Minesweeper Classic

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

Minesweeper is a classic Puzzle game originally released on PC in 1990, and included in multiple releases of the Windows Operating System. In the times since its original release, versions of the game have appeared on countless platforms, with this version by Soroka Games coming to Nintendo Switch in 2026.

I’ll say now, while there are many versions of Minesweeper that are similar to Microsoft’s classic original game, most at least make a token effort to hide how they’re a copycat. Soroka’s release doesn’t even bother with that, looking nearly identical to Microsoft’s version of the game, down to the simple smiley face at the top of the screen. There’s no sound here either. This is just about as blatant a copycat as you can get. Which makes me wonder… is this game even legal? Or has Microsoft just not heard about it yet?

The gameplay here is pretty much as you’d expect it, with flags to signal suspected mine spots, numbers to indicate how many mines are nearby, multiple different difficulty modes with different filed sizes, and so on. If you’ve ever played any version of Minesweeper, you know what to expect here.

However, there are two noteworthy omissions here. First, there’s no way to use a “?” to test-mark a cel to help figure out tricky spots, as in Microsoft’s version. There’s also no easy way to click on a number that already has the correct number of mines near it to clear out the remaining fields near that number. Also, I should note that this release doesn’t make use of the Nintendo Switch touchscreen in handheld mode, even though it seems like it would greatly benefit the game.

In other words, this is a shameless copycat of a 36 year-old game, one that not only doesn’t transform the game in any way, but that shamelessly copies its look, and then leaves out two features of that extremely old release. If you like Minesweeper, the core game here is still good, but this is absolutely a lesser version of it that’s such a poor and blatant copycat that I cannot in good conscience recommend it.

tl;dr – Minesweeper Classic is a take on the classic Microsoft PC Puzzle game, and by “a take on”, I mean it’s about as blatant a copycat as you’ll ever find, even down to copying the look of the Microsoft original. Yet despite this shameless copying, this release still lacks features that were in that 36 year-old game. While the core gameplay here is still good, I cannot in good conscience recommend this cynical (and possibly infringing) release.

Grade: C-

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