We made this puzzle game working at Sherwood Media. Sudoku's fever was rising by then, and the game was a big success, reaching 13th position in ADeSe's PC game's Top Seller's list on December 2005.

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT

We had 30 days to program this game from scratch, including our own algorithms and an extensive beta testing over a wide range of operating systems (Windows 95, 98, Millenium, 2000 and XP) We did everything in the game except for the interface graphics, though we still designed the UI's layout.

Algorithms were the main point of the game. We created a solving algorithm as a basis for the creation one and the most of the efforts were focused to adjusting game's difficulty. By then, most Sudoku games out there had a very poor level adjustment. Easy boards difficulty was too close to hard ones, so we worked hard in order to get 5 different difficulty levels that felt really different.

We based the solving algorithms in human solving techniques. We weren't experts on Sudoku, because we'd never heard of the game before, so we skipped some techniques that would be included later in its sequel, PC Sudoku Samurai + PC Kakuro. So we introduce a quotient to evaluate board difficulty based on how difficult was each guess one should made to reach the solution. We decided to provide more starting numbers than those specified in the Sudoku's generic rules for easy levels, giving a better chance for people who hadn't played Sudoku to get started. On the other side, the game should be able to create very hard boards too, so that experienced people could find a real challenge in the game.

After fine-tuning the algorithms, we started taking care of the interface. We considered that Sudoku was mainly a portable game, so we decided to add printing and editing capabilities to the game, allowing users to print a copy a Sudoku on paper to solve it later anywhere. Also added the ability to introduce new Sudokus in the game, allowing users to check their solution or use the programs's hint system to solve them. Also made some high score tables and a simple save/load game system. Our publisher suggested a 6x6 Junior gamemode, using coloured drawings instead of numbers. Finally, a full manual and a brief history of the Sudoku were also embedded in the game too.

We had minor problems during the beta testing period, mainly some GUI object leaks and an incompatibility issue on Windows 95 which led us to raise minimum system requirements to Windows 98. Also, a minor bug related with old monitor's refresh frequencies was reported and fixed. The program was coded with Visual C++, using the old Win32 GUI API to get the maximum compatibility on Windows systems. Code and resources were packed into a single executable file that could've been easily distributed on-line if needed.

SOUND EFFECTS

We decided to spend some time animating a couple of panels and adding some sound effects to the different events and actions, as well as some funny animal effects in the Junior mode.