Fabulous sudoku! Best I’ve played!
Thu Feb 16 2023 murrayphdI have played many sudoku games over the years, and this has been the best for me. The numbers have different colors, helping to spot patterns more easily. You still need to use good strategy, but this feature helps with focus. When jotting a note (hypothesis for a number), if I enter a number that is impossible (e.g. the number is already in that row or column) an audible and visual alert lets you know… especially helpful when I’m tired and not tracking well. When a number is complete (all nine are placed) that number dims… again making it easier to focus on what’s important, instead. As an extra bonus, there are 3 daily goals, adding a new challenge to the game. Bravo to the developers for such a fine game play.
Very mediocre
Tue Apr 26 2022 Mudak326This app makes some interesting design choices in the way it presents sudoku puzzles. I don’t see how the completed puzzle relates to the pixelated image you can sometimes earn upon solving the puzzle. The biggest negative I see of this particular app, is the fact that there’s a setting that allows you to turn off h automatic hints for potential moves. I have yet to turn this setting on, and it still gives you hints. All you need to do is highlight any empty space and it will make the remaining values in the 3x3 square in which you highlighted the space, stand out. Furthermore, the app calls you out if you make a mistake. If these aren’t hints, I don’t know what a hint is. It’s quite annoying actually.
Furthermore, the daily challenges border on the ridiculous. Over and above ones like “place a 6 then an 8 two times" you’ll occasionally get a challenge that says something like "complete three columns back to back" whose definition of "back to back" is questionable at best. I got this challenge and played two puzzles by literally completing all nine columns left to right, and the meter never once went beyond a streak of 1. I simply can’t recommend this app to anyone over, say, the age of 8 when there are so many better sudoku apps out there.
If you want a truly great sudoku app, look to the (non-Apple Arcade) one created by Conceptis Ltd.
This is a total waste of time
Tue Feb 21 2023 janetinCarmrlThis is a colossal waste of time for any Sudoku player beyond the most elementary level. I am at level 322 and only now getting to puzzles the NYT would rate as Easy. And you have to complete four perfect games to prove you are worthy of advancing to another level. So I have spent much time doing over 1000 puzzles to get to a level that is modestly interesting but not in the least bit challenging.
And there are these weird graphics and side games that give you points, but to what end is never explained. I think there’s probably 1000 levels and times a minimum of 4 complete games to go to a new level I won’t do it. and I won’t do 4 perfect games at all levels. I kept going until the chance to write a review came up again.. I am so done. Again, a colossal time sink with no end in sight. Do not start on this if you are a good Sudoku player. I think this penalizes you if you ask for a hint. At level 322 I’ve never asked for a hint and you’d have to be an idiot to ask for one for any of these puzzles so far. Again, I am done and signing off.
OK for beginners but not very challenging
Fri Sep 22 2023 CntryKitTLDR: I really enjoy sudoku but there are only two in the arcade and they both have the same problems it seems. I’m a fan of PennyPress puzzle books (old school pencil and paper) and this just didn’t meet my expectations.
Pros: Easy to read numbers with color/theme options, easy to find settings panel, hint options, good for beginners and novices.
Cons: You can’t turn off visual hints - as in, you click a number and it basically shows you all the possible cells it can go in or you click the cell and it bolds or highlights the numbers it could possibly be and there is no way to turn this off. I tried turning it on expert mode and all it did was give me puzzles with fewer starting numbers, but left the visual hints the same, so not harder at all, just more time consuming. And it’s not something that you can just ignore, I tried, it’s frustrating.
It feels like the game is holding your hand through the process and never stops making sure you figure it out. I want a challenge from my sudoku games, this didn’t have it. I don’t want the hints unless I ask, and I really don’t want to see the numbers that are the only options, it makes it way too easy and I just don’t feel any challenge in them at all. If you’re just learning sudoku or if you’re a bit rusty, this may be good for you, but if you want a real challenge, then look elsewhere.
I Love Sudoku
Thu Aug 11 2022 PlasticsongI appreciate that this game is ad free with arcade, and the hints don’t trigger another ad. Overall it is a great sudoku game, but there is always room for improvement. The game is slow paced, you must select each individual cell to mark a note rather than being able to lock a number and drag your finger to mark a row of cells. The number boxes and the note button at the bottom are really small and easy to miss. You must make sure you select the note button or you will accidentally fill a cell with an incorrect number. I enjoy the small goals of earning trophies and collecting pictures. Once you earn all the pictures that’s it, it doesn’t reset or unlock another album. It would be nice to see the actual time of day during the play like the solitaire game by the same developer. I will continue to play this game daily and I have high hopes that it will be improved.
Great for a beginner, awful for a sudoku player
Wed Jan 31 2024 Laserjet37If you want to play on the highest difficulty, get ready to be stumped by unsolvable puzzles. When you try to use a hint to see what obvious logical step you’ve missed, the hint will simply tell you something you already know (this square can only contain one of these 3 numbers) and it’s generally not actually helpful to solving the puzzle, very occasionally, and seemingly only by pure chance, the hint will occasionally show you the hinge point of a Y-wing. However, most of the time, no Y-wings exist and the hint simply tells you information that any half-competent player would’ve already figured out. The mobilityware devs were too lazy to make an algorithm that made solvable difficult puzzles, and rather than tell you that, they just leave you to feel like an idiot, staring at a puzzle for quite some time trying to find a unique solution that simply doesn’t exist. It almost seems intentionally designed to be an awful experience for anyone above beginner level.
Great way to play Sudoku
Tue Jul 06 2021 BBRTWife has played Sudoku for over a decade but I was never interested. Then I found Sudoku Simple and was hooked. Maybe it’s because the colorful version is more like Apple OS v Microsoft list OS. In any case I fell for it. One wish would be that there was an auto fill when I only have 1 number and 4 slots left. Well, now that I think of it, one more wish … right now when I have a column with 2 blank slots, in a square with 5 blank slots, I must mentally eliminate 3 numbers that are already fill in the column, to determine which 2 numbers I am working with. In a sudoku book u make yourself lots of little notes … might be nice if I could click a number off, so I only see the numbers I want to choose from. … great game tho
Clumsy interface with tedious tasks and not hard enough
Fri Nov 17 2023 phr0zeI play on the hardest level and rarely find a challenge. It is mostly just a fill in the notes game which is slow and boring. The interface makes it easy to click the wrong buttons and constantly deselects the numbers you’re placing which makes taking notes slow. The daily challenges very often end up being win 3-4 games in one way or another. (Ie complete xx rows, complete xx blocks, fill in xx 7’s). That can take a while for quick dailies because of how slow the note taking is. They are also very boring tasks and not challenges. There should be some time challenges, challenge puzzles, etc. None of the daily challenges should require more than 2 games if played perfectly. I also wish it would allow some shading in the squares to have additional marks.
Best sudoku app I have used
Sun Jan 14 2024 vince5335743246775Definitely the best sudoku app I have used. Beginner, medium, and hard puzzles can be solved without using pencil markers. Expert puzzles are very challenging but the pencil markers make it a breeze. After a year of using this app I’m a lot better at sudoku. Now I do nothing but solve expert level puzzles perfectly. Expert puzzles are challenging enough that solving them perfectly is satisfying. My only request is the stats should include perfectly solved puzzles where there are no errors. Finally, we all know a puzzle is not truly solved unless it’s perfect anyways, so completing games perfectly with no errors should also be goals in the Daily Goals.
Update Spring 2024
Tue Apr 02 2024 ColoradoParrotheadI still love this app, but…
The latest update to this app, including Auto-Complete and Events is interesting, but not really useful. All the puzzles in the two events to date have been very simple, and based off Easy puzzles. For many of the goals, I spent more time waiting for the animations than solving puzzles. The same goes for Auto-Complete. It appears with 9 tiles remaining, regardless of digits. The animation pause takes about the same amount of time as filling in those few digits manually.
If the devs are looking for a feature to add, I would recommend an option to automatically display all the notes for a puzzle. In Expert mode, I almost always need to wear out my index finger filling them in after a couple of runs through the digits. THAT would be a time saver!
