I recently stumbled across “Kaboom” which is a really interesting take on the classic Minesweeper. Rather than the board being set up randomly, the game plays antagonistically against you. That is, based on what you’ve revealed so far, if you click to reveal a space that could have a mine on it, it does have a mine on it. The exception (making it winnable) is that if you have cleared all spaces where you could infer with certainty from what’s revealed that there isn’t a mine there (that is, you’re forced to guess), then your guess is guaranteed to be safe.

It turns out there aren’t nearly as many scenarios where you’re forced to guess as I would have thought. It turns Minesweeper from being a little time-waster with some logical deduction into being completely based on logical deduction. That is, every game is winnable, and the only way to lose is if you haven’t cleared all possible-to-have-known-were-empty spaces before moving on to might-be-empty spaces.

I’m now curious if there were other classic games you could do this kind of idea with.