It is very different from other minesweeper games because it does not divide the world into neat little boxes and give you exact numbers of neighboring mines. Instead you must carefully watch the shades of gray and stay away from darker regions where mines lurk.

There is another minefield game included. In this version the object is to cross from one side of the minefield to the other as quickly as possible without getting blown up.

Download Dynamine version 2.0 from the official Dynamine ftp site!

Download Dynamine version 2.0 from Walnut Creek

A SAMPLE GAME

The Game About to Begin This is what a game of Dynamine looks like when you start. The detector square is in the center, and is a light color throughout, showing that the area around this position is relatively free of mines. The window does look just a little darker in the lower left, suggesting mines are closer in that direction, so we start off moving up and to the right. The caption at the very top of the window tells that this game is at level 7 (of 10 or custom or multi-level) and that it is the sweep game instead of the minefield crossing game. The status line shows that 0% of the field has been cleared, no points have been scored, and no time has passed. The high score for this level is 3201 points. (High scores are disabled until you register.)

Well Begun This is what a game of Dynamine looks like about halfway though. In this game all the safer, lighter areas have been cleared, so it is time to take more risks and move closer to the dark regions where the mines are known to lurk. Now 52% of the field has been cleared in one minute and 34 seconds for 334 points.

Getting Trickier Now about 73% of the field has been cleared and a couple of isolated mines have been trimmed away from the larger mine concentrations. Now we proceed more slowly and carefully with the smaller detector size. (Detector size is switched with a click of the left mouse button.)

A Game Just Ended This is what a game of Dynamine looks like right after it ends. This game we only succeeded in clearing 87% of the minefield in five minutes and 28 seconds for a final score of 896. You can get a higher score by clearing the field faster. It just takes a little practice. The red dot and star mark the point where the detector hit the mine.

After the Game A click on the left mouse button after the game has ended brings up this screen, showing where the mines were lurking all along. Clearly we had several close calls but also could have cleared some more. The yellow square marks the site where the detector hit the mine. Another click on the left mouse button will start another game.

Confused?

You may now wonder why it is so much darker around some mines than around others. The color is controlled by the sum of the signals from all nearby mines, so isolated mines are not surrounded by a very dark area.

And yes, some signal does "wrap" from one edge of the window to the opposite edge. That's why the lower left corner above is a bit dark.

But there is still hope. With experience you can distinguish the outskirts of a large dark area from a small dangerous region. The regions around isolated mines gets darker more suddenly and the shadow falls off more if you head sideways or around the dark part.

This is the point of the game.

The Minefield Crossing Game

In this game, the object is to cross from one side of the minefield to the other. This player succeeded in 23 seconds, and so did not beat the high score of 20 seconds.

Other Variations