NeggSweeper

Introduction

NeggSweeper is based on the real life game of Minesweeper. Actually, it's one of the oldest games on Neopets, made before the days of flash games! And while it may not be original, it's still a Neopets classic.

The point of the game is to flag all of the "mines," or in this case, Neggs. The object is to identify the hiding place of all the Neggs on the board in order to finish the game and get your Neopoints.

How to Play

You start with a big field of regular grey Neggs. When you click one, it'll either turn into a red Negg mine and the game ends or, hopefully, it'll turn out to be safe and turn into a white square, possibly with a number in it. That number helps to tell you where the mines are. A green 1 means that there is one mine total in the surrounding 8 squares; a blue 2 means that there are two mines in the surrounding 8 squares; an orange 3 means that there are three mines in the surrounding 8 squares; and so on up to 8. (If you're wondering, all numbers 4 and greater are red.) However, 5's and 6's are very uncommon, and 7's and 8's are extremely rare.

Empty squares can be thought of as 0's: they have no mines next to them. When you click on an empty square, it'll actually reveal an island of clear squares, including itself and all empty squares connected to it and all numbered squares connected to any of those! For an example, check out this screenshot:

You will notice two numbers at the top of the board:

• Remaining: The number of squares without mines still covered by grey Neggs on the board. (This is different than traditional Minesweeper, which tells you how many squares with mines are remaining on the board.) You win the game by uncovering all of these non-mine squares.
• Jackpot: Your score so far for the current game.

Flagging Mines

The game isn't entirely without use of your keyboard, though: to flag a mine, you have to click the square you think it's on while holding down your Control or Shift key. Flagging a mine has the benefits of clearly marking the square with a red X and making the square unclickable so you won't accidentally activate it. Flagging mines can be useful for keeping things organized, but is completely optional, and you don't even have to flag any to win the game. Remember only to flag the squares that you're sure a mine is on!

Difficulty Levels

Last of all, there are three different difficulty levels to choose from: Easy, Medium, and Hard. The difference between them all is size of the game board and number of mines:

Rewards

Each game costs 30 NP to play, regardless of difficulty. If you successfully complete a game, you win the amount in your Jackpot. There is a daily limit of 3,000 NP, but you can play as much as you want to keep building your cumulative score.

Strategy

Since NeggSweeper is a game of logic, it's not hard to figure out all the winning moves yourself. However, here's a beginner's tip for those who don't feel like thinking right now:

So, you have four potential mines right there. Obviously, either the top Negg or the one right below it is a mine, but only one is. The same goes for the bottom Negg and the one above it. But it's a simple deduction: the second-top Negg can't be a mine, because then both the Neggs above and below it couldn't be and there would be no other mines connected to the 2. That sure isn't possible. Therefore, the top square and third-lowest square must be the mines! The rest of the game is just one big expansion of that kind of logic.

Solved!

There will be times when logic is not able to determine the locations of any further mines or clear squares. Sometimes you can use the "Remaining" number of clear squares shown in the top left corner to figure it out, but sometimes (such as in the example below) you will need to make a guess!

Oh well...

Beginning a Game

1. First, start a game (begin on Easy if you've never played before) and click on any random square. If it's a mine, start again; if it's clear, hopefully an island, you've got to start using the numbers given to you.
2. If you got a simple 1, forget about it for a while and click on a new random square until you get a decent island. When you do, you have to use all of the numbers to decipher where the mines are around them. Let's say you have the following layout:

   

   There's one particularly obvious place where a mine is located, near the bottom-right corner; the square touching five 1's. You don't have to flag it, remember.
3. From that island, you can already figure out where most of the mines are. With a quick look at one more screenshot, you can see that NeggSweeper isn't such a hard game.

   

Bonuses

In a few random squares in every NeggSweeper game there are some special Neggs; when you click on their squares, it'll act normally except that you'll receive a notice at the top of the page explaining that you got extra points depending on the kind of Negg it was. The more points they give, the rarer they are to find. Each type gives a certain amount of points.

Blue Negg: +50 pts

Purple Negg: +100 pts

Rainbow Negg: +150 pts

Crystal Negg: +300 pts

Fish Negg: +500 pts

Additionally, if you clear a really large island, you will be awarded a bonus! It is 1 point for every square revealed on Easy, 2 points on Medium, and 3 points on Hard.

Trophies

There are multiple trophies to be won in this game!

Standard Trophies

The first set is similar to other games and can be won by getting a high score in a single game.

To earn one of these trophies, you pretty much have no choice but to play on Hard. Unfortunately, it does require a lot of luck: you basically need to get as many of the random bonuses as possible. One way to tip the odds in your favor is to click on squares that you know have numbers before you click on squares you know to be empty, as each click is another opportunity to get a bonus. If a number square is revealed by an empty square instead, you missed the opportunity!

Standard NeggSweeper trophies

Cumulative Trophies

An additional set of trophies can be won for high cumulative scores.

This trophy is a little trickier than many other game trophies because of two reasons. First, the trophy is for cumulative points won over any number of games, not a top score from a single game. Second, this high score table doesn't truly reset! Although the table is cleared at the start of every month like all others, each user's cumulative score is maintained. All a user has to do to re-enter the high score table is win another game. A user's score only clears after three months of not winning a game of NeggSweeper.

The best strategy for building your cumulative score is to play on Easy. While each game will be worth fewer points compared to the other difficulties, the games are much shorter and you will win far more often, so the points will accumulate faster.

Cumulative NeggSweeper trophies

Game Info