Sudoku

Everything a Sudoku fan needs

Reviewed by Shawn from afro-ninja.com

Sudoku is just one of those unexplainable fads that comes and spreads like crazy. The actual game of Sudoku has been around since 1986 (Thanks Wikipedia) but before 2005 if you wanted to play a ‘Sudoku’ game people would have no idea what you’re talking about. But now it’s here, and there’s no surprise that we have flash games to satisfy the online craving for Sudoku.

If you haven’t heard the rules of Sudoku a thousand times over yet, let me reiterate. You have a large grid filled squares and numbers. Nine boxes consisting of nine squares each. Each square must contain a number, and each row, column, and box must each contain the numbers 1-9 with no repeats. There’s no math involved at all, which is what scares some away. It’s all logic.

It’s kind of hard to mess up a game of Sudoku- as long as you can fill in the numbers and the puzzles are formatted correct, then you have a Sudoku game. But there are things you can do to enhance the experience, which is what this game does well. First and foremost, you can log on daily for new puzzles. I don’t know how long this is supposed to last, but it’s a nice incentive. There are three levels of difficulty (although I didn’t notice much difference between easy and medium) and if you want you can opt to change the numbers 1-9 to the first 9 letters of the alphabet. Personally I find that kind of annoying, but the option is there for anyone who wants it. There are also other small touches, such as being able to hold the space bar down and ‘note’ what numbers you think might be in a given square (they show up smaller). When you have a current number selected you can scroll the mouse wheel to quickly change between them, instead of having to go to the bottom and choose another.

I’m not exactly sure why a barnyard theme was chosen for this game but it works well enough. Simple and bright graphics are easy on the eyes, and the country ambience sound can be switched on or off. Lastly, this game has two nice features that pencil and paper Sudoku cannot- it will let you know when you are trying to place an incorrect number (this will base it on your other numbers as well, so you could still be placing an incorrect number even if it doesn’t tell you so) and it keeps track of your stats on each difficulty level. It will tell you how many games you have played, your best completion time, and your average completion time.

With flash renditions of Sudoku as complete as this there’s really no reason to ever want to buy a PC game Sudoku package. You might get some better graphics, but does that really matter? A must-see for any Sudoku fan.

Click here to play Sudoku






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  Latest comment left by thatguy:

I'm constantly playing Sudoku on my DS

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