Sudokuball Detective Reviews

why a ball though

Nice little sudoku game. [h1]Pro:[/h1] [list] [*]Story is pretty silly but I found it entertaining enough, so it served its purpose [*]Several types of sudoku, each with a twist (Sudokuball where you have to solve 6 overlapping sudokus in a row; two types of speed sudoku with almost complete boards but sometimes harsh time limits) [*]lots of hand crafted sudokus of all types from the story plus standard sudokus to play independently of the story, sorted into three difficulties for each type [/list] [h1]Contra:[/h1] [list] [*]No way to take notes on the sudoku field. On a few of the later levels in the story I used pen and paper to help solve the sudoku [*]The sudokus in the story start out extremely easy, sudoku fans might be bored until they are 2/3 through the story [/list]

Main Story is beatable in 1-2 hours. very easy for a Sudoku game. There's few gamemodes within Sudoku in Story mode: Clue find - Regular Sudoku without time limit, fill the big square with ? marks. Inspection - Fill the entire Sudokus(9 big squares, 81 tiles) several times Within time limit. Lockpick - Fill the center tile with correct number(4 wrong number to fail), Within the time limit. Chase - Fill the tile with red footprint. Taking more time = more tiles to deal with. The ball rotation with RMB is hard to control, thus it would frustrate you in timed levels. Other than that, control is quite generic for sudokus(number keys and - key work and recommended) I've been a fan of connected sudokus(those are connected at corners), but in Main Story mode they haven't fully used its goodness. In Classic mode it's used well, and plays better than 4 minigames Story mode offered. 7/10, Get it only if you like Sudokus. If you're detective fan, there are better games around.

A sudoku game with a story and the sudokus being solved on a sphere. While it sounds interesting, the game has some flaws that ultimately bakes it all into a bad experience. There are some interesting mechanics here, like timepressure, or making one single digit the main goal of the puzzles, but they are for most part sabotaged by the game's own flaws. -No tools for helping keeping track of numbers ingame. You either need to get pen and paper, or just be born with some sort of eidetic memory. -The sphere layout takes a toll on your eyes as everything is bent and no longer lines up. -Scrolling the map or sudokus themselves might have worked well on resolutions 15 years ago, but is now difficult and frustrating. -No saving mid-puzzle: In later stages you need to set aside an hour or so since any progress will be lost if you do not solve everything in a level in one go. Short sessions just doesn't work with this game, which turned into a barrier for playing sometimes. -Even by 2009 standards the technology of the gameengine feels very outdated. Alt-tabbing, scrolling, loading, soundscape; all feel lackluster and not in the charming aged way. On the other side it's very interesting with the story (allthough the story is simple and short) and the visual novella style going on between levels. Some of the music tracks are ok compositions. I like the idea of a 3D map to navigate around, kinda like some of the old point'n klick adverntures. However these are not enough to pull the game up to a recommendation. If you none the less are looking to test out a sudoku game that doesn't look like all the other games, this game is worth a look for collectors.

Oh God... I wanted it to be good, but it's baaaaad. On the surface it's a little like Safecracker or Puzzle Agent in the, you're a detective of sorts, solving sudoku over puzzles to unravel some mystery, shenanigans. However, the comparison stops there. The resolution options are low, medium, high, wide. I mean come on. What century is this? Ok, so I only messed around in story mode for a short while but the story was pretty uninvolving if I'm honest. The controls are a bit dodgy too. I dropped my mouse sense to 800dpi and it was still difficult to get levels and puzzles to lock into place. The final nail is that the puzzles are laughably easy. Maybe it gets harder later on but I soon grew bored of facing yet another grid where there's really only one square to solve. It just feels a bit lacking. More could have been done with this. And then it hit me. How can you get a simple click and drag control system so wrong? The only possible explanation is that this game was never designed to use a mouse as an input device. The evidence starts to mount up and now I feel like an actual detective. The resolution options, of course! This game was never built for PC. It was built for a smartphone, that's why the cutscenes use still images and have no voice acting. It all becomes clear. This is a half-arsed mobile port and suddenly, the price tag that seemed reasonable starts to feel like a massive ripoff.

Alright, I saw a Sudoku game, and for 7 Dollars, I thought why not, I ventured into the game pretty fast, aside from the old graphics that reminded me of the 90s I thought alright, maybe the puzzles will make the game worth it. I started the story mode on normal difficulty, skipping most of the text to get to the puzzles I want. Most of the time, the grids were only missing 1 or 2 numbers a box which made it seem kind of redundant for a challenge. Afterwards I decided to go into free Play, and tried to play a "Hard" sudokuball puzzle, I was able to complete it in about 20 minutes which disappointed me being a sudokuball puzzle. Essentially solving one of the 3x3 grids made the rest of the puzzle just fill in the blanks. As a detective game, there isn't even any challenge, just solve the sudoku and you pretty much solve the game. 3/10