Where is multiplayer Minesweeper?

Casual multiplayer gaming is in its infancy. Most casual, browser-based games don't include the option of playing against, or with, other players from across the web - even though the web is their natural medium. That's the opposite of what hardcore gamers have been used to for years - an integral or even exclusive multiplayer experience in the majority of titles.

Up until lately, the options for playing a Flash game against other people almost never strayed from the beaten path of classics like Chess, Checkers, Poker and other board, card, word and trivia games drawn from the living room environment. Development is only now beginning, slowly, to expand creatively towards a larger variety of multiplayer gameplay styles. There is great room for experimentation and discovery.

Some good, simple ideas for multiplayer fun have been laying under our noses for years. The famous Minesweeper, born in the 80's long before Windows introduced it into every home, is a widely recognized casual phenomenon, yet i know of no multiplayer implementations of the concept (except as a side-activity inside the Massively Multiplayer game Runescape).

A multiplayer Minesweeper can work in many different ways. One of the simplest ways to imagine it is as a one on one realtime competition on the same board. Each player is free to click squares he thinks are free of mines, and can also mark squares he suspects are mined (but these marker flags do not appear on the other player's board). You get points for clearing out free squares, and get seriously penalized for clicking a mine, and the winner is the higher scoring player after a fixed time or when the board is fully cleared. The gameplay subsists on a constant tension between the pressure of competition and the danger of hastily stepping on a mine.

The game could raise the stakes by dictating that a player who steps on a mine loses immediately, although that could make the players wary to a degree of slowing or even stopping the game. This could be solved by giving each player a few lives, and forcing them to move rapidly, either by requiring a move each x seconds, or by giving each player an energy bar that continuously depletes, and can only be recharged by clearing out more and more squares.

Another option to deal with stepping on a mine is to have the player's cursor virtually explode, slowly gathering itself back together over the course of 10 seconds or the like. During this time the player is forced to sit on the bench, while his rival keeps racking up points. Being kicked out of the game for a short period may be somewhat jarring, but may also be a more serious, tangible threat, considering the frustration of seeing your opponent free to operate while you look on helplessly.

Other things that could be considered are awarding more points for squares cleared inside a mine-rich environment, and having special hidden bonuses and powerups inside random squares. There is also the option of going back to the original concept of Minesweeper, where the player wasn't an abstract entity clearing the board from above, but actually a character (most likely a combat engineer) that had to cross the minefield one square at a time from one side to the other. In this variation, you could have each of the players start the game at an opposite end of the board. The first to reach the flag, treasure or whatnot in the middle is the winner.