Review: Gameloft Platinum Sudoku

By
Jeremy Horwitz
|
August 1, 2008 11:50 am UTC

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 Gameloft’s Platinum Sudoku ($4 $2); 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.

There’s no doubt that the best of the Sudoku titles we’ve reviewed is Platinum Sudoku, and the reason is simple: tons and tons of options. This professionally developed, beautiful-looking title lets you select from 16 different fonts, 14 different backgrounds, 6 different grids, and 11 different, actually background songs. Some of these items are available at the start, others are unlockable through continued play; game music can be turned on or off. Handwriting number recognition and a pad can be toggled between, various types of hints and draft markings are available, and there are all sorts of other extras—voice samples, male and female coaches, puzzle modes, a puzzle solving mode, and a hybrid Sudoku/crossword puzzle game called Kakuro.

Kakuro, which is accessed by scrolling down from the main menu, is like Killer Sudoku in that you’re given number tallies that must be met to properly fill the grid. There are hundreds of different Kakuro puzzles built in here, adding so much to the title’s continued play value that they could—had anyone known was Kakuro was—have served as a standalone game. Given that those puzzles are here, along with the best version of Sudoku we’ve yet seen, you’re actually getting three times as much as in EA’s Sudoku, at half the price. This sort of great value combined with great design is the very definition of a flat A rated game, and fully worthy of our high recommendation. Platinum Sudoku is notably only the second iPod/iPhone game ever to receive our flat A rating. [Editor’s Note: This game was further dropped in price following our review.]