Disclaimer: I won a key in a contest put on by Mandinga games. I also was fourth person to complete their hardest difficulty puzzle (Difficulty D, the 16x16 behemoth) and won a contest giving me keys to all of their games, present and future. While I had not heard of Mandinga games before finding this game and have not received anything else of value than the aforementioned keys nor have I been directed to make this review in any way. I want to state this for full disclosure.
I love Sudoku, so when I saw this game had effectively infinite puzzles as well as a 16x16 experience I decided to give the contest a try. I played the demo quite a lot, I think I had ~10-20 hours in the demo alone.
This game is essentially just Sudoku, but instead of doing one puzzle you are doing six puzzles simultaneously. There are some things to note about that:
- If you play on higher difficulties then you are generally required to finish multiple edges to complete the puzzle. This is because faces come with incomplete information. This is great because it makes it harder to brute force with computer solvers and requires you to actually think, find singles, pairs, triples, x-wings, y-wings, etc.
- Digits on an edge see a minimum or two different sides, and are effective on the sides they see.
- You cannot select multiple cells at once. This makes inputting notes/pencil marks across multiple cells more time consuming.
- Notes/pencil marks are automatically removed when you insert a digit and that digit is looking at a cell with its note in it. i.e. you have a note/pencil mark saying r3c5 is a 1 and you input a 1 into r7c5 the pencil mark in r3c5 will be removed.
- Generally, the Phisotmefel Ring is not going to help you. For those that know what that is, and are able to implement it, this game will probably feel more like a unique take on classic sudoku.
- At the time of writing, there is no undo button.
- At the time of writing, there is no hint button.
In my experience the dev is very open to suggestions and is vocal about what they are fixing and working on. I have very much enjoyed this game and I am planning on purchasing a copy for a friend of mine if they tell me they want it.
If you like Sudoku, you'll like this game. It's a bit of a different experience, requires a bit of a different thinking method (thinking about multiple faces instead of just a singular puzzle), though it is absolutely an amazing take on Sudoku. You can think of it as a variant of classic Sudoku in a way.
If you don't understand Sudoku but want to get into it then the game has a 4x4 cell set of puzzles to get you started and help you understand the game, then an easy set of 9x9 puzzles, hard set of 9x9 puzzles, and finally hard 16x16 puzzles.
Hopefully in the future we see an undo button and maybe other variants. Killer Sudoku, Arrow Sudoku, or Thermo Sudoku hopefully!
EDIT: It has come to my attention that the devs have not actually generated puzzles as they said they did and instead have a singular puzzle where they rotate the numbers in a singular set of positions. You will always be completing the same base puzzle, the initial given digits are always the same. i.e. if you are given a 1 in r2c1 in one difficulty then start a new puzzle on that same difficulty you will find that r2c1 is now a 4. This is the same with all givens and means that you are only playing one puzzle. To read more about it check out this thread: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1770230/discussions/0/6164890302168622779/
For this I have to change my review to not recommended. It is a fun idea, though I wish it could have been implemented in a way that isn't misleading. A real shame, I really enjoyed it when I played.
