Sudoku in Space is the latest release from Napland Games; you might remember them from my review of Wordspionage. Napland Games consists of Sean Mann (lead developer) and Shannon Ahn, marketing manager. They’ve been creating games since April 2013.

Watch the trailer:

I’m not a big fan of Sudoku, but I really liked the twists that Wordspionage put on the classic Scrabble formula, so I thought I’d give Sudoku in Space a try, and I’m glad I did. A tutorial from Allen the Alien is included, for those of us who either haven’t played a lot of Sudoku or are newbies. There are four difficulty levels: beginner (10), easy (100), medium (150), and hard (200). Something I really enjoyed was that you can play in either classic mode, with numbers, or in cosmic mode, with colors. You can change this in the pause menu of the game. For someone who is more visually oriented versus numbers oriented, that was nice! You’re still doing the puzzles in the same way too. I ended up playing with the numbers on – you still get the colors, but can sort in two ways instead of one.

You’re allowed three hints with no penalty, and each level times you and gives you a star rating at the end. This doesn’t really matter though, because you can access every level from the beginning. You’re only penalized for mistakes made when it comes to the star rating, as far as I can tell – I take a pretty long time on these I’m a big fan of space/space related things, so being able to play “in space” with an alien buddy was fun. The music is really relaxing and appropriately spacey. There’s an option to turn it off, but I always wanted to keep it on – it makes for zen-like concentration. There’s only one in-app purchase, and that’s to remove ads. It’s not obtrusive either.

If you’re looking for a new way to play Sudoku, or if you’ve never played before because it hasn’t appealed to you, try this. You might be pleasantly surprised, like I was!

Score: A

Visit the official site here, get it for free on the App Store here, Google Play here, Amazon here, and for Windows/Mac/Linux on the official site for 99 cents. Follow them on Twitter here.

[Disclaimer: A review code was provided for me to review this game.]