I’ve published my personal email address (michael @ badweaselgames.com) so that people can get direct support and help on all of our games.  If you have an answer to the question or a feature that you’d like to see, email it to me there or mention it in the support forum.  I’ve created a special forum topic for it.

But there are some inherent challenges in making a perfect sudoku game.  The biggest challenge is that different people play at different levels and this means they expect different things out of the game.  In the current version of Big Bad Sudoku Book we’ve tried to address this with game options, but I fear that users aren’t finding these options easily enough and just assume that the game can’t do what they want it to do.  Chances are the option is there if you know where to find it.  Making the game so that it’s easier to navigate the options is on the list for version 3.

Tap one of these icons to find game options.  This screenshot is from the iPad, the iPhone has the icon without the description next to it:

In the Game Option card you can set whether scoring is shown as you play (which usually gives away if your answer was correctly or not), whether or not the clock is shown ticking away, when the line sparkle effect animates (which can also give away correct answers), and a few others.  The Marks Options card has many options on how the game deals with marks and provides several ways to manipulate marks.

Common Sudoku Book Questions

One of the features that varies greatly from the casual player to the hard core player is how they want to use Marks and what they expect Marks to do automatically.  To exemplify this issue, here is a recent question emailed to me by a real user:

Love the Big Bad Sudoku Book app, but found a request that you may have received already. When there are marks in fields and then you enter a number in one of them, it doesn’t erase that number’s mark from the corresponding fields. For example, if I have marked “7″ in 3 different squares in one row or column, and then ultimately enter “7″ as the value of one of the squares, it would be great if the other marks would disappear.

Thanks,
Dennis

First off, thanks dennis for the kind words.

I guess it depends on what level of help you want.  The game actually does do what Dennis is asking, but maybe not in the way he’s asking.  There is a show True Marks option.  Under this mode the marks automatically show only the numbers which are still available after eliminating all the numbers already used up in the Row, Column, and Block.  (Side note, there is a score penalty for using true marks, meaning that you can’t get as high a score on a game if you use it.)  The thing is, when showing True Marks you can’t change the marks yourself.  Under Version 2 of Sudoku Book you have to choose… is the computer doing marks for you or are you doing them?

Sudoku Book does allow you to alternate between the two types of marks.  Switching back between the two modes doesn’t destroy the marks that you’re tracking yourself.  This is an exclusive feature that Sudoku Book has had even back in version 1.

If you’re tracking marks and are showing My Marks, the app doesn’t alter them at all.  The more advanced players use marks to keep track of numbers that have been eliminated as possible candidates for each cell based on a number of techniques.  Those players (myself included) don’t want the app to automatically alter their marks.

For one, if the app removed marks/candidates for you using every technique in it’s arsenal, there would only end up being one candidate left in each cell and it would basically be solving the puzzle for you.  Where’s the fun in that?

Still, there is a sliding scale to the question of ‘what level of help do you want?’.  I would say that probably MOST players want features that prevent them from having to do lots of menial tasks in a sudoku game, and possibly eliminating marks when answering a cell might be one of those things for some players.  And for others it’s part of the fun.  So the answer is probably to stick it in the options somewhere.

What about scoring?

But also there’s the issue of scoring.  With version 2 of Sudoku Book we added a puzzle scoring scheme with the goal of having it fairly reflect whether or not the user got any help in solving the puzzle.  The top player has accumulated over 12 million points and has played almost 3,000 games.  I get more emails about Game Center and problems reporting scores than I do about marks. Users love the ability to compete against other players and the top scorers have a lot of pride in their scores.  Which is why game center score hacking is such an annoyance.  It’s also something that will be fixed in version 3.

The issue is that players who get any help in solving their puzzle shouldn’t get the same high score as players who don’t take any help.  It was a difficult task to devise a scoring scheme that takes this into account.  Even the fact that a score is shown when you enter an answer gives the player a hint as to if they answered correctly or not.  But automatically eliminating marks for any reason is assisted play.  It makes the puzzle easier to solve because invariably it will at some point directly show the answer to a cell.

Overcomplicating things?

Maybe we are over-thinking it… but it is our job to do so.  The quest to create the Perfect Sudoku Game is going to require a lot of thinking and over-thinging.  And we can use some thinking and some input from you guys… so send in those emails!

I’m leaning towards the concept of Rated Play and Non-Rated Play.  Meaning that you’re either playing by… let’s call it Vegas Rules, or you’re playing more casually.  Possibly under Casual Play you can get all the automatic help you want, but under Rated Play you pay for any help you get when it comes to the score.  Or maybe there are two classes of leader boards.

Either way, we’re working away at perfecting this game.  It going to be fun!

Snow Day Sudoku gets Holiday Game Feature

Bad Weasel Game’s newest game has just been featured in the Holiday Games section right next to Angry Bird’s Seasons.  Snow Day Sudoku is part of the Sudoku Book family of products and is a deep winter / Christmas themed version of our popular game with calming falling snow effects and much holiday cheer.

This year Bad Weasel Games is sponsoring The Water Project, which is a US-based non-profit committed to providing clean, safe drinking water to those who suffer needlessly without it.  Bad Weasel hopes to finance several clean water solutions this season and has decided to donate $1 for each copy of Snow Day Sudoku sold between now and December 31, 2010.  We will post updates here as to our progress, and show photos of our completed water projects later in 2011.  The great thing is that Snow Day Sudoku is staying the same low price of $1.99 – so it’s a win-win.  Get a great game at a great price and feel good about it at the same time.

Snow Day Sudoku  - Version 1.0.1 – $1.99 US

• Fixed crashing under iOS 3.1.3.
• Fixed hanging/crashing about 10 seconds in (facebook check).
• Fixed crash when reporting 50th campaign score to game center.
• Fixed a few other problems that could cause occasional hanging.

Also the Game Center Leaderboard sort order is now fixed.  So all of your high scores should be now posting…

This fix is live now and does not require the update.  All you have to do to get all of your scores updated is complete any game and allow it to report the score to Game Center.  All of your accumulated points will post.

Bad Weasel Games has been a busy place since we released Big Bad Sudoku Book v2.0.  Sudoku Book 2.0 added support for all iOS devices in one universal app, high resolution graphics for the Retina display on the iPhone 4 and new iPod Touch, and many more new features.  We’ve been hard at work on two new games.  But first we are prepping a new update that supports Apple’s new Game Center and also fixes a few of the minor issues with 2.0.

The new version allows players to use Game Center features (only on the iPhone and iPod Touch) to see how they compare with their friends via a Leaderboard, and introduces Achievements.  Of course, all the version 2.0 social gaming features are still there.  You can still sends puzzle to friends for competitive play over facebook, email, or even via a text message (if both devices support text messaging).  When you update to version 2.1 all your previous progress will be saved and apply towards your achievements.

Version 2.1 also fixes a couple of minor issues that people reported:

• Campaign Mode puzzled played across multiple load sessions now correctly unlock the next puzzle.
• The timer no longer sticks.
• Auto import of puzzles from Facebook friends – now ignores puzzles that had previously been imported.
  • If you want to import a puzzle a second time just use the facebook app to find it and click on the link.
• Improved the readability of some of the numbers in the status font.
• Added a Help button to take you to the help section on our website.

The update is live NOW!

If you have any questions or comments please Email Support.

Here’s an example from actual game play. In each of these following screen shots the red drawing is not part of the game but has been added to explain how the Big Bad Sudoku Book works. Click on the pictures to see them bigger:

In this sample game let’s start by trying to figure out where some of the 7’s go. By tapping and holding on any one of the 7’s all 7’s are highlighted:

Since there is a 7 in that top row there can’t be any more 7’s in that row.  Touching outside of the first row and swiping into the row (action shown in red) highlights the whole row:

There’s also a 7 in the second row (underlined in red). Swiping into that second row highlights it as well:

Next we can see that there’s a 7 in the second column. Swiping down into that column highlight it. Now we can see that in that first block the only remaining place where a 7 can go is in the cell that’s been circled in red. This is the power of highlighting. When used in this way it doesn’t just give you the answer, but helps focus your attention to find the answer:

Taking it a step further, after placing a 7 in that cell you could swipe down that column and highlight it to reveal where another 7 goes. But the Big Bad Sudoku Book has another trick that does it all at once. For this simple puzzle it really gives us too much help, but it’s a feature that you can use when you need it. As shown in that first screenshot, by tapping and holding on the 7 it highlights all instances of the 7. If you tap and hold again on the 7 it will highlight every row, column, and block that those 7’s are in:

This means that all of these highlighted cells can not be 7’s because there can’t be more than one instance of any number in any row column or block. From this you can easily find what cells are left to hold 7’s – the ones not highlighted. After filling in the 7 in that first block (shown here in red), it also eliminates that first column and points to the location of the next 7.  Continuing this narrows the search down even further. Of course using highlights is completely optional – but it’s there when you need it.

To clear all highlights tap anywhere outside of the puzzle area.

During the weekend of April 24th we made BBSB free for 3 days.  During the promotion it jumped in the rankings becoming the #1 most downloaded app over the weekend.  Thanks to everyone who downloaded it during the free weekend sale!