Games Like Dragonsweeper

Dragonsweeper is Daniel Benmergui’s free browser game that turns Minesweeper into a dungeon crawl: the numbers on the board add up the levels of the monsters around them, you fight your way up through the levels, and a dragon waits in the middle. It was one of the most talked-about free games on itch.io in early 2025. If you are looking for the game itself, play it on itch.io — it is free.

If you have finished Dragonsweeper and want more of that feeling, this page is for you. The playable game here is Dungeon Sweep, our own minesweeper RPG in the same genre: numbers are sums of monster levels, fights cost health and earn experience, and ranking up heals you. It plays differently in the ways that matter — a smaller 9 × 9 dungeon, ordinary monsters with no special powers, potions you carry and drink when you choose, and a level-12 minotaur as the final fight. Every dungeon is checked by a solver before you get it, so a careful player never has to guess.

How to play Games Like Dragonsweeper

1. Pick Random dungeon for a new map, or Today’s dungeon for the map everyone gets today.
2. A patch of the dungeon starts open. Each number is the levels of the monsters on the eight tiles around it, added up — a 3 is one level-3 monster, or a level 1 and a level 2, or three level 1s.
3. Click a tile to open it. If a monster is there, you fight it: you lose its level in health and gain its level in experience.
4. Enough experience ranks you up, which heals you to full and raises your maximum health. That is the main way to heal.
5. Potions are picked up and carried. Drink one (+3 health) whenever you choose — they are your safety margin for the end.
6. The bestiary under the board shows how many of each monster are left. Use it with the numbers to work out where they are.
7. Defeat the level-12 minotaur to win. At low ranks it will kill you outright, so rank up first.

Games Like Dragonsweeper controls

Games Like Dragonsweeper tips & strategy

• Start with the small numbers. A 1 next to only one hidden tile is a level-1 rat you can take — and the experience starts you climbing.
• Use the bestiary counts. When the numbers allow a 3 or a 1+2, knowing how many 3s are left often settles it.
• Rank up before you heal. Ranking up refills you anyway, so spend health down toward the next rank instead of drinking early.
• Save potions for the minotaur. The last rank gives 28 health; the minotaur takes 12. Potions are what let you clear the rest of the map first.
• Pencil in what you know. Mark mode lets you note the level you think a tile holds. If you mark something that would kill you and then click it, the game asks you to tap again first.
• Stuck? Ask for a hint. It points at a tile whose worst case you can survive — the same reasoning the solver used to approve the dungeon.

Where Dragonsweeper comes from

The idea of a minesweeper whose numbers add up monster levels is older than Dragonsweeper. Its own credits point to Mamono Sweeper, a Japanese browser game by Hojamaka in which you level up by defeating monsters weaker than you and read the board by their summed levels. Dragonsweeper built on that with a dragon to slay, monsters that each follow their own rules, and treasure and secrets to find. Since then the genre has grown, with games such as MonSweeper and Dwarf Sweeper taking it in their own directions. Dungeon Sweep is one more: the same core idea, built around fairness.

Dungeon Sweep vs. Dragonsweeper

In short: Dragonsweeper is richer, with more secrets to discover; Dungeon Sweep is smaller and purely logical — a good fit if your favourite part of Dragonsweeper was working out the numbers.

The Dungeon Sweep bestiary

Four potions are hidden as well, each worth 3 health. You start at rank 1 with 10 health; ranks 2 to 5 arrive at 7, 17, 30 and 46 experience and raise your maximum to 14, 18, 23 and 28. Your score is your experience times ten, with 200 more for beating the minotaur.

Every dungeon is solvable by logic

Before you see a dungeon, the game plays it itself using only what a player could see: the numbers, the bestiary counts and its own health. If its solver can’t clear the map and beat the minotaur without guessing, the dungeon is thrown away and another one is built. In our tests every dungeon it handed out was won by deduction alone, and most of them were won with six health or less to spare — fair does not mean easy.