Sudo - simply elegant Sudoku
Official Site: http://sudoapp.com
App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sudo-simple-elegant-sudoku/id560178257?ls=1&mt=8
Platform: iPhone and iPod touch (with support for retina screens and iPhone 5 screen size)
At its core, it's just another Sudoku puzzle game for iPhone, but I've worked hard on a few key areas to try to set it apart from the competition:
1. It looks good! I hired an ex-Apple, now Facebook designer to help with user interaction. Together, we worked our hardest to throw away unneeded menus, chrome, and distracting "features" that just get in the way. Take a look at the screenshots and compare to some of the leading Sudoku apps on the market.
2. Sudo teaches you. Lots of Sudoku apps have this feature, but I've put a ton of time and effort to polish it. I feel like mine is the easiest to comprehend because of the way each technique is broken into steps and presented.
3. Cool gesture feature: If you (like me) use pencil marks a lot, you'll find that it's annoying to fill in the actual answer once you've eliminated all other possibilities. Sudo lets you double-tap a tile to auto-fill the answer when there's only one pencil mark remaining. This doesn't sound like much, but when you're finishing up a puzzle, it saves a ton of time. It's like the end of a game of computer Solitaire -- things just fall into place.
4. Puzzle difficulties are evaluated intelligently. I spent a lot of time reading and learning from this forum, SudoWiki, and Andrew Stuart's The Logic of Sudoku book. I'm a Sudoku addict myself, so I sympathize with others when mislabeled puzzle difficulties cause frustration. My generator evaluates the difficulty of each puzzle based on the techniques a HUMAN would use to solve it. If a puzzle can be done using just the Single Possibility method, it's obviously an Easy puzzle. However, if you need to use a Finned Swordfish to get un-stuck, it gets tossed into the Diabolical realm. I separated all puzzles into five difficulty levels and feedback has already shown that each difficulty feels distinct.
For the Sudoku geeks out there, puzzle difficulty is generated based on the following techniques, and each of these techniques is explained using the in-game hints system:
• Single Possibility
• Only Choice
• Naked Pair, Hidden Pair
• Pointing Pairs
• Box Line Reduction
• Naked Triple, Hidden Triple
• Naked Quad, Hidden Quad
• X-Wing, Swordfish, Jellyfish
• Y-Wing
• Remote Pairs
• Avoidable Rectangles
• Finned X-Wing, Finned Swordfish, Finned Jellyfish
• Chained Y-Wing
• Singles Chains
• Brute Force
5. Details and polish: Through all the effort of refining the design and technical aspects of puzzle generation and presentation, I clocked a lot of hours playing Sudoku. In fact, my motivation for creating the game was because it seemed like all the others hand rough edges in one way or another. I've worked hard to smooth these rough edges and to make Sudo entirely about solving the puzzle.
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BONUS GIVEAWAY
As a bonus to this forum, I'll give a promo code to download the app for free to the first three people who message me and ask!
Note: Unfortunately, I can only give promo codes to those who use the US app store. Sorry, international patrons.
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This is my first iPhone game and I'm just getting started so I'd really appreciate any feedback users can give, positive or negative. If you end up buying the game, be sure to leave a rating on the app store. Every little bit helps a ton.
Thanks all!
- bt
