Back in August I reviewed the freeware sudoku game Sulite. I enjoyed the game. So, when the chance came up to test out a few more Sudoku games, I jumped at it. The list of games to test grew and grew as did this review. But finally I managed to have a good play with each game.

A range of commercial and freeware games were tested over a two month period leading me to suffer from major Sudoku fatigue. I'll take a look at each game individually then tell you my favorite freeware and favorite commercial Sudoku games. I'll finish by telling you which one won a permanent place on my Treo.

To those of you unfamiliar with Sudoku, it's a logic game that originated in Japan. The game is played on a 9x9 grid further divided into 9 3x3 grids. The aim of the game is to put the numbers 1 to 9 into the squares so that each horizontal row of 9 squares, each vertical column of 9 squares and each 3x3 grid contain the numbers 1-9. Completing the puzzle can be done through a mixture of logic, deduction and sometimes a little guess work.

Freeware options

(1) SULITE

If you don't like using your stylus for play, then this game is not for you . There's no D-pad support and digit selection is a purely stylus driven affair.

Graphically, Sulite is basic compared to some of the other games reviewed here. The game also has fewer puzzles available. However, the game permits you to enter your own puzzles from other sources.

There are various help options available to allow you to make the game easier, such as only letting you select from or insert legitimate digits. One nice feature is that at any point you can ask Sulite whether the puzzle is still solvable. This can be useful because, if you make a mistake, it will not be automatically obvious. However, Sulite will only say if the game is or is not solvable. Then it's up to you to find out where you've gone wrong, which can be a nightmare and generally involves a lot of blanking squares to find out where you've gone wrong.

(2) SUDOKU (BY ANDREW GREGORY)

For all you "stylus haters" out there, this is the freeware option for you as you can happily play the game all the way through without needing to use the stylus once. Overall the game plays similar to Sulite and has similar options. However, there are a few noticeable differences between the two game.

The one killer option this has over Sulite is the ability to pencil all the legal moves in. This'll mean little to people who've never played Sudoku before. But it is a great time saving option. When ever you play Sudoku, be it on your Treo or on paper, you often find you want to enter all the possible legal digits for a particular square without selecting one digit as your answer for that square. Tthese possible digits are called pencil marks and most of the games here let you enter them in some way. By selecting pencil legal moves, your Treo does this for you saving you from this time consuming exercise to let you get on with the real problem solving.

This game also improves on Sulite by highlighting the incorrectly filled in squares on request instead of just telling you if the puzzle is still solvable. This allows you the blank the squares where you've gone wrong and restart the puzzle with only the correctly filled squares.

As far as I'm concerned, this version of Sudoku has only one major problem. You can't alter the difficulty of the puzzles. This is fine when you first start playing but as you get better at solving the puzzles you do want to try harder puzzles. This isn't an option with this game.

(3) SUDOKU SOLVER

After I started playing the game I found that it had a lot of the negative points. The game has very few options, you can only ever enter legal numbers, which is great for beginners when you need your hand held but as you get better it's an option you'll want to be able to turn off. You can't enter pencil marks. So, unless you have a photographic memory, you'll continually be clicking on boxes to remind yourself which numbers can go there. It's a stylus only game. This doesn't bother me. But I know some of you guys will get annoyed at this.

Overall, this has all the negative points from the other two freeware games with few positives.

Commercial Options

(4) SUDOKU (ONESIR)

Although the game is cheap at $9.99, I can't recommend it over either of the two other commercial games.

(5) TOP SUDOKU

(Buy this from the mytreo.net/store!)

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The authors of the game have obviously played quite a bit of Sudoku as they have several features that really make the game more convenient to play. The first two options that I really liked were the ability to either discard or replace all wrong filled squares. This is great as it means when you get completely lost and can't see where you've gone wrong, you can just blank out all the wrong answers or replace them with the correct number and re-start your part done puzzle.

You also have the feature to start the game with all the possible pencil marks pre-filled. This is really useful as it saves you clicking on loads of squares to enter the pencil marks one at a time. One thing that really annoyed me about this game was the way you had to click on an icon to flip between pencil mark and play modes. What a pain, you sometimes forget what mode you're in and lose your train of thought whilst flipping between modes.

One interesting feature they've included with this game is the ability to use other symbols instead of digits in the game. Wait a minute, I hear some of you say how can you play a number puzzle without numbers? Well, actually, Sudoku isn't a number puzzle it's a logic puzzle in which you have to arrange 9 different symbols in specific orders. If this works with 9 different digits it can work with 9 different symbols on any type, such as the shapes and flags offered here. This all sounds fine and dandy until you try playing and it suddenly become much more difficult. I don't know if it's just the way my brain is wired. But I find looking for patterns in number much easier than looking for patterns in a screen full of flags.

(6) SUDOKU (ASTRAWARE)

Puzzle wise this game takes a different route to all the other games reviewed. Pre-generated puzzles are available of 6 different skill levels and you can install additional puzzle packs from the Astraware Sudoku site. This site also provides lots of hints, tips and techniques to help puzzlers of all levels to solve Sudoku puzzles. The game also has the ability to generate it's own puzzles at various skill levels or you can enter your own puzzles onto a blank board providing an almost unlimited number of puzzles.

I have to say I preferred the look of the colourful interface on Top Sudoku, but once you start playing you see how functional this game's interface is. All the time the whole board is visible there are no pop-up boxes or drop down lists covering the board when you enter a digit. You can just tap your stylus on the digit of choice on the right hand side or press the number of choice on your Treo's keypad. You can navigate the board either with a stylus or D-pad, I've found my self selecting squares with the D-pad and entering digits with the Treo keyboard. The central button on the D-pad is used to flip between pencil mode and data entry mode. It works in a very similar way to switching modes on Top Sudoku. It's just a lot more convenient to be able to use the central button rather than having to hit an icon every time you want to switch modes.

Option-wise there are most of the ones seen on the other games with pencil marks and assistance to check you're inputting correct values all of which can be turned on and off.

This game has several unique functions. One that I like is the way you can have multiple users for the game so different people can have their own accounts and keep their own statistics. The other function I found a bit strange it's a scratch-pad option that lets you draw and write all over the board this writing can be clicked on and off so that it doesn't interfere with play. I guess you could use it to highlight key points or squares where you have guessed at the number. But it's not a function I think I'll ever use..

So what's the down side of this game? Well all these options and extras add a lot to the memory space taken, with just one puzzle pack installed this game was more than double the size of all the other 5 games combined. Also the menu system is a pain. Instead of the usual drop-down menu selection method seen on the other games, you have to navigate a hierarchy of menus to get to various options. Just imagine you're in the middle of a game and shock! You discover you've gone wrong and you don't know where so you decide you want to highlight the incorrect digits. You start by pressing the menu button then navigate up through 4 menu screens select 'Flag mistakes,'and then navigate back through the 4 menu screens back to the game. Compare this to Top Suduko where you'd press the menu key, select actions then discard or replace all, problem sorted in a third of the time.

Overview

Decisions, decisions, decisions.......

Now for the hardest part of the review, what are my favourite Sudoku games.

If I had no money and wanted to play Sudoku, which of the freeware games would I choose? The easy answer is to try them all and see which you like best, but then this wouldn't be much of a comparative review if I gave no recommendations. I would have to say the result is a photo finish between Sulite and Sudoku (by Andrew Gregory). If you must have stylus free play, go for Andrew's. Overall, Andrew's is a superior program but once you've done enough Sudoku puzzles, you may find that a lot of the puzzles it generates are a bit easy. This is where Sulite scores by letting you choose skill level you can have a hard puzzle when ever you want. I know Sulite only has 150 puzzles. But to be honest, if you played all 150 I don't think you'd remember particular puzzles when they came up again. So after the stewards enquiry Andrew Gregory's Sudoku wins the freeware competition by a nose.

So you've played the freeware games to death and you're now willing to dip your hand into your pocket, which game do you buy? In a similar result to the freeware race we find one game that just can't keep up with the others, Sudoku by Onesir is currently the most expensive of the three commercial games and just doesn't have the presentation or options to justify this. So which would I choose between Top Sudoku and Astraware Sudoku? Whilst Astraware's Sudoku is at the cheap price of $9.95 it's an easy win for this highly polished game, it has everything you need to keep Sudoku addicts happy. However, when Astraware put the price up to $19.95 is it three times the game of the $7.99 Top Sudoku? I don't think it is, Top Sudoku offers you most of the functionality of the Astraware game along with some additional features like being able to use flags and symbols instead of numbers, at a 1/6th of the memory footprint and a 1/3rd of the price. So either buy Astraware's Sudoku now whilst it's cheap or if you're to slow and it's gone up to $19.95 check out Top Sudoku. It's a bargain.

So which game am I keeping on my Treo? It has to be Astraware's Sudoku. It's converted me to playing stylus free Sudoku, I have no problem with the size of it as I have lots of free memory and I didn't have to pay for it!

Sudoku Puzzle

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Posted by Sion Phillips