Critic & User Reviews
IGN Review of Zendoku
Nintendo DS game developers are going to drive me to drink if they keep producing Sudoku games on the system. Well...drink more, anyway. After being able to count the amount of Sudoku games on two hands, I'm now running out of fingers -- how many versions of the newspaper puzzle game do we really need, anyway? Zoonami's and Eidos' take is, at the very least, unique, featuring a multiplayer competition focus on top of the established grid gameplay. This focus definitely separates Zendoku from the umpteen other Sudoku games, but you know what? It doesn't really make it all that much fun of an experience.
If you mixed the Sudoku gameplay with the presentation of a Super Puzzle Fighter or Puyo Pop, that'd be Zendoku. In the competition mode, players are working on their own version of the same puzzle, and as they complete a full row, column or 3x3 block it'll trigger an "attack" on the other screen...much like how a combo in a puzzle game would screw with the other player. The "garbage" attack in Zendoku forces the opponent to perform a specific challenge in order to re-enable his Sudoku puzzle. Wiping coins off the screen, or tapping away stone blocks, or blowing out candles by huffing breath into the microphone. That sort of thing.
Zoonami definitely poured a lot of its effort into the presentation of Zendoku, and clearly tried to make not-just-another-Sudoku game. The visuals are bright and the audio's catchy. And while a lot of the touch screen elements are cliche Wario Ware style challenges, there are a lot of them.
The problem lies within the design of the Sudoku engine. Like Toon-Doku, Zendoku's "hook" is to remove the numbers in favor of symbols -- panda heads, sumo wrestlers, pagodas, dragons. Sure, the symbols give the game a cooler flair, but it absolutely destroys the pick-up-and-play nature of the sudoku design -- numbers are immediately more recognizable than symbols made specific to the game. Sure, you get the images on the sides of the puzzle for easy reference, but it's a hundred times more difficult (and just as frustrating) to immediately recall the line-up from memory instead of mentally rattling off the numbers one through nine to find the missing ones.
But, like Toon-Doku, Zendoku has a separate "Classic Sudoku" mode. Problem is, it's featureless -- yes, you can use the number structure, but you can't do what you would do in pen-and-paper versions: jot notes for future reference. It's not a good enough version to cover all the bases.
Back to the meat of Zendoku, the competition is challenging, and admittedly it gets both hectic and fast-paced, and the added aggression does add a feeling of reward when you've solved a row, column, or block.. But the fun is a bumpy road. Practiced Zendoku players can easily trounce Zendoku newbies -- even if they're Sudoku veterans -- because of the symbols. And good luck trying to convince DS owners that multiplayer Sudoku's worth the download and play investment -- matches can go on for several uneventful and quiet minutes as competitors sit in silence trying to place all the symbols on the grid. It's no Tetris, that's for sure.
©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
If you mixed the Sudoku gameplay with the presentation of a Super Puzzle Fighter or Puyo Pop, that'd be Zendoku. In the competition mode, players are working on their own version of the same puzzle, and as they complete a full row, column or 3x3 block it'll trigger an "attack" on the other screen...much like how a combo in a puzzle game would screw with the other player. The "garbage" attack in Zendoku forces the opponent to perform a specific challenge in order to re-enable his Sudoku puzzle. Wiping coins off the screen, or tapping away stone blocks, or blowing out candles by huffing breath into the microphone. That sort of thing.
Zoonami definitely poured a lot of its effort into the presentation of Zendoku, and clearly tried to make not-just-another-Sudoku game. The visuals are bright and the audio's catchy. And while a lot of the touch screen elements are cliche Wario Ware style challenges, there are a lot of them.
The problem lies within the design of the Sudoku engine. Like Toon-Doku, Zendoku's "hook" is to remove the numbers in favor of symbols -- panda heads, sumo wrestlers, pagodas, dragons. Sure, the symbols give the game a cooler flair, but it absolutely destroys the pick-up-and-play nature of the sudoku design -- numbers are immediately more recognizable than symbols made specific to the game. Sure, you get the images on the sides of the puzzle for easy reference, but it's a hundred times more difficult (and just as frustrating) to immediately recall the line-up from memory instead of mentally rattling off the numbers one through nine to find the missing ones.
But, like Toon-Doku, Zendoku has a separate "Classic Sudoku" mode. Problem is, it's featureless -- yes, you can use the number structure, but you can't do what you would do in pen-and-paper versions: jot notes for future reference. It's not a good enough version to cover all the bases.
Back to the meat of Zendoku, the competition is challenging, and admittedly it gets both hectic and fast-paced, and the added aggression does add a feeling of reward when you've solved a row, column, or block.. But the fun is a bumpy road. Practiced Zendoku players can easily trounce Zendoku newbies -- even if they're Sudoku veterans -- because of the symbols. And good luck trying to convince DS owners that multiplayer Sudoku's worth the download and play investment -- matches can go on for several uneventful and quiet minutes as competitors sit in silence trying to place all the symbols on the grid. It's no Tetris, that's for sure.
©2007, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved