the credits. Can’t win ‘em all.

• jameshart

  today at 7:32 PM

  No pets credited either.

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

• rf15

  today at 6:39 PM

  Sorry, did you mean Achievement for Starting the Game for the First Time?

  • em-bee

    today at 10:23 PM

    it took me an hour to realize that i needed to double click to start the game. i tried switching browsers, using a vpn/proxy, turning off ublock... nothing helped...

  • buran77

    today at 7:22 PM

    "Only 7.89% of gamers unlocked this".

• jandrese

  today at 6:44 PM

  There should be additional audio logs you can find under some squares that provide snippits of backstory.

  • lapetitejort

    today at 6:48 PM

    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--

• RobotToaster

  today at 8:34 PM

  Those will be in the $50 DLC

So good. Looking forward to level 2 so we can find out what happened in Singapore.

• jameshart

  today at 7:36 PM

  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.

Needs:

- Checkpoints after each mine

- DLC for rounded corners

• thesuitonym

  today at 8:31 PM

  The DLC is a hat for John Sweeper.

  • hiccuphippo

    today at 9:15 PM

    It really does need a store with skins, several kinds of currencies, and loot boxes!

Please expand this into a full open-world minesweeping game

so, in case if you like minesweeper and doom ... https://dreadsweeper.franzai.com/

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...

10/10 story. I look forward to the forthcoming motion picture adaptation from Skydance directed by Michael Bay.

• test6554

  today at 7:05 PM

  After Singapore, there just wasn't any choice.

Wow the ending credits music was actually pretty awesome

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.

Great parody - very "Focus, M"-esque. Often, it feels that we've lost sight of "If it's not fun, why bother".

the non-stopping narration makes it so hard to actually sweep the mines....

• em-bee

  today at 10:25 PM

  i could block that out. the subtitles covering the area were more annoying.

• nvme0n1p1

  today at 6:36 PM

  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.

• MitPitt

  today at 6:22 PM

  Focus, M.

What no 30 minute shaders compiling sequence?

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

Needs an 'always online' requirement

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.

And which half of the staff gets fired day after release?

No lootboxes?

• qw

  today at 10:14 PM

  It's also missing a tutorial.

• ravenstine

  today at 6:44 PM

  There aren't even any skins I can buy with my mom's credit card.

I love the parody. Is this a treatise on modern game development? I hope so.

Needs a 128GB RAM, 100GB free disk space requirement.

Was expecting Hideo Kojima in the credits.

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.

• thaumasiotes

  today at 7:15 PM

  > 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/

  • johnnyanmac

    today at 7:23 PM

    >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.

icymi, we can also do this with Mario https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMh_APo2Xss

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.

Made me lol, thanks :D

We need a day-1 patch to align the mines to the center of their tile.

That's hilarious. Spot on.

I need to sweep these mines.

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.

Sweep (2026)

I need to sweep these mines!

Ok but like... Kojima vibes. 10/10 best trippppllleee AAYYyyyyy game to come out this year lol

Where do I enter my credit card info for the Season Pass and the special operator skin?

I need to sweep these mines!

Pac-Man as a Modern AAA Game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaoUVVD-hUc

• kennywinker

  today at 7:07 PM

  I should follow those pac-dots...

Incredible

The ending needed to force you to click on a mine so you die in the cutscene lmao.

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.

This is hilarious

Not even a dlc and cosmetics?

There might be a mine here

I laughed way way way too hard

Needs Debra Wilson

That was awesome

The part where the subtitles hide the mines is the best for me. Also talk with Ubisoft - they make AAAA games.

Damn I didn't even have to Press Start to begin

omg this is brilliant i was IMMEDIATELY tilting my face off

now add a kernel level rootkit and a monthly subscription which guarantees a set amount of loot-boxes a month.

Art

This is fun.

Lmao

lol perfect execution. I cracked up with the smiley face lip sync.

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