July 17th, 2014 
Developer: Witan Entertainment
Publisher: Libredia
Platform: DS, PC – Amazon, Steam Wii
Sudoku is a game I enjoy playing because it only requires one player and is a good time-waster. It was the concept of Sudoku being paired with a story that intrigued me into trying Sudokuball Detective. In it, you play as a detective invited to a party. Suddenly, one of the party-goers dies! As the resident detective you must solve the mystery.
Now, I jumped into this game for the story but found myself unable to pay attention to it. It falls into much of the trappings you expect from an upper class murder (hint: it has something to do with inheritance money). Story segments appear between each puzzle and sometimes tweak how puzzles function slightly.
For example, if a suspect runs from you your goal is to solve only the squares on the board with red footprints on them. Similarly, you may need to unlock something before people stumble upon you. At this point you must solve specific spots before time runs out. Timers really hurt the experience because I don’t like to feel rushed when solving a puzzle. It’s much more my style to carefully check over each square rather than jamming through with partial guesses.
Sudokuball Detective’s rendition of Sudoku is also harmed by not allowing players to mark squares with possible values. This is another favorite strategy of mine and useful to keep from rechecking the same spots multiple times. Although this is a video game there’s also no hint function or error check until you complete one of the nine main squares.
Oh, and we haven’t gone into the whole “Sudokuball” aspect yet. For whatever reason there are multiple Sudoku games plastered on a sphere. The execution is a bit rough as sometimes you can’t fully see numbers near the rounded edges. On a personal level I also found it hard to quickly read lines and would sometimes get them wrong because of the curve. Sudokuball Detective is a fresh take on Sudoku but it fails to be much fun.
1 out of 5 alpacas
