{"id":359290,"date":"2025-12-19T23:40:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T23:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/359290\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T23:40:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T23:40:09","slug":"we-asked-four-ai-coding-agents-to-rebuild-minesweeper-the-results-were-explosive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/359290\/","title":{"rendered":"We asked four AI coding agents to rebuild Minesweeper\u2014the results were explosive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>            <a class=\"cursor-zoom-in\" data-pswp-width=\"1053\" data-pswp-height=\"752\" data-pswp- data-cropped=\"false\" href=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/aimine2.png\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n              <img width=\"1053\" height=\"752\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/aimine2.png\" class=\"fullwidth full\" alt=\"\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\"  \/><br \/>\n            <\/a><\/p>\n<p>              I can\u2019t tell you how much I appreciate those chording instructions at the bottom.<\/p>\n<p>      I can\u2019t tell you how much I appreciate those chording instructions at the bottom.<\/p>\n<p>          Credit:<\/p>\n<p>                      <a class=\"caption-credit-link text-gray-400 no-underline hover:text-gray-500\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bxfoundry.com\/minesweeper\/2\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><\/p>\n<p>          Benj Edwards<\/p>\n<p>                      <\/a><\/p>\n<p>Implementation<\/p>\n<p>Not only did this agent include the crucial \u201cchording\u201d feature, but it also included on-screen instructions for using it on both PC and mobile browsers. I was further impressed by the option to cycle through \u201c?\u201d marks when marking squares with flags, an esoteric feature I feel even most human Minesweeper cloners might miss.<\/p>\n<p>On mobile, the option to hold your finger down on a square to mark a flag is a nice touch that makes this the most enjoyable handheld version we tested.<\/p>\n<p>Presentation<\/p>\n<p>The old-school emoticon smiley-face button is pretty endearing, especially when you blow up and get a red-tinted \u201cX(\u201c. I was less impressed by the playfield \u201cgraphics,\u201d which use a simple \u201c*\u201d for revealed mines and an ugly red \u201cF\u201d for flagged tiles.<\/p>\n<p>The beeps-and-boops sound effects reminded me of my first old-school, pre-Sound-Blaster PC from the late \u201980s. That\u2019s generally a good thing, but I still appreciated the game giving me the option to turn them off.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFun\u201d feature<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cSurprise: Lucky Sweep Bonus\u201d listed in the corner of the UI explains that clicking the button gives you a free safe tile when available. This can be pretty useful in situations where you\u2019d otherwise be forced to guess between two tiles that are equally likely to be mines.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, though, I found it a bit odd that the game gives you this bonus only after you find a large, cascading field of safe tiles with a single click. It mostly functions as a \u201cwin more\u201d button rather than a feature that offers a good balance of risk versus reward.<\/p>\n<p>Coding experience<\/p>\n<p>OpenAI Codex has a nice terminal interface with features similar to Claude Code (local commands, permission management, and interesting animations showing progress), and it\u2019s fairly pleasant to use (OpenAI also offers Codex through a web interface, but we did not use that for this evaluation). However, Codex took roughly twice as long to code a functional game than Claude Code did, which might contribute to the strong result here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I can\u2019t tell you how much I appreciate those chording instructions at the bottom. I can\u2019t tell you&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-359290","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}