Closed Loop System

The first thing that caught my eye about this one is, it's an actual minesweeper game. In HTML. On the AO3 fanfiction archive. I've experimented with AO3's limited HTML/CSS support, to help writer friends do things like linked footnotes and mimicking Twitter threads, but I never knew this level of interaction was possible. I've been looking through the code and it's super impressive.

On the game itself, this is an affecting and bittersweet story that links into the mechanics of minesweeper surprisingly well. It's set in the universe of The Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells, but you do not need familiarity with either the books or the recent TV series to understand the game. It would be useful to know that SecUnits are androids rented as security personnel; they are slaves, their actions controlled by a governor module that inflicts pain if they disobey orders or violate policy. You do need to know how to play minesweeper.

In-universe the minesweeper board is a research survey site, that two SecUnits are combing through to map out locations of deadly beetles (the mines) and hopefully avoid being killed themselves. The story is told through communications between the SecUnits, the AI HubSystem, and the research team, which is slowly revealed as you play. It's an evocative glimpse into the SecUnits' constrained lives: the careful, defiant ways they sneak through jokes and pseudo-swearing without triggering punishment for unprofessionalism, the jokes they make despite punishment. It's increasingly and infuruatingly clear that the research team views them as disposable tools; the whole reason the SecUnits are risking their lives scanning for danger at close range is because the supervisor considered that cheaper than authorising high quality satellite scans.

It makes for the most immersive game of minesweeper I've ever played. Each move is a lot more emotionally tense, when a mistake means the death of people who just sent each other funny gifs and complained about their client's incompetence, who will not even be mourned. I made moves only when I was sure; guessing at beetle/bomb locations even with UNDO turned on felt almost like treating the SecUnits as as callously as the survey supervisor does, placing information over their lives.

The player's progress triggers the communications but do not affect them (unless you uncover beetles and die), until the very end, at the most heartbreaking moment in the game. (major spoilers below)

(Spoiler - click to show)If you play minesweeper mostly in the intended way, you come to the last two squares where there isn't enough information to definitively tell where the beetle is. For the first time in the game you have to guess, with 50/50 chance at the SecUnits being eaten by carnivorous beetles. The supervisor does not authorise better scans, or allow just cordoning off both squares as unsafe. They expect the SecUnits to go in and risk death to get as much data as possible, which of course they do. It's what they're designed for. The player makes the guess, the SecUnits survive, or not, based on that choice.