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Picture Perfect

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 12
Date: August 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I've tried sudoku on paper and my first experience with the DS sudoku was from my cousin's Brain Age. It got me hooked and it was fun. I wanted to try something new rather than plain numbers. When I saw ToonDoku at the store, I decided to give it a chance. It turned out that I got hooked on it.

In the main menu, you get to pick among 5 choices. I will cover each one.

Stage Mode- This is where you can play through 10 tutorial puzzles to help you with tricks to get through problems and then play through 100 puzzles with a boss opponent in each level. The puzzles get progressively harder, but it's still fun. You receive/unlock different pieces that you can use as your "1-9" substitutions such as pictures of food, animals, fun designs, etc. I mainly use food because it's very appealing to me, but nonetheless, you can customize what pieces you would like through the options menu. I'll go into more detail when I go to options. Throughout the puzzle you can save your progress in case you get tired or have to attend to something else. After saving you can quit, and then return by touching "Stage Mode" once and "Load" will appear next to it. You touch that and continue from where you left off after saving.

Instant Play- The next option is instant play. This is where you get randomly generated puzzles so you never get tired of playing the same ones. When I got through the booklet ones through pencil and paper, I'd have to get a new book of puzzles, but this feature conveniently allows you to scroll through the almost infinite number of puzzles and choose one that you would like to play. You have two options that you can see here. They are "Locked" and "Style." In "Locked" you choose the number of pieces that will appear when you start. For example, if you pick 32, then you will begin with 32 pieces on the screen. As for "Style," there are 3 that you can pick from. "Random, Mirrored, and Swirly" Random will place the pieces randomly on the board, Mirrored will symmetrically place the pieces on your board while Swirly will have images in yin yang style, basically it's circular symmetrical. Completing this will also unlock pieces (there are around 255, I think) As for the numbers you see below rating, they go from 0 to 99,999 with 0 being the easiest and 99,999 being the hardest.

Multiplayer- You get to play and trade with a friend. I don't usually play this much since this is for my recreation, but when my brother or someone wants to try it, then I go here. It consists of 5 menus.

1. Game Share- A friend with a DS can play "Instant Play Mode" without having the game cartridge itself. They get to play puzzles from instant play mode.

2. Piece Trade- You trade custom pieces through wireless with a friend. They must also have a ToonDoku cartridge for this.

3. Create Game allows you to play multiplayer with a friend where you choose the puzzles style, number of locked pieces and multiplayer game mode. Your friend must have a ToonDoku cartridge to play this.
The multiplayer game mode here consists of 3 things

3a. Speed Puzzle Race- You compete to see who finishes the fastest.
3b. Speed Battle- Similar to speed puzzle, but whoever finishes three puzzles first is the winner. Both players will have the same difficulty and are identical for both players.
3c. Adversary- You two take turns completing the same puzzle. You can distract your opponent through attacks (I'll explain the distraction attack system later) The player who fills in the most difficult blank squares win.

4. Join game- You join your friend's game by selecting the host's name in the lobby.

5. Vs. CPU- In this, you play the Speed Puzzle, Speed Battle, Adversary against the computer. You pick the opponent and difficulty.

Tutorial- Consists of 9 sections which will help hone your skills in ToonDoku.

Basically the distraction system is activated when you do a boss battle in Stage Mode or multiplayer. On the upper right hand side of your screen, you see a picture from your collection board. The opponent/boss will throw things at you and if they throw enough, the distractions will cover places on your screen. You will see this when their faces cover areas in your Sudoku grid which can get annoying. To counteract this, you drag the pieces that are seen in the circle at the top right so if it's cherry, you drag cherry from your collection grid and keep doing it until you see them look gloomy at the top of the screen. From my experience, they throw less and more slowly when they're sad. It detracts from concentration, but it isn't so bad.

On the lower right hand side in the marking system. I don't use this, but for others you might utilize it. You basically click on an empty square and it gets highlighted. You then pick a piece that you think you might want to place and then drag it to the lower right grid and it'll leave a note for you when you get back to it.

Options- Allows you to adjust various settings.

1. Track selection- Select what tracks you want to hear in the game. All tracks are on by default.

2. Music Volume- Adjust music volume.

3. SFX Volume- Adjust sound effects volume.

4. Visual Theme- Select random or pick a background that you prefer.

5. Character Select- You choose the character who you want to use in your puzzles.

6. Collection- This is where you choose what pieces you want, where they'll be placed on the grid and edit the pieces you've received through the paint icon. Click save to save your settings after customizing your grid.

7. Name Change- Changes your display name.

All in all, this is a really great game to pass the time. When I was an undergrad, students would play Sudoku from our school newspaper during lecture. It really depends on the person. You can either love this game or despise it. I personally enjoy this game and pass the time when I'm free. Now that I'm in grad school, this is a great distraction when I'm free during the day. It's cute and creative and definitely is fun and user friendly. You get to personalize how you want to play. Nothing can get better than that! I highly recommend this and it's great for all ages. This helps with cognitive processing (yes, the psychology major in me had to let that out!) along with your enjoyment!

Poor Graphics

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 31, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Toondoku is an awesome idea, but the product was poorly created. I got a stack of 10 DS games for Christmas, and this is the one I'm not happy with. I was so excited to get this, but the graphics are so poor I got a headache after just 5 minutes of messing around with it. Traded it in for about $1 credit at my local GameStop and considered myself lucky.

Don't believe the complaints...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 31, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Some people complain that the pictures are too small to tell apart, and I'm amazed that these people are smart enough to play sudoku, but can't figure out the simple solution to this problem. With all the many different images to choose from, just make sure you select ones with different colors. In other words, something blue, something red, something green, etc... then there's no problem telling them apart quickly (unless you're color blind). I definitely agree that it's troublesome if you use images that are similar to each other, so don't! Also, it is VERY quick and easy to zoom in and out so you can get a better look at the images anyway. People like to put down a perfectly good product because they don't want to bother figuring out how to use it properly. If you like the idea, don't pass this game up because of those people. It's easily one of my favorites.

Toon Doku fun but glitchy

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 04, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I'm a visual person so sudoku with pictures is a more natural and relaxing game for me, but this game is a little buggy - you drag the images to where they need to be but sometimes mid drag it will drop one image and pick up another or drop your image early and cause lots of errors which prevents you from unlocking new images. I find saving your progress after every few moves so you can restart and reload the game if it messes you up solves this issue, but is annoying. Also there are not enough easy puzzles - Playing the game I expect them to be simple, logical, and satisfying but after only 7 or 8 puzzles the difficulty increased to having to use the marker system a lot and make guesses all the time and I gave the game to my math/brain teaser inclined husband to finish instead of continuing to play. I did like the ability to create your own pictures to use, and the option to change which pictures you play with any time you feel like it. The distraction function during the boss matches seems unnecessary.

poor pictures

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 03, 2008
Author: Amazon User

pictures are to small to see clearly. Some of the subject pieces look so smililar it is hard to tell them apart.

TINY TINY graphics

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 14, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game could be fun but the graphics are SOOOOO small....gives me a headache to try to play it. Bummer!

Graphics too small!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 28, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I believe this would actually be a fun game if the graphics weren't so small. It is very hard to see what your doing. Sometimes you can barely tell the pictures apart.

The idea is great, but I was shocked by how small it is. I mean, if your doing a puzzle you want to be able to see what you are doing! Or then you just do it wrong!

I say they should come out with a different one and have BIGGER graphics. I don't like straining my eyes, it is suppose to be fun.

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