iLounge

Company: eLogicpuzzles

Website: www.eLogicpuzzles.com

Title: tSudoku Plus

Players: One

Price: $4

Compatible: iPod touch, iPhone, iPhone 3G

eLogicpuzzles tSudoku Plus

By Jeremy Horwitz

Editor-in-Chief, iLounge
Published: Friday, August 1, 2008
Category: Games - iPad, iPhone + iPod

On August 1, 2008, iLounge published iPhone Gems: Every Sudoku Game, Reviewed, a feature article looking at 23 different Sudoku releases for the iPhone OS. This review focuses on tSudoku Plus ($4) by eLogicpuzzles.com; you can read the full article, with screenshots of all of the games together, through the link above. A collective screenshot below shows you some of the other Sudoku interfaces you can expect to find in these titles.

If you’re reading this article, you probably already know that Sudoku is a one-screen puzzle game based upon a 9-by-9 grid that’s partially filled with numbers. The objective is to fill the empty spaces of the grid with single digit numbers so that the same digit does not appear twice on any horizontal or vertical line. Additionally, the same number should not appear twice in any of nine 3-by-3 mini grids on the screen.

iLounge’s top-ranked Sudoku games are ones that offered fully-functional renditions of the game, with impressive interfaces, bonus features, user customization, and pricing as of the time we tested them. The fewer of these features a given game had, the lower it rated. While updates to these games may well be released over time, and their features may change, we couldn’t wait around forever for bad or so-so titles to catch up with ones that were already good or great.

tSudoku Plus started out at $5, and though it has dropped in price to $4, it hasn’t increased in attractiveness—it’s actually the least impressive app we’ve ever seen at this particular price point. The loading screen looks like an Apple II computer menu, and the game itself features a very basic visual rendition of the Sudoku grid with similarly simple fontography. tSudoku Plus’s only frills are the ability to upload your results to the elogicpuzzles.com web site, select from three difficulty levels or random (well, “all”) difficulty, and a set of dials that let you play a specific puzzle from the now 20,000 stored inside—you know, just in case you want to replay Sudoku puzzle number 6,453. The game will also solve a specific cell for you, but provides a time penalty to keep scores the same between ranked players. You provide your own iPod audio. Lacking possibility markings and possessing perhaps the worst graphics we’ve yet seen on the iPhone, this one also rates an F because of the outrageous price; if you have $4 to spend and you use it on this rather than Platinum Sudoku, you must be out of your mind.