With a busy Christmas week I’ve not had much time for more complex games. So in-between present unwrapping and the consumption of too much food, I’ve been playing another of Studio Goya’s Sudoko games as an escape from the madness of the holiday.
The Sandwich variant of Sudoku follows the same rules as normal Sudoku, except it adds an extra type of clue. Each row and column displays a number representing the sum of the digits between 1 and 9. For example, if the number shown is 14, then the digits between 1 and 9 must add up to 14 (i.e, they could be 6 and 8, or 3, 4 and 7).
In the more difficult puzzles, not every row and column will have its sum given. Just as with Sudoku puzzles featuring fewer digits, you as the solver have to infer what these values must be.
The Sandwich Sudoku was introduced to many people via the Cracking the Cryptic YouTube channel, and you can see the classic solve of Between 1 & 9 in one of their videos. A short time after, they would curate a collection of these variant Sudokus, and Studio Goya would release them as a full game.
There isn’t much I can say about the game that I haven’t already said about Thermo Sudoku, another of their variant Sudoku collections. As I found with that game, I find their interface to be less intuitive than Sven’s SudokuPad, namely that backspace is bound to the undo action rather than delete, and that N and M are used for undo/redo instead of the more common Ctrl+Z/Ctrl+Y. Still, as with Thermo Sudoku, it provides enough options so that it is still playable for those more used to SudokuPad.
One feature of the UI unique to this version is that it has a specific button for annotating 19 in a single cell – something which you will do a lot in Sandwich Sudoku. You often know where the 1s and 9s are in the puzzle, but don’t know which is which, so this is a great quality of life feature.
Another feature unique to this version that I like is the Combinations feature. By clicking on one of the clues outside the grid, the game will show you all the possible combinations that can be used to make that value. You can click the combinations to rule them out, giving you an in-game tool to keep track of what combinations are possible. This saves you having to use extra paper for notes when solving puzzles.
A feature I really like are the hints. Unlike with other puzzle games where it would just reveal part of the solution for you, it instead explains a piece of logic related to the current puzzle. The purpose of these hints is to help you solve the puzzle on your own, allowing the game to become a learning experience. So by playing this game you will become a better Sudoku solver.
There are 100 puzzles in this Sudoku ranging from fantastically easy puzzles with a wealth of clues, to frustratingly difficult ones with the minimum number of clues needed to solve them. The game encourages you to start slow by only giving you access to the easy puzzles. As with the other Sudoku games, you will gain stars as you solve puzzles. These stars will unlock the harder puzzles one by one, giving you a sense of progression as you make your way through the collection.
Whether you’re a casual player or a Sudoku master, this game offers endless hours of gameplay. It deserves a place in every puzzle enthusiast’s collection.
