Menneisyys

Yes, there are a lot of Sudoku games for the Pocket PC. There is, however, only one of them, the lately released version 1.2 of Fast Sudoku, to support for multiplayer gaming, where players strive for filling in the cells faster than the other players. Please see The Definitive Multiplayer PPC Game Roundup and also make a generic search for multiplayer in the Pocket PC Mag Expert Blogs to see what other multiplayer games there are and what multiplayer is about.

The multiplayer model of the game is, fortunately, the most flexible one as it’s IP-based (the IP address of the host must be manually entered). This means it can be both played over local Bluetooth PAN and Wi-Fi peer-to-peer connections and remote connections even over slow, say, GPRS or EDGE dial-up.

The game is available here. It has a fully-functioning 3-day trial version; the registered version costs $9.95.

In this review, I only contentrate on the multiplayer-related questions because it's in mostly multiplayer modes that I prefer playing games (and the single player mode is very easy to check out by anyone).

Pros

1. Support for multiplayer
2. Most flexible IP-based multiplayer model
3. Support for several (not just two) players taking part in a game
4. Native VGA support (Except for the on-screen numeric keypad, but it’s not visible while playing)
5. Almost no in-game CPU usage – not even in multiplayer mode!
6. Wide compatibility with all Pocket PC 2002+ Windows Mobile versions
   

Cons

1. Very awkward and slow numeric keypad in multiplayer mode
2. The always-enabled ClearType may get on the nerves of some (for example me)
3. Not any kind of in-game music
4. No multiplayer goodies like chat support
5. As the game doesn’t support a central dispatcher server model, goodies like server-side high score storage and remote games are impossible between devices all behind different firewalls
   

Example screenshots

On the host:

Setting up the host – giving the host a name (it can be anything)

Starting to wait for clients; the IP address displayed in here must be entered to clients connecting to the host

An example of two devices having joined the host (a HTC Wizard and a Dell Axim x51v; both via Wi-Fi P2P)

On the client(s):

First, name the clients

Then, enter the IP address of the host

Generic multiplayer stuff:

Checking out how many cells the other players have already filled in

Aditional notes

Note that while the game itself doesn’t consume any CPU cycles at all (resulting in a very low battery consumption), some (not all!) Bluetooth stacks may have a considerably higher CPU usage when operating in PAN mode, depending a lot on a lot of other factors. For example, my Pocket Loox 720, while only consuming some 2.8% (average) CPU time in BT PAN mode, consumes some 30% CPU time while fully loaded with programs and other paired devices. (Will further check and elaborate on this later.) I haven’t run into similar problems with other Widcomm implementations or Wi-Fi P2P connections.

Recommended links

The Definitive Multiplayer PPC Game Roundup

The Pocket PC Mag Expert Blogs

(Note that, at the time of writing, the FTP access to upload the example screenshots didn’t work and, therefore, clicking the image links won’t work. Will upload them later.)

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MS MVP- Mobile Devices.