Rondoku

[H1]No music, no hints, no mercy…but lots of satisfaction[/H1] Thank you Lucas Demo for the curator key! But rest assured, this is still an impartial review written as if I had bought the game myself. 😊 Rondoku is exactly the kind of twist on classic Sudoku that makes you go, “Oh, that’s clever,” and then suddenly lose 6 hours of your life in a perfectly calm, zen haze. It’s minimalist, approachable, and instantly satisfying to pick up, but absolutely capable of melting your brain once you get into the tougher grids. With 71 puzzles spanning all difficulties, it offers hours of content at a price that feels just right. The controls stay simple and clean, and I love that you can tweak the font size and color for better visibility, small accessibility touches really go a long way. The whole ambiance leans into quiet focus (there’s no music), which works surprisingly well if you enjoy the meditative side of puzzling. Just be prepared: there’s no hint or help system, and no community guides yet, so you’re on your own when the later puzzles get beefy. A few quirks though: the game sometimes opens with the cursor misaligned, so I had to switch to windowed mode and back to borderless each time to fix it. Keyboard navigation is also clunky enough that I’ve solved all the puzzles entirely with the mouse out of pure self-preservation. But honestly? Even with these small issues, the core experience is so strong, so absorbing, and so well-designed that Sudoku fans should not skip this one. Strongly recommended for any fans of minimalistic, original and late-game brutal puzzles. [quote]For more reviews like this one, please check out [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45639970-Ele%2527s-Little-Recommendation-Corner/][b]Ele's Little Recommendation Corner[/b][/url]![/quote] [quote]For reviews covering all types of indies, recent and old, don't hesitate to drop by [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32732116-IndieGems/][b]IndieGems[/b][/url]![/quote]

Great puzzles. Minimalist in its form. Dense in its approach. Play this game if you are looking for a one of a kind challenge.

Lovely take on a classic puzzle game that I enjoy. Highly recommended.

This has quickly become one of my favourite puzzles games in a while. It’s not one that I will likely spend lots of time on replaying, but I don’t doubt I will keep returning to it over time. I have a few gripes, particularly on one level, but to succinctly summaries my thoughts below: this is an easy recommend from me. What I really have to commend the game on is how just adding a seemingly simple twist to standard Sudoku introduces some really elegant and emergent logic. There are countless variations of Sudoku, but this remains the most interesting I’ve played or seen. It adds a surprisingly decent amount of complexity to the usual logic you’d use for Sudoku, out of what is arguably a pretty simple premise: change the shape of the board that you are using. Each board/puzzle is a series of circles; each circle has a centre and ring that must then contain one of each numbers 1-9 as usual. The game also introduces another simple rule on top of this: two consecutive numbers cannot be placed next to each other. For what seems like a fairly novel twist and minor rule addendum, you end up discovering some really interesting bits of logic through the game when it comes to the placement of those numbers. Figuring those out were the best moments of the game in my opinion, and as the game does not tutorialise you aside from the rules, these feel very rewarding to work out yourself. There are 71 levels in total; 21 in the main game and 50 additional/bonus levels. After playing the demo, I was concerned that it would end up becoming repetitive – to the point where procedural generation would do the job all the same. Pleasantly, however, I can say that each level generally has it’s own unique moment, or some catch that brings together a collection of ideas that you have encountered previously. Some of the final levels become quite challenging, requiring you to think about quite a lot at once as well as a number of steps in advance. That being said, none of the levels felt like they were asking too much from you. Now that last sentence would be true were it not for the final level. I am a completionist and it hurts to say that I probably won’t solve the final puzzle; at least not any time soon. The final five or so levels definitely upped the difficulty quite dramatically and I was spending more than half an hour on each. As you work your way through them you get less and less information to start with. The final level is where the game goes too far. You are given a single number...and that is it. Now, I have no doubt there is a logical route that can get you to the answer, but to me, it feels like it’s going to be far too contrived and I highly suspect it will only make sense to you, once you already know the answer. It’s a real shame, because everything up to that was fantastic, thoroughly enjoyable and actually well designed, if not challenging in their own right. There are some general criticisms I do have. An undo button would be nice, though not essential. The main thing I would have liked was the ability to write/draw on the screen to test out theories – when it comes to the later levels, testing out theories can require following the fallout from assuming a number somewhere, and then ending up at an invalid state, thereby proving your initial assumption has to have been wrong (proof by contradiction style). As there is no undo or a way to go back to when you made that assumption, it can become quite annoying to revert – being able to write out as you go along would be a neater solution to an undo in my opinion but either sufficiently solve this issue. The only other thing I struggled with is as the number of rings increases, it’s surprisingly easy to lose track of which number is on what ring of what circle. Colour coding, or changing the style of the ring (like dashes vs dots vs full stroke etc) would be clearer and reduce the chance of making those mistakes, which I hesitate to put full blame on the player for making. It generally only applies to the later levels where you have so many more rings to deal with, but it would be nice nonetheless. Overall though, I will again reiterate that even with the aforementioned criticisms, this is still one of the most memorable and enjoyable puzzle games I’ve played in a while and I can definitely recommend it.

Já havia jogada a Demo, e o encantamento surgiu logo no começo. Rondoku é um jogo refinado, que consegue te fazer cair num ritmo de entusiasmo como poucos conseguem. Mas não se engane, não é um jogo de rapidez, é um jogo sobre envolvimento. Parabéns pelo projeto! Aguardarei mais lançamentos!

An incredibly interesting reimagining of Sudoku. Instead of columns, there’s a kind of Enso mandala that must be filled in using mechanics that are progressively introduced throughout the pages. It’s fascinating how the zen quality of the gameplay aligns perfectly with a game that, in its essence, unfolds through the completion of a book full of empty spaces.

Рекомендую. Можете установить демку и попробовать как играется, а обзор пишу только ради поднятия рейтинга игры. A tip for the developer about achievements: The correct way to write them is "Решите 5/7/10/13/16/20/30/50 головоломок."

Ótimo jogo, lindos puzzles, um desafio e tanto. Como amante de sudoku eu estou extremamente entretida!

很不错的益智游戏，闲暇时间玩一会挺放松的

A very interesting twist on the Sudoku formula, highly recommended. Unfortunately, the last puzzle is a massive difficulty spike that really soured my experience, and now the spectre of near-completion hangs over the game for me.