Play MasterMind Online

I first played MasterMind in 1996, part of the MS-DOS Classic Games collection from MegaSoft. It was a time when a lot of games fit on a single floppy disk, and this one was a straightforward, no frills digital version of the classic code breaking board game. It didn't try to be anything more than that, which was exactly its appeal.

You are the code breaker, facing off against the computer. The goal is to deduce the secret sequence of colored pegs it has chosen, using only the clues it gives you after each guess. The core mechanics are placing your own rows of colored pegs and then interpreting the small black and white hint pegs that tell you if a color is correct and in the right position, or just a correct color in the wrong spot. The pacing is methodical, almost meditative, as you cross-reference your previous attempts, and the difficulty ramps up steadily as you reduce the number of guesses you're allowed. It feels like a quiet, personal battle against a puzzle that is completely fair but utterly unforgiving of sloppy logic.

Each game uses different controls, most DOS games use the keyboard arrows. Some will use the mouse , "Alt" ,"Enter" and "Space bar".