The object of the game is to get from one side of the minefield to the other without being blown up. You only get one life so be careful - not all mines are visible. The only way you can tell how many mines are nearby is by looking at the mine detector in the top right hand corner of the screen. You can move horizontally or vertically, so the only mines that are shown on the counter are those which are above, below or to the left or right of you. The fence around the outside is also mined and if you are adjacent to it, it will register a mine on the mine detector. On higher levels you will see red, green or blue spiders running along the road, and these will kill you if they touch any part of you. On higher levels tanks will also appear, these shuffle the squares underneath them around and will sometimes clear a path through the minefield, but they can also block it. If you land on the blue bonus squares you get bonus points. This is a game of logic, skill and deduction.

The game was written by Ed Hollingshead and is a clone of the ZX Spectrum game Mined-Out. The original advert in September 1983 said, "You may have seen other Minefield games but ours has tanks that lay invisible mines, and spiders that are very tricky to avoid." In Mined-Out a Mine Spreader and a Spider perform the same tasks.

The most obvious difference is that Super Minefield introduced a picture background instead of each Level being a single colour. However, the picture and flashing objects do not mean anything; for example, the path can contain mines. There is a highscore but unlike Mined-Out there is no action replay feature.

The following attributes can be used to map the evolution of Minesweeper. Blue cells are confirmed attributes for official versions of Super Minefield. Yellow cells are unknown.