Bad news for fellow addicts of the iPad game
Sue Doku: it's been updated, and is now a universal app. You do hear that term a lot, and it often isn't explained, so let us clear that up now: a universal app means
Sue Doku is now available on both your iPad and iPhone. Translation: distraction. It's just a sudoku app, we can stop playing any time, but it is a particularly well done one on the iPad, and enough so that we sidled back to our desk to quietly pick up our phones and download it immediately.
That was fun, actually. Usually you know about new apps or big updates because you've read it on
MacNN, you've come across it in the App Store, or someone's told you about it. We stood there by the coffee machine and thought hello, that distinctive white icon has become a distinctive black one. Courtesy of iOS 8's automatic updating option, the new version of Sue Doku slipped onto our iPads, and actually the only new feature for the iPad one is the changed icon. It's still enough to warrant a version number upgrade from 1.1.2 to 2.0.0, because of the universality.
You've gathered we like this game, and if you're not sure that you're reading this between the lines correctly, you can still hear the cheering from the review we did of the original iPad one
back in February. We had one boo and hiss in a sea of praise, which was that there wasn't an iPhone version. Consequently, we're very happy with this new release.
Just not quite as happy as we might be or as we might expect. Not quite.
On iPhones, the new
Sue Doku has the same minimalist look that appeals to us in the iPad version, but it does feel a little more bare, somehow. It's hard to fathom why that could be so, when the screen is smaller yet has the same text on it but somehow the centered text on the iPad looks better.
Our only real issue -- and this is small -- is how the way you enter numbers into the sudoku grid has been changed. On the iPad, you tap in the square you want, and a pop up mini-grid appears with the numbers 1-9. Tap the number, and it's entered into the square and the pop up closes. On the iPhone, there's no pop up: the numbers 1-9 are permanently displayed in a row at the foot of the screen. To enter one into the game, you tap the square you're so sure must have the number 7 in it, then you go down to the bottom of the screen and tap that digit.
Doubtlessly, we will get used to this tiny difference, and doubtlessly the new design is just fighting hundreds of hours of our fingers' muscle memory. Yet it has thrown us visually too: we lost more time than we want to admit because we kept thinking that the number 1 in this footer row was actually in the game.
Just anecdotally, we're finding the game harder on iPhone than on iPad, but there is one fact from our original review that quite literally goes double now. We shook our heads at how this game was only a dollar, and it still is. Despite being on two devices, it's still a single dollar on the App Store. That meant we got the new version for free, as existing owners of the iPad version, and we really owe this developer a lot more than a dollar for all the fun we've had from this app. Mind you, the developer also owes us a lot more money for the hundreds of hours they've cost us in productivity.
Sue Doku 2.0.0 requires iOS 8.0 or later, and
costs $1 on the App Store.
Who is Sue Doku 2.0.0 for:
If you have the iPad version, get this. If you haven't got the iPad version, get the iPad version, and you've got this. It's not exactly an action shoot'em up kind of game, but it's an elegantly arresting version of sudoku, and our easy favourite of the ones we've tried so far.
Who is Sue Doku 2.0.0 not for:
Anyone with a job, or a boss, or just a general wish to ever get anything done ever again.
-- William Gallagher (
@WGallagher)