Two Million Sudoku - Bid your pen farewell forever?

by Jay O. on Oct 21, 2010 7:48:56 PM — read 2,227 times

TAGS: Android Market, Apps, Games,

Tested version: 2.5
Latest version: 2.8
Requires Android: from 1.1

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Summary

Play Sudoku all day long: when you’re on the train, on your lunch break or stuck in traffic (and sitting on the passenger seat, of course). While it is fun using paper and pencil (or a pen if you’re feeling adventurous), I seem to be going through the Sudoku books in no time. Shelling out cash each time you want to buy a new book can get tiresome as well as financially unviable. Two Million Sudoku provides 2,000,000 Sudoku puzzles for you to try and crack. If you’re patience is as boundless as mine - read on!

Features & Use

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You enjoy playing Sudoku but keep forgetting your booklet at home? Toss it in the garbage, because your Android phone can now exasperate you just as much as a hard copy booklet can. The proof is in the pudding with Two Million Sudoku!

Not all too long ago no one had a clue what Sudoku was. Nowadays, the game is as well known as crossword puzzles. If you’re already a Sudoku freak, skip this paragraph: what follows are the rules. One row, one column, one block, your opponent. The numbers 1-9 may only be used once in each row, column, and block. Use the existing numbers to help you find the missing ones. You can check the internet for tips and strategies that will help you crack even the most challenging Sudoku puzzles.

Two Million Sudoku trumps with a massive amount of puzzles. You better get on your way to the fountain of youth, because you’ll never be able to solve all these puzzles in one lifetime. You can try to access the games by trying to initiate the download, “trying” being the key word here, as the progress bar hardly budges in the right direction. You can start panicking after you’ve canceled the download. There’s five digit code with which you can theoretically also access all the puzzles. However, where I’m meant to find this code is a mystery to me. There were no indications regarding where one might find this code on the developer’s website or in the app itself. For each game an ID is displayed in the game’s status bar, but no further information is provided. It is possible to start a new game, however. All you need to do is choose a degree of difficulty and Two Million Sudoku will present you with a new puzzle. You can select between

• Easy
• Medium
• Hard

On one occasion a puzzle was filled with weird looking symbols rather than numbers, but this didn’t reoccur.

Are you stuck and at wit’s end? Well, you’re not going to get any help from me. Two Million Sudoku will take over that. Use the Show/Hide Solution button in order to see the puzzle’s entire outcome. I’m not sure whether this button is doing you a great favor and should think that a button which displays the number for one particular field would be a lot more useful (especially for beginners), rather than revealing the outcome of the entire game.

Advantages

• Controls are well thought-out and easy to use
• There is a huge amount of Sudoku puzzles
• There are different degrees of difficulty

Drawbacks

• Already existing numbers can be written over
• Loading using ID is a hassle
• No information or documentation regarding the game
• Cryptic symbols (see screenshots)

Screen & Controls

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Two Million Sudoku's design is pretty basic and won’t make graphics enthusiasts jump for joy. Black on white, white on black, and a bit of red thrown in for good measure: that’s about everything you can expect on the design front.

Controls are very good, however. First, select the block you want to crack and then choose the specific field. You can then enter the number, but be careful that you don’t accidentally pick a field that contains one of the already present numbers. The game’s greatest drawback is the fact that you can write over numbers. I wonder if it’s like that for a reason...