In Minesweeper, mines are scattered throughout a board which is divided into cells. Cells have three states: uncovered, covered and flagged. A covered cell is blank and clickable, while an uncovered cell is exposed. Flagged cells are those marked by the player to indicate a potential mine location.

A player left-clicks a cell to uncover it. If a player uncovers a mined cell, the game ends. Otherwise, the uncovered cells displays either a number, indicating the quantity of mines adjacent to it, or a blank tile (or "0"), and all adjacent non-mined cells will automatically be uncovered. Right-clicking on a cell will flag it, causing a flag to appear on it. Flagged cells are still covered, and a player can click on them to uncover them, although typically they must first be unflagged with an additional right-click.

The first click in any game will never be a mine.

To win the game, players must uncover all non-mine cells, at which point the timer is stopped. Flagging all the mined cells is not required.