Finally, a Good Sudoku

If you love Sudoku puzzles, chances are you’ve downloaded a phone app, played a few puzzles, and immediately deleted it. Sudoku puzzles are notoriously hard to digitize; it’s difficult to replicate the kind of note-taking that is required by the pencil and paper variant. Game developer Zach Gage (Spelltower, Card of Darkness, Sage Solitaire) and development partner Jack Schlesinger had this very experience and decided they’d solve this problem at long last. The result is Good Sudoku. The name doesn’t lie.

Good Sudoku is both a great Sudoku app for veterans and a teaching tool for people new to the puzzles. Even people with hundreds of puzzles under their belt may learn some new techniques too. The game works these lessons in via an interactive glossary; if you’re unsure of a term, you can touch the book icon and instantly see what it means. Plus, if you get stuck during a puzzle and use the Hint feature, it doesn’t just reveal a number for you. Instead, the game will highlight where you can use a specific Sudoku strategy. Basically, the game encourages you to perfect your skill as opposed to helping you cheat.

To add an additional layer of competition to the mix, the game’s Daily mode offers new puzzles every day with high-score leaderboards. If you complete a puzzle quickly without using hints, you could potentially soar to the top of the heap. Every hint you use lowers your overall score, but thanks to the lessons within, you can use this information to get higher scores down the line. The puzzles start easy on Monday and become Professional level by Sunday, so strategize accordingly.

If you love Sudoku, Good Sudoku is the first app that loves you back. It’s a perfect tool to help you become better at solving puzzles, and and an even better tool to learn how to play them for the first time. It will probably be on my phone until my phone bites the dust.