iLounge

Company: Surf Shack Software

Website: www.Surfshacksoftware.com

Title: Surf Shack Sudoku

Players: One

Price: $1

Compatible: iPod touch, iPhone, iPhone 3G

Surf Shack Software Surf Shack Sudoku

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 Surf Shack Sudoku ($1) by Surf Shack Software; 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.

As another extremely threadbare version of the game, Surf Shack Sudoku offers a black and gray grid with white numbers, simple sound effects, and two features: a hint button and a large on-screen number keyboard. You can pick between three levels of difficulty and turn off the sound effects; iPod music is the only other audio you can hear. There isn’t any pencil-marking here, one of several omissions that limits the game’s appeal in our book to demo status; randomly generated puzzles are included.