Minesweeper Game Downloads

Bombs Away!

Year

1995
Strategy

Flag Mines
Platform

DOS || MS-DOS

Bombs Away! - Game Overview

Bombs Away! was written for DOS in 1995 by Dave Dobson.

Bombs Away! is similar to the many minesweeper games available. It offers many useful features such as benevolent autostart, a hint key, multiple playfield sizes and difficulty levels, and a detailed record of best times. The object of the game is to locate and mark with flags all of the bombs in the playing field in the shortest amount of time. You only have as many flags as there are bombs, so if you run out and haven't won, you've made a mistake somewhere along the way. Note that unlike other games of this ilk, in Bombs Away! you win the moment you correctlyflag every bomb.

Difficulty: There are five levels of difficulty, Amateur through Eughh. Amateur is trivial, with only one out of fifteen squares containing a bomb, and Euggh is exceedingly difficult, with one in three squares containing a bomb. Games at the higher difficulty levels may be impossible to solve without random guessing or hints. To change difficulty levels for the next game, click on the difficulty bar to cycle through the levels.

Size: There are five sizes, 1-5. The playfield will be (9 x size) squares across and (5 x size) squares high, so size 1 is 9x5 and size 5 is 45x25. To change the playfield size for the next game, click on the size bar to cycle through the sizes.

Top Times: The best three times for winning the game are stored for each size and difficulty pair. You will be prompted to enter your name if you are among the top three after a game. To view the best time list, click on the Top Times bar. You can cycle through the different difficulties and sizes by clicking on those bars on the Top Times window. Clearing the scores will reset only the times for the difficulty level and size pair you are currently viewing -- to reset all times, it may be easier to delete the file HISCORE.DAT while in DOS.

Hint (+10): If you get stuck, you can ask for a hint. This will reveal a covered bomb-free square in the puzzle, but it will add ten seconds to your time, and the revealed square will be an ugly color to mark its dishonorable origins. The square revealed will be adjacent to at least one other uncovered square. If ask for a hint and you only have bombs left, the computer will ponder this fact for a while and then chirp at you in irritation.

The game was written using Borland's Turbo C compiler and Dobson offered the C code for a $10 donation. Dobson announced the game in Usenet group rec.games.abstract on 31 March 1995.