The goal
Mines are hidden under the tiles. Your job is to uncover every tile that isn't a mine. You never have to uncover the mines themselves, and you never should — touching one ends the game.
Uncover the last safe tile and you win, however many flags you did or didn't place along the way. Flags are a notepad, not a scoring system.
Reading the numbers
When you uncover a tile, one of two things happens. Either it's blank, in which case none of its neighbours are mines and the board opens outward automatically, or it shows a number. That number is the only piece of information in the game:
It counts how many of that tile's neighbours are mines. Nothing else. Every deduction you will ever make comes from combining those counts.
One hidden neighbour
The 1 says exactly one neighbour is a mine. Only one neighbour is still hidden, so that tile is the mine. Flag it.
Count already satisfied
The 1 is already accounted for by that flag. Every other neighbour is therefore safe — you can open all seven without thinking.
Chording
Rather than opening those six one at a time, act on the 2 itself. Its flags match its number, so one action clears the rest. This is where speed comes from.
Controls
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Tap | Uncover a tile. On a tile that's already revealed, chords it. |
| Press and hold | Mark a hidden tile without switching modes. With question marks enabled, repeated presses cycle flag, question mark, clear. |
| Flag button | Flips what a tap does, so you can plant a run of flags without holding each one. The button shows Flag On or Flag Off so you always know which mode you're in. When question marks are enabled, marking cycles through flag, question mark and clear. |
| Hold a number | Highlights precisely which tiles a chord would open, so you can check before you commit. When your flags match the number, release without dragging to open the remaining neighbours. Incorrect flags can still uncover a mine. |
| Pinch / drag | Zoom and pan. Essential on the larger boards, where tiles get small. |
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Left-click | Reveal a tile. Clicking a revealed number chords it when the flags match. |
| Right-click | Mark a tile. With question marks enabled, clicks cycle flag, question mark, clear. |
| Mouse wheel | Zoom around the pointer. Drag the board to pan. |
| Ctrl+Enter | Toggle full screen. |
| Escape | Go back a screen, or leave full screen from the board. |
Two things you never have to worry about
-
Your first tap is always safe. In Standard mode, mines are placed after you click. Your opening tile is excluded, along with its neighbours when the board has room. Puzzle mode starts from a checked, partially revealed board.
-
Puzzle mode never asks you to guess. In the classic game a perfectly played position can still come down to a coin flip. Switch to Puzzle mode in Settings and every board is checked in advance by a solver — it is guaranteed to be finishable by logic alone, right down to the last tile. If you're stuck in Puzzle mode, there is something to work out.
What changes when the board isn't squares
The rules above never change. A number always counts the mines touching that tile. What changes from tiling to tiling is how many tiles count as touching — and that quietly rewrites every instinct you have.
On the classic square board every tile has eight neighbours, and after enough games you stop counting them consciously. On hexagons there are six, and the familiar 1‑2‑1 patterns simply don't arise the same way. Further out it gets stranger: on Kisrhombille an interior triangle touches sixteen other tiles, and on Triakis Triangular it touches twenty-one.
Two consequences worth knowing before you start:
- Higher numbers aren't harder, they're just bigger. A 7 on a board where tiles have twenty neighbours carries less information than a 3 on a hex board. Mine counts are tuned per tiling to keep the numbers meaningful rather than uniform.
- In several tilings, neighbour counts vary between tiles. Where a tile sits in the pattern determines how many others touch it. Look at the shape before you count — assuming every tile is like the last one is the single most common way to blow up on an unfamiliar board.
The advice, then, is simple: start on Square to remind yourself of the rules, move to Hex to feel the ground shift, and treat everything after that as a new game that happens to share a rulebook.
Difficulty
Easy, Medium and Expert each have presets tuned individually for every tiling, so "Medium" means a comparable challenge whether you're on squares or pentagons rather than a blindly copied board size. Custom lets you set width, height and mine count yourself, up to 150 in each dimension and 2,500 mines, within the board's capacity. Use Suggest to choose a mine count suited to your tiling.
Your best times are recorded per tiling, per difficulty, per board size and per mode, so a fast hex win is never quietly ranked against a fast square one.
Find your next board
Open Settings and choose the game type. The gallery groups all 116 tilings into Standard, Two-uniform, Three-uniform and Aperiodic families. Pick a preview to change boards. On Android, six tilings are free and Pro unlocks the other 110. Minesweeper: Retiled is also coming to Steam for PC.
Aperiodic boards include Penrose, Hat, Spectre and Pinwheel. Their patterns do not repeat periodically, and a new game chooses a fresh patch. Take a moment to check which tiles touch before trusting a familiar pattern.
Make it yours, then share it
Choose from seven themes and nine tile styles, including Stone, Marble, Flagstone and Wood. Use the full-screen button for more board space. Android also offers adjustable haptics for marking tiles and game outcomes.
On the share screen, choose a screenshot, branded image, animated WebP or MP4. Enable Pan and Zoom for a replay camera that follows the action. MP4 includes game sounds when sound is enabled. Share opens your device's sharing options; Export saves the result. Your in-progress board autosaves, and the app remembers your board and appearance choices for the next session.
Ready? The Android game is free, six tilings are unlocked from the start, and nothing about it is on a timer or behind an advert. Get Minesweeper: Retiled.