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 Tile Sudoku ($5) by Magnetism Studios; 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.
Tile Sudoku is a simple but clean-looking version of the game, where the numbers are on tiles rather than a traditional grid. The only frills here are your ability to drag and drop tiles into positions on the board, and an option to show you only tiles that might work on a given spot. Double-tapping on a spot on the board lets you do pencil-style possibility marking, which doesn’t really fit with the visual theme of the game, but at least it’s in there. Simple sound effects overlap your iPod mode audio.