Ancient Sudoku is your basic Sudoku Mac game. Click on numbers to fill in the squares, and complete the 9×9 grid by placing in each row, column and 3×3 box numbers from 1 through 9 without using a number more than once. With that said, there is much more to Ancient Sudoku besides the mysterious sounding music. You can create your own puzzle, get one from newspapers or books, choose from multiple tile sets, print a sudoku and use an in game music player.
By creating your own puzzle from your ideas or from a newspaper, magazine or book you customize your play. The computer verifies that the puzzle is solvable before using it. In addition, this game can check boards you have already done. This process is a great step for correcting your many finished sudoku puzzles.
The many options to this game are the difficulty levels, check on duplicates and errors, and different tile sets. Also you can change the look of the selector (ring, keypad, spinner), turn animation on and off, and of course, the usual sound level and music level.
There is a Master Challenge for all those who are a whiz at sudoku and want a more difficult play. You complete a set of 10 sudoku boards in sequence with escalating difficulty. Upon finishing all 10 boards, you become the master high scorer.
On the regular Sudoku play, you choose the difficulty level and tile set. Whether you play with the usual numbers or you change it up a little by switching to the letters or colors, it’s up to you. The helps are the standard helps: hint, solve, undo and save. The pencil hints will put all possible numbers (letters or colors) in each square. I didn’t like the fact that the possible numbers were not in the same location in each square which made scanning across rows and down columns more difficult, but that didn’t create a big hardship. I just had to be more careful. The other minor annoyance was that the duplicate numbers in the hints were not automatically removed when you placed a number in the square, but you had to click on pencil hints button again to remove them. This would not have been bad except in Sudoku Latin Squares, they remove the duplicates immediately without having to click another button. One gets spoiled quickly when it comes to mac games.
Overall Ancient Sudoku with its mellow, Asian like music was a relaxing way to spend a quiet afternoon solving sudokus. The many options give it a variety of changes to keep you interested and engaged in this game.
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