“Hold up, didn’t you already tell us about Sudoku?” Well, yes, sort of, but that was Hawaiian Sudoku! And, no, I’m not here to talk about the normal version, at least not exactly — I’m here to talk about the board game.
Yep! Sudoku is a competitive game now! Sudoku Challenge actually came out in like 2006, but I didn’t have a blog then, so we’re going to pretend this is a new discovery. The first thing to choose is which side of the board you’re playing — Sudoku (9×9 grid), or Zoodoku (6×6). What’s Zoodoku, you ask? Well, it’s the easier version of Sudoku, and much, much cuter, since instead of numbers, you’re placing animals.
Whichever you choose, the mechanics are the same — you start by placing the starter tiles (marked with a different backing), one in each box, no overlapping rows/columns, and placing each player’s chosen pawn at 0 on the scoring area. Players then take turns drawing a face-down tile and choosing where to place it. Just like regular Sudoku, it can’t be in the same row, column, or box as a tile of the same type. Unlike regular Sudoku, you have another goal: scoring. When you place a tile, you get 1 point for each other tile that shares a row, column, or box with it. Each tile is only counted once. If you’re feeling exceptionally masochistic, you can play Sudoku with a twist — instead of scoring one point for each other tile, you add up their values. Note that if you do this, you will run out of 40-point tokens; we used the Zoodoku tiles as stand-ins.
There are going to be times when prior placements leave spaces unable to be filled, like the empty space in the middle right of the board below, where the box needs a deer (blocked by row) and the row needs a raccoon (blocked by both column and box). If a player draws a tile they cannot place, the game ends immediately, and whoever has the most points wins.
