The new larger deluxe pen, exclusively on the iPhone 5 vs the one on the iPhone 4S:

Big Bad Sudoku Book version 3 is available on the iTunes store.

Or get the free to play version: Big Bad Sudoku Book Free.

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!