iLounge

Company: Freeverse

Website: www.Freeverse.com

Title: Big Bang Sudoku

Players: One

Price: $5

Compatible: iPod touch, iPhone, iPhone 3G

Freeverse Big Bang Sudoku

By Jeremy Horwitz

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

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 Big Bang Sudoku ($5) by Freeverse; 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.

Big Bang Sudoku is a very simple rendition of the game, opting to avoid cluttering the grid with number-adding overlays in favor of a bottom-of-screen list of numbers that can be shifted into either answer or possibility markers. Other than four difficulty settings, you are limited to turning off or displaying a wisecracking “Sun God” character, a timer, or incorrect moves. Except for simple sound effects, which can be turned off, the game is silent, so you have to provide your own music. The single biggest thrill of the title is a gently moving starfield background; it is just too expensive given how simple it is.