3D Minesweeper

While Classic Minesweeper is easy to visualize, pickup, and play; The variant known as "3D Minesweeper" is a bit harder, mostly due to its added complexity through one extra dimension, but it is also harder to visualize as currently the most popular version of 3D Minesweeper lacks several quality of life features and is overall difficult to physically see through the screen, I will do my best to highlight and direct your attention to the intended area, but do not feel bad if it is not clicked based off reading and following the images by themself.

Due to the difficult to visualize nature of 3D Minesweeper, I will go over some basic concepts to be used, then at the bottom of this section will be a video showcasing a game of 3D Minesweeper being played, this will make it easier to follow than just using images alone.

First off, imagine a 3x3x3 cube, and the very center of that cube is a clear space, or in this case, a one. Much like Classic Minesweeper all the cubes(tiles) around this one, must contain one mine - Meaning this one has 26 possbile cubes to contain this mine but this is just an example, more than likely in game you will not encounter such a setup unless you play on advanced difficulties.

This hypothetical is just to attempt to familiarize you with the concept of 3D Minesweeper. When playing, it helps to visualize this 3x3x3 cube around your cursor when trying to deduce which cubes are touching a number and which have mines.

To control the board in the game. Left click and drag will rotate the cube, and right click and drag will move it around, it is best to get used to how the moving works before continuing.

To start, left click any tile on the board. Much like Classic Minesweeper, starting at a corner will give you the best start, if your first cube is not a zero, go to a different cube until it is.

Note: The orange cube in the diagram is in the center of the 3x3x3 cube, not on the corner.

Something extremely important to Minesweeper that is more emphasiszed in 3D(and 4D) Minesweeper is the ability to go from one number to an adjacent one, and count the number of adjacent tiles(in this case cubes) that are added and the different or lack of diffenrece between the amount of mines.

In this case looking at the ones in the bottom left corner, the leftmost one has the purple adjacent cubes, going a single one to the right only adds two cubes, takes away zero adjacent cubes and adds zero mines. This means that the cubes in green cannot be mines.

With the same method using the two sets of circled ones, we can also further eliminate the cubes highlighted in green.

This is a pretty generic and simplified example of this, but it is what I use most to clear 3D Minesweeper. The thing to note is that cubes are added but NONE are taken away, if that is the case then eliminating the cubes that are added could cause you to click a mine.

Expanding upon this if the number does increase it can still be used to assist you, depending on placement you can rule out cubes that cannot possibly be mines based on their relation to the numeric increase. If that sounds confusing, it gets easier the more you practice.

The main thing to keep in mind is that learning can be a lot of trial and error, and to not give up when losing, just keep trying and over time it becomes easier.