Simply Sudoku Review - Screenshot 1 of 1

Let’s face facts here: anyone after a Sudoku game on DSiWare is likely to have bought one by now, but Engine Software has thrown its hat into the ring with Simply Sudoku, a truly barebones package.

There’s three different difficulties with fifty puzzles per difficulty, which even if your maths isn’t good enough to solve a Sudoku should convince you you’re getting quite a lot for your 200 Points here. If you struggle on any difficulty you can call in a hint: with ten available for each puzzle and no penalty for using them, they certainly make the hard difficulty much easier than perhaps it should be.

Number input eschews the usual handwriting recognition in favour of a number wheel that appears over the highlighted square, although you can also choose to use shapes, letters or colours if numerals aren’t your thing. There’s also a few different backgrounds to choose from, all of which float by hypnotically, combining with the soothing elevator music to offer a typically relaxing Sudoku experience.

Throwing that relaxing feeling out of the window is the fact there’s no resume feature, leaving you to finish each puzzle before you can move onto the next, a real flaw when taking on some of the most difficult grids. When other Sudoku games on the system offer this important ability for the same price, there’s very little reason to plump for Simply Sudoku over any other title.

Conclusion

If you’ve clocked every single Sudoku game on the system and desperately need more number-crunching “action”, Simply Sudoku offers plenty of puzzles and does very little wrong, but that’s partly because it attempts so little: there’s nothing here that couldn’t be done with a newspaper and pen, and even that would let you return to a partially-completed grid. Simply Sudoku offers nothing new in the increasingly crowded Sudoku market and is only for truly dedicated maths mavens.