‘Buku Sudoku,’ the first and only sudoku game coming to Xbox LIVE Arcade, was released yesterday and I had the lucky chance to get my hands on the game on Tuesday and sit down with the game’s producer and lead designer, Ben. Here’s a rundown of all the great stuff you can expect from this game whether you are planning on downloading the game or are still on the fence about it.

As mentioned earlier this is the only sudoku game that will be developed for the Xbox 360 and when Merscom took on that task they made sure they were going to do it right.  The game comes with 1200 puzzles ranging the three difficulties form easy to hard and yesterday saw the first puzzle pack which featured an additional 1200 puzzles for free.  While there will be more down the road they will most likely come in at 150 MS Points which is roughly $1.87 USD. Not bad considering a paper book which won’t have nearly that many puzzles will run you at least $5.

The game itself features a single-player mode, either casual or timed modes, as well as multiplayer allowing for 4-player locally or 8-players over LIVE in pretty much any configuration you can imagine.  You can either play co-op, team battle or a duel where your progress will affect your opponent’s puzzle.  In order to play in the ranked matches each person must have their own Gamertag and LIVE account but for social games guests are allowed to sign in and play. 

The first thing many people will notice is the design of the game. The menus give you a feeling of being at a desk looking at a notebook and when you are in the menus the top right will show “From the desk of: <Gamertag>.” The game features 5 themes to start you out, each of which features three unique backgrounds and their own subtle animation to give the feeling of being in the environment.  Each theme also has it’s own background music which can be changed at any time using the RB button (unless you are playing with one hand and are right handed, then it switches to the LB button). 

One of the most unique features I discovered was the control options. There are four for using the Xbox controller, two of which allow for one-handed play, and the others allow for the use of the big-button controller or even a DDR-esque dancepad.  I had never considered the possibiliy of one-handed controls but it makes sense with the modr of the game allowing for this to become your daily sudoku challenge you can do while sipping your coffee and eating breakfast.

If you are new to sudoku or just not too experienced with it there are helpers in the game to get you more comfortable.  The auto-pencil option will fill the empty squares with the numbers that could possibly go there allowing people to get the hang of the game.  The other option is the error checker which has two different settings.  The basic error checker will check for mistakes in general logic such as having two identical numbers in the same row, box or column while the “deluxe” error checker will mark an incorrect entry by comparing it to each puzzle’s solution.  I encourage people to use these helpers but be careful because some Achievements cannot be unlocked while using them.

Overall this game was a very pleasant surprise for me mainly due to the attention to detail and extra effort everybody over at Merscom put into it.  This is a fantastic game for gamers of all levels and may even be that title that gets a 360 controller into the hands of somebody completely new to the console or a significant other who is not much of a gamer.  Remember there is always a demo to try for free and I know a lot of people will make the conversion to the full game once they experience this amazing title.

I’d like to thank the crew at Merscom and Ben for allowing me to come out there and speak with you about this great game.