This iteration of Minesweeper was created by Oberon Media. It also came with a more peaceful 'flower' motif to replace the landmines. The icons were updated to match the Aero look. The game's color scheme changed with the release of Vista (from gray to either blue or green). In 2003, Microsoft created a variation called Minesweeper Flags in MSN Messenger, which is played against an opponent with the objective to find the mines rather than the surrounding squares. In early versions of the game, a cheat code let players peek beneath the tiles. In the Windows Vista and Windows 7 versions of the game, the player can pick whether they would like to play with mines or flowers.

The game board comes in three set sizes: beginner, intermediate, and expert, though a custom option is available as well. However, in the event that a game is lost and the player mistakenly flags a safe square, that square will either appear with a red X covering the mine (denoting it as safe), or just a red X (also denoting it as safe). The game is won once all blank squares have been uncovered without hitting a mine, any remaining mines not identified by flags being automatically flagged by the computer.

To help avoid hitting a mine, the location of a suspected mine can be marked by flagging it with the right mouse button. Some squares are blank but some contain numbers (1 to 8), each number being the number of mines adjacent to the uncovered square. The location of the mines is discovered by a process of logic.Ĭlicking on the game board will reveal what is hidden underneath the chosen square or squares (a large number of blank squares may be revealed in one go if they are adjacent to each other). The goal of the game is to uncover all the squares that do not contain mines without being 'blown up' by clicking on a square with a mine underneath.

Microsoft minesweeper crashes