Swords and Software

About Minesweeper 6

AI

After over 20 years of writing Minesweeper clones using different technology, Minesweeper 6 is the first one that I didn't write.

It was written by Claude (AI) on the evening of 4th March 2026 based on a brief description of what I wanted, i.e. a web-based Minesweeper game in the spirit of the old Windows Minesweeper, that's web-based and uses Three.js (for 3D) and has some fancy tile animations. It took a few iterations to factor in things like mobile support, but essentially this resulted in a fully working game in a matter of minutes.

So what makes this worth including as part of The Minesweeper Legacy? Every entry in The Minesweeper Legacy is a lesson along my software engineering journey. I started off wanting to learn how to make games, and the process was so long and complicated that all the detours and yak shaving made me lose sight of the goal.

The goal of software engineering is to build things that solve problems, not to write code (that is a means). It took many years to get to the point where I was able to put together a simple Minesweeper game. And the lesson with this latest one has been to swallow my pride and realise that it is now possible to build such things with code being a part of the equation that I don't have to handle directly. Stepping away from the craft that I've spent over 20 years honing can actually result in a better product and a faster turn-around time.