Sudoku
Posted by colin on 30th October 2005
Direct Link : Sudoku
Publisher : Astraware
Price : $9.95
Rating : 9 out of 10
The Sudoku craze is well and truly upon us, especially for Pocket PC users. There’s now a new kid in town and he’s gunning for all the other Sudoku games and packing some real heat. Sudoku is more commonly played in magazine and newspapers all over the world. The basic premise of the game is to complete the grid of numbers. All lines have the numbers 1 to 9, no numbers are duplicated. All sub squares, there are 9 in a nine by nine grid, also must contain the numbers 1 to 9. No number can ever be next to a like number. It all sounds easy when you say it fast and indeed for easy puzzles it is.
Astraware provides us with a very well thought out implementation of Sudoku, that borrows a lot from other versions, but also has some very nice features of it’s own. Some of the excellent additions are :
Crossfire square selection, aids puzzle solving
Highlights the full row and column and also hightlights the individual cell to fill. Makes it easier to deduce the number needed in any given column or row.
Full tutorial mode
An excellent tutorial, which gets users up to speed pretty quickly
Notes mode
Gives you the ability to scribble notes over the screen.
Support for VGA Pocket PCs
Yes, crisp clear graphics for owners fortunate enough to have a VGA enabled Pocket PC. Non VGA users still benefit from a clean, well designed screen.
Puzzle Packs (Registered Users Only)
There are 6 different levels of puzzle pack with 5 different packs for each. Each pack has 100 puzzles, so that makes a total of 3,000 different puzzles to work your way through, which should keep Sudoku fans busy for a while. And I’m sure more puzzles will be available in the near future.
Generate Puzzles (Registered Users Only)
Never be without a new puzzle. Great if you’ve completed all the puzzle packs, or just want to try something off the cuff.
One of the features I’m not so keen on is the way in which a number is selected. The popular method of selection is usually to click on the cell and from the number grid that pops up, select the number you want to place. With Astraware’s version you have to select the number from the number list on the right of the screen. Similarly this is also how you select pencil marks (i.e. pencilled in numbers that could feature in the final puzzle), but you select them from the number list on the bottom of the screen. This is only a minor niggle and doesn’t distract too much from the game.
A feature I love is the puzzle packs. Having the ability to generate billions of puzzles is great and not to be sniffed at, but after a while the enormity of it all causes you to lose interest. I’m not saying that the other Sudoku games are any worse for it, but having a puzzle pack with a finite amount of puzzles, gives you a definite goal, which helps to keep the fire alive.
A feature I just thought of that would be great, is the ability to create a bitmap or HTML version of the Sudoku puzzle that you can sync to your desktop PC for printing. This allows you to play some games away from your Pocket PC, which I’m sure would prove a nice addition to the game.
Finally Astraware provides a companion website Spam Karma 2: 4167 Spams eaten and counting...