Sweep the dragon Dragonsweeper is my favorite game of 2025 (so far) The quick-hit Minesweeper-style RPG has just the right mix of logic and luck. Kyle Orland Feb 10, 2025 12:59 pm | 3 A promising start. Credit: Dragonsweeper A promising start. Credit: Dragonsweeper Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreWhile writing a wide-ranging history of Windows Minesweeper for Boss Fight Books in 2023, I ended up playing many variations of Microsoft's beloved original game. Those include versions with hexagonal tiles, versions with weird board shapes, and versions that extend Minesweeper into four dimensions or more, to name just a few.Almost all these variants messed a little too much with the careful balance of simplicity, readability, reasoning, and luck that made the original Minesweeper so addictive. None of them became games I return to day after day.But then I stumbled onto Dragonsweeper, a free browser-based game that indie developer Daniel Benmergui released unceremoniously on itch.io last month. In the weeks since I discovered it, the game has become my latest puzzle obsession, filling in a worrying proportion of my spare moments with its addictive, simple RPG-tinged take on the Minesweeper formula.ExploresweeperLike Minesweeper before it, Dragonsweeper is a game about deducing hidden information based on the limited information you can already see on the grid. But the numbers you reveal in Dragonsweeper don't simply tell you the number of threats on adjacent squares. Instead, the "numbers are sum of monster power," as the game's cryptic "Monsternomicon" explains. So a revealed square with a "14" could suggest two 7-power devils nearby or two 5-power slimes and a 4-power ogre, or even seven 2-power bats in a particularly weird randomized arrangement.Destroying those monsters means eating into your avatar Jorge's health total, which is prominently displayed in the bottom-left corner. Jorge's health can safely go down to zero hearts without dyingwhich feels a bit counter-intuitive at firstand can be restored by using discovered health potions or by leveling up with gold accumulated from downed monsters and items. If you can level up enough without dying, you'll have the health necessary to defeat the titular dragon sitting in the middle of the board and win the game.Dragonsweeper's "Monsternomicon" isn't exactly easy to parse at first. Credit: DragonsweeperDragonsweeper's "Monsternomicon" isn't exactly easy to parse at first. Credit: Dragonsweeper The first few times I played Dragonsweeper, it seemed impossible to make significant progress. I'd defeat a few of the low-ranking monsters revealed at the beginning of the game, use all the level-ups and health potions I could, and then be stuck with no health in a situation where it seemed like I had to guess to continue. The balance between logic and luck seemed completely out of whack.The game didn't really click for me until I read a comment suggesting that I think of Jorge's hearts as a sort of "exploration budget" to probe the frontiers of unrevealed tiles. Instead of clicking on the monsters you can already see (or deduce directly), it's usually much smarter to click on multiple tiles if and when you can be sure those tiles won't kill Jorge.So if I see a revealed "14" tile with 10 points of known adjacent monsters, I know I can click the other adjacent tiles and take just four points of damage. In exchange for that health, I gain more board information and more gold and items to continue the cycle of healing and exploration. After literal decades of Minesweeper-honed instincts to never click a potentially dangerous box, Dragonsweeper had to train me that it was OK to trade "danger" for information in this way. Even death can provide valuable information for future runs. Credit: Dragonsweeper Even death can provide valuable information for future runs. Credit: Dragonsweeper While most Dragonsweeper monsters end up acting as simple damage sponges, a few have some hidden abilities or patterns that only become apparent after a bit of guess-and-check gameplay. It pays to follow the Monsternomicon's directive to "Observe Monster Patterns When Dead," looking at the fully revealed board to figure out the kinds of locations where certain monsters congregate and exploit that knowledge as you plan your strategy.Just one more dragonVariants like Mamono Sweeper and Runestone Keeper have similarly tried adding RPG systems to the basic Minesweeper formula in the past, but they ended up feeling a little too complex and difficult to parse for my tastes. Dragonsweeper adds just enough randomized monster battling and item collecting to stay interesting without becoming unwieldy under the weight of intricate systems.After a few hours of somewhat obsessive play, I got pretty good at consistently killing the dragon on the original version of Dragonsweeper. Then, late last week, Benmergui posted an update that greatly improved the user interface, modified some monster behaviors, and "adjust[ed] the challenge." The new version requires a little more care and deduction to make early progress, even though the vast majority of boards still seem solvable with careful play. Even after your first "win," you'll keep coming back to improve on your top score and completion time. Credit: Dragonsweeper Even after your first "win," you'll keep coming back to improve on your top score and completion time. Credit: Dragonsweeper Even after you've notched your first Dragonsweeper "win," there's still reason to keep coming back. The game's background scoring system encourages you to defeat not just the dragon but every single monster on the board, a feat that requires careful planning and a bit of luck in finding early gold piles. The latest update also adds an in-game timer (which is only revealed when you win), encouraging the kind of record-chasing speedruns that high-level Minesweeper is known for (my best Dragonsweeper run so far is just under four minutes, but I'm sure that can be improved).Even with a number of grand, bid-budget gaming epics in my backlog (and my review plate), Dragonsweeper has become the game I'm eager to return to with practically every spare moment I can find lately. It's a perfect "coffee break" game that requires just enough logic and strategy to focus my higher brain functions while offering enough luck to not be rote. As it happens, that's exactly what I'm looking for from a gaming distraction these days.Kyle OrlandSenior Gaming EditorKyle OrlandSenior Gaming Editor Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper. 3 Comments