Sudoku Puzzle Blast - Cheesy goodness incarnate.

Welcome to Sudoku Puzzle Blast, by Pogo! Complete the puzzles to help a mouse in a mining cart get through tunnels, hopefully find cheese, and pick up a nice bonus at the end!

It makes sense. I swear! ^_^

Pogo actually has a pretty good guide up already. Do read it if you get stumped! And if you haven't played Sudoku before, here is a guide to get ya started. Basically you have a 9x9 grid, and you have to fit the numbers 1-9 on each row and each column once. To make things even tougher, there are nine 3x3 grids inside the BIG grid, and the numbers 1-9 also have to fit inside each mini-grid.

Neon green guidelines not included.

See why I linked you to a guide?

Still, Sudoku Puzzle Blast is a really neat twist on Sudoku. ^_^ In addition to figuring out which numbers go where, you have to figure out which *pieces* go where. Grey blocks are "cemented" to the board and will not move. The colored pieces are the ones you have to fit in!

It's jigsaw Sudoku! Sweet!

The puzzle above is an easy puzzle. There are 7 difficulty levels: Beginner, easy, medium, hard, expert, master, and bonkers. Harder puzzles have fewer gray pieces on the board and more colored puzzle pieces to work with.

I tried a bonkers puzzle for fun.

Why yes, I am masochistic. What made you ask?

Much to my surprise, I actually completed the darn thing! O_O

Oooohhh. Pretty!

You can crank up the insanity (and the points) by turning on rotation. This means you may have to turn a piece a few times in order to figure out where it goes. It's quite a challenge! On the upside you get 4x the points for completing a game with rotation on!


Features

When you make an invalid move, the board kindly highlights all of the reasons why your move was dumb. In bright, bright red.

Oh. I meant to do that.

It's a helpful feature, but kind of annoying at the same time. I REALLY hate seeing the board light up with red.

Since you can't exactly "pencil in" what numbers might go where, Pogo created Ghost pieces. Basically you hold down shift and you'll get a "ghost" piece to work with. The downside of Ghost pieces is that you can't see if there are any errors in your work, so you can easily build something that fits together perfectly but is completely wrong.

It looks perfect!

Yeah, that picture above? Not perfect. Once I right-clicked to de-ghostify the pieces, the board lit up in red. Dangit!

I'll be honest, I only used the Ghost pieces one time and that was to get a screen shot of them. As much as I dislike the red you-are-dumb numbers, if I'm going to make a mistake I want to find it early. But that's me. You might love the Ghost pieces. ^_^

Now if you get stuck or just want a little extra help, you can always hit the HINT button. All it does is take a random piece, tacks it on the board, and turns it gray. So really it's more of a this-piece-goes-HERE button.

You only get one hint, and there *is* a bonus for not using the hint, so try not to use it if you can. The harder the level, the more points you get for not using the hint!


The Story

Okay, I fibbed. There really isn't a story. You're just helping a poor miner mouse work through a maze-mine. At the end of each puzzle you get to pick whether the cart should go left or right.

Go right!

When you go down the track you'll find some sort of treasure.

That must be heavy.

The treasure is always cheese-themed, so enjoy that. ^_^ The token bonus is added to your puzzle score.

Twelve minutes? Slowpoke.

After completing the 5th puzzle you finish the track and uncover a bonus multiplier! It multiplies your entire score for the last level!

Toldja to go right. :P

You also get to see where the best multiplier is, and see how fate cruelly twisted you away from it. Sad day. :(


Jackpot

Sudoku Puzzle Blast at Pogo has a progressive jackpot with a max pot of $4,999. To earn a jackpot spin you must complete five puzzles and reach the end of the track! As with all Pogo games, the odds of winning the cash prize is teeny tiny. However! You're nearly guaranteed to win tokens, and that buffers the pain a little. ^_~


Tips & Tricks

No matter what difficulty level you pick, work around the gray pieces first. They are the firm foundation of your rainbow Sudoku house. ^_^

I like to work within the smaller grids instead of rows/columns. It's just easier for my eyes to focus on. Check the example below.

Okay..

In this example, there is one spot left open in the 3x3 grid. When I count all of the numbers, I can see that it's missing a 3. This means that I need to look for a piece that has a 3 AND would fit in the spot.

This actually makes it a little easier than regular Sudoku, because when you figure out one number, you have 2-4 that go with it. ^_^

Although the puzzles are timed, there is no visible bonus for finishing under any specific time. Take your time and relax!

And remember, for the best points you want to use rotation. You may have to work up to it, but the points are pretty skimpy without it.


Final Rating

I really love Sudoku, so this game is perfect for me. ^_^ Add in the bonus of having 14 difficulty levels to work with (if you include the rotation option) and there's a Sudoku puzzle for every mood!

If you like Sudoku at all, I highly recommend trying Sudoku Puzzle Blast. It's different, but extremely fun!

5 stars out of 5!