Sudoku

Overview

Sudoku is a free-to-play puzzle game developed by Babaroga and released digitally by Microsoft Game Studios for Windows Phone 7 devices on July 29, 2011.

A digital adaptation of the number-puzzle game of the same name, Sudoku tasks players with filling a 9x9 grid with a combination of numeric digits (with some of the grid pre-filled, higher difficulties making the board more ambiguous) so that each row, column, and 3x3 sub-grid have all nine digits.

Similar to the studio's adaptation of Minesweeper, Sudoku adheres to Microsoft's Metro interface while adding new functionality to the base game, including Xbox Live support (such as leaderboards and achievements), a persistent XP system, unlockable power-ups, and an alternate point-based scoring mode ("Lightning"). As a free-to-play game, the game includes basic banner advertisements.

The game later received a spiritual successor with Microsoft Sudoku.

Gameplay

The game has two play modes: the classic mode and the lightning mode.

In the classic mode, you just have to solve the sudoku puzzle without any limits. This mode has 5 difficulty levels (some have recommended ranks, however you can start a new game on all of them, regardless of your rank):

• Training - 4x4 puzzle
• Easy - 9x9 puzzle, recommended rank: Player
• Moderate - 9x9 puzzle, recommended rank: Casual
• Advanced - 9x9 puzzle, recommended rank: Addict
• Expert - 9x9 puzzle, recommended rank: Master

The concept the lighning mode is to finish the puzzle with as much points as possible. The player's starting points are decreasing continously. If the player manages to input a correct number to the puzzle then some points are added back to the score. The lighning mode has four difficulty levels:

• Gentle - 9x9 puzzle, recommended rank: Player, starts with 1500 points
• Easy - 9x9 puzzle, recommended rank: Casual, starts with 2500 points
• Moderate - 9x9 puzzle, recommended rank: Addict, starts with 3000 points
• Intense - 9x9 puzzle, recommended rank: Master, starts with 5000 points

Finishing a game yields experience points, even if the player gave up the puzzle. The experience points collected will increase the player rank, and make the power ups available. The game has 8 different power ups, with functions that help the player in solving the puzzle, like give the correct value for a cell or slowing the time down, boost XP, etc. The use of the power ups are limited by the token system. Tokens are generated with time (even when not playing), and each power up has it's own token cost. The maximum number of tokens can be increased with leveling up.