Gnomines is a minesweeper

Minesweeper (computer game)

Minesweeper is a single-player video game. The object of the game is to clear an abstract minefield without detonating a mine. The game has been written for many system platforms in use today....

 game for GNOME

GNOME

GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...

 is licensed under the GPL as part of GNOME Games

GNOME Games

GNOME Games is a collection of computer games that is part of the standard open-source GNOME desktop environment. It includes the following games:* AisleRiot - - a suite of Solitaire card games....

. The game was written in C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

 by Pista and it was later improved by face artwork made by tigert. The faces are written in SVG and they are used to demonstrate the state of the game.

Gameplay

The game's premise is that the player has to locate mines floating in an ocean.

Gnomine can provide hints, but doing so adds 10 seconds to the time per hint. Using hints to solve a beginner level puzzle will often take three minutes or longer. The algorithm behind the hint function gets the layout of all of the squares and if they aren't empty it performs the move that is the most revealing.