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 KillerSudoku ($5) by WhiteNile Systems; 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.
We originally described KillerSudoku as “the single most confusing Sudoku game we have tested,” but an update fixed the biggest issue—its initial inability to generate playable boards. Now KillerSudoku actually includes the two promised modes, Classic Sudoku and Killer Sudoku, along with the ability to save and open games, and solve newspaper sudoku puzzles. The Killer mode includes on-board tallies that impose additional rules on certain two- or three-unit parts of the grid. As before, no audio is included, and the help system isn’t extremely helpful.
Better than it was in its initial revision, and undoubtably aided by the Killer Sudoku variant, this is still a pretty limited game in terms of interface, and doesn’t currently provide possibility/pencil markings.