Minesweeper is a terrible puzzle game. It’s not a terrible game! But it’s a terrible puzzle game. Because Minesweeper involves guessing, and that’s fundamentally bad puzzle design. Whether you enjoy playing it comes down to how you approach it. If you’re someone who enjoys methodically solving complicated puzzles using learned techniques (hello!) then Minesweeper is the worst. If you’re someone who loves reaching a certain point where all you can do is blindly click and hope, then it offers the thrill of chance. We all should learn to live in peace and harmony. (But when we do eventually go to war, I know which side is going to win. Hint: it’s the side that doesn’t randomly jump on places where their might be bombs.)
Globesweeper manages to muddle this issue even further, taking the Minesweeper format and placing it a on sphere. Which, it turns out, really reduces the need for guessing, but doesn’t eliminate it. That is, until you find the extraordinary triangular mode.