How CyberGrid is played

Minesweeper the way it has always worked – only on a circuit board. Mines hide under the cells; the numbers on the opened ones give away where. The rules are explained in a minute; here they are in full, with every special case.

The goal

Mines are hidden in the grid. Open every cell that holds no mine – then the grid is secured. Open a mine and the system is breached. Setting flags is not required for that: you win as soon as all mine-free cells are open.

Starting a game

In the menu you pick the level – Easy, Normal or Hard (see below) – and tap New game. If a game is still running, Continue sits above it: the game is saved after every move, even across closing the app. Before the very first game the in-game guide opens by itself; later you reach it through “How to play” in the menu or the ? at the top during play.

Opening

A tap on a closed cell opens it. Open cells no longer react to taps – so you cannot mis-tap while zooming and dragging.

Your first tap is safe

The mines are not fixed at the start: they are placed only after your first tap, and never on that cell nor on any of its eight neighbours. Your first tap therefore always opens an area, never a mine.

Numbers

An opened cell shows how many of its eight neighbours hide a mine. Every number has its own colour, from the blue 1 to the pale 8.

Empty areas

A cell with no mine around it stays empty and opens its neighbours along with it – and those open theirs, until numbers bound the area. A single tap can lay open a large part of the grid.

Marking: flags and question marks

Hold a cell for a moment to mark it. A ring fills up around your finger, then the phone buzzes briefly. Each further hold switches the mark on: flag → question mark → none.

The flag is your note for a cell you are sure hides a mine. At the top, THREAT shows the mines minus your flags – set too many and the value drops below zero.

The question mark is the note for a “maybe”. It does not count for THREAT, and the cell can still be opened. If you do not need it, the settings switch question marks off – holding then only sets and removes flags, and existing question marks disappear.

Zooming and dragging

Pinch with two fingers to zoom, drag with one to move the grid. Hard with its 16 × 30 cells is designed around that: zoom in once, then work through it section by section. Android's back button first closes an open dialog, then leads from the game to the menu, and in the menu it quits the app.

Time, best time and system reset

The clock at the top left starts with your first tap and stops as soon as the game is decided. Win faster than before and the level remembers the new best time. The AI face above the grid is the reset button: a tap on it starts the same level over. It also shows how things stand – calm, tense while your finger rests on a cell, and at the end done for or triumphant.

Game over

When a mine goes off, all mines light up red, the one you hit breaks up into flickering fragments, and wrongly placed flags are crossed out. Clear the grid and green code rains down over it. Either way, a dialog asks whether to go straight into the next round.

Levels

The level applies from the next new game; a running game keeps its own. Every level has a best time of its own.

Tips

• Start at the edges of the open areas. That is where the numbers are that already tell you something – in the middle of closed cells there is nothing to conclude.
• A 1 next to a single closed cell means exactly that cell is the mine. The same goes for any number with as many closed neighbours as it names.
• Number minus flags. If a 2 already has two flags around it, all its other neighbours are safe – open them in one go.
• Question marks instead of guessing. Two candidates, one of them the mine: mark both and come back when a nearby number settles it.
• When nothing is certain, guess where the fewest mines can be – usually at the edge, far from the high numbers.