Mines

Mines are items that scroll on the playfield along with the notes. This item originated in In The Groove, and was ported to StepMania during development of ITG. Stepping on a mine will reduce your lifebar and posibly your EX-SCORE, so be careful!

These usually begin appearing on harder charts (and some medium charts and rarely on easy charts). Mines are used to make some patterns harder, get the player to move their feet in a certain way, or for visual purposes like shapes or spelling out words.

In most noteskins, mines appear as spinning white disks with a flashing red light in the middle. When stepped on, the mine explodes with an explosion sound and a yellowish explosion mimicking the explosion that usually comes from a bomb. In some DDR noteskins, mines are replaced by shock arrows. These arrows are electrified. When stepped on, appear a lightning direct to the step zone and all compatible DDR themes can heard the lightning sound. In SM4 CVS, they appear as spinning brownish flowers. The appearance of the mine might be changed for certain noteskins like circular noteskins in order to not confuse the mines with the circular object.

In older versions of StepMania, to add these in a chart, press shift+a number to add a mine on that column. In SM5, use M and N to switch between note types, then press a number once you have the mines selected.