A Minesweeper board sits in the middle of a black screen. The main character, the Sweeper, exclaims "Oof! A Mine!"(Image credit: Mike Lacher)

In recent years, triple-A games have often been criticised for overly excessive handholding, overcompensating for a dread fear that the player might become stuck. This has manifested in numerous ways like Atreus' heavy-handed puzzle hints in God of War: Ragnarok, yellow paint splashed on every other ledge of Stellar Blade, and most recently, Marvel's Wolverine essentially playing itself for entire portions of the game.

I'm not here to weigh in on that debate. Instead, I'm simply going to point you to Triple-A Minesweeper, a delightful spoof game created by developer Mike Lacher, which expertly skewers some of blockbuster gaming's most egregious habits.

Now, before I describe the experience of playing Triple-A Minesweeper, I strongly suggest that you go and play it. It only takes about five minutes, so in explaining it I will probably tell you about most of the game. It should also give you a giggle, perhaps several, even!

But if you insist on reading on, then unlike regular Minesweeper, which begins by letting you play Minesweeper, Triple-A Minesweeper opens with a bunch of un-skippable title cards for third-party software and developers, before we get the dramatic title of the game itself. Then your character—the Sweeper—slowly blinks open his eyes as a woman called Nora fills you in on the situation, namely that you need to sweep some mines.

But where should you begin sweeping on that terrifying grey grid? Fear not, because Nora has added a diamond-shaped yellow marker pointing to precisely where you should click. If that isn't enough help for you, the Sweeper regularly vocalises his thoughts with phrases like "Pretty sure there's one mine nearby" and "I think there's two mines around here".

What I enjoyed most about Triple-A Minesweeper, though, is what happens if you attempt to go off-piste. If you ignore the market and hit a mine, you don't die. The Sweeper just exclaims "Oof, a mine!" and the game continues.

Even if you do nothing, Triple-A Minesweeper doesn't care. The Sweeper will constantly reiterate the phrase "I need to Sweep those mines" while increasingly random characters will chime in via voice comm, like a malevolent figure known as "The Don", and even the local radio DJ. I actually had Triple-A Minesweeper open in another window while writing this, but I had to close it because the constant chatter became so annoying—a testament to its satire.

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It's an astute send-up of what has been—in certain instances—some very silly design decisions. But we shouldn't forget that the intent behind those decisions is (usually) well-meaning, and the problem is usually that they need to be subtler or more inventive. That's why I suggested five alternatives at the end of last year. Some of them were jokes, admittedly, but I do think a couple of them could actually work.

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.