by Mad Cave Bird Games

Where should I start!! First it arrived on time and in excellent condition!! When I opened the box it was love at first sight. The game itself is heavy, the quality of the board is phenomenal, it isn’t cheap wood. This board can honestly last a lifetime!! The balls are wooden and look like gum balls. The colors are bright and beautiful. With that being said, I would never keep this game near babies, toddlers or pets because they really could mistake them for gum or candy. This was a Christmas gift I picked out but my son gifted it to me. For any Sudoku fan out there ( which I am) you will love, love, love this version of the game!! If you are on the fence BUYYYYYY ITTTTTTTT!!! You will not, I repeat NOTTTT be disappointed!! I cannot wait to start playing. I just received it this morning and was so excited opening it!! Again I cannot believe how beautiful this product is!! Someone had posted that the colors are close and you can’t tell one shade from the other. Well yes you can clearly see the color variations. Green is green, light green is light green and yellow is yellow. Please view my pics and video. You will clearly see the difference. Also let me point out this game is not small. Its a big board to play. Those that may have sight issues can clearly play this game!! Update: I completed several puzzles and I must say I just love the concept of colors instead of numbers!! I find it to be much more fun then numbers. Again if you love Sudoku you will love these colored puzzles!! BUY ITTTTTTT!!

I bought this because I am not a huge board game player but I wanted something on hand for rainy days or when I have someone over as a conversation starter. This fit the bill because most people know how to play sudoku so no need to teach the rules (I HATE that!), and if I wanted to play alone I could do that as well. When I got it, I was surprised that it was all made out of wood and I really liked the feel, heft, and quality of the pieces and board. No chemical smell like someone here noted. There are tons of suggested problems ranging from easy to super hard, and the amazing part of this game is that you can also look for sudoku problems online and copy them on this board by assigning numeric values to the colors--as such, you really can't run out of problems to solve. I had a date over for a glass of wine and we actually ended up playing a couple of problems together because he was excited to see this game on my shelf. It was great to have something to work on together while we talked and got to know each other better. I think this is such a great game to have around and now my mom wants one, too. Great gift, great for solo play, and great for playing with when you don't want to keep track of a million board game rules.

colorku review JDB 4-4-15 We purchased this game a year and a half ago and it has been without a doubt the favorite game my wife and I like to play together. She has always enjoyed the numeric version one sees in books and newspapers, but I was not attracted to working with numbers. But the Colorku board is a different matter. First, It involves colors, not numbers, which I find more appealing. Second, it is in a board version, where the colored balls can be put down and moved around. It is shareable format where more than one person can be work on in a puzzle together. We’ve had the Colorku board and balls on our breakfast table for a long time now, and we immensely enjoy solving the puzzles together. Particularly with difficult puzzles, we feel a rush when we manage to ferret out a ball placement that “breaks” the puzzle, after which the remaining ball placements are more and more straightforward until the puzzle is solved. We’ve purchased all three sets of puzzle cards, though the easy set is a little too easy for us. We have, incidentally, found a couple of games that had double solutions. Since there is no single solution, they cannot be solved logically. We found the difficulty ratings for puzzles variable: sometimes we could do harder rated ones, but were stumped by puzzles with lower ratings. We are now at level 65 in the hard deck and are solving most of them. We still get the high of having cracked a difficult puzzle! We are developing a vocabulary of the game: we call a single ball location a “cell,” a 3x3 division a “square,” and a line of 9 cells a “row.” We have developed a number of strategies for determining colors of cells. We looking for triples (a single color pattern across three squares), colors needed for row completion, the constraints on where a particular color can be placed in a square, and seek “bound” pairs and triples. A bound pair is two cells, each able to contain only one of the same two colors. Similarly, we look for bound triples, or three cells, each able to contain only the same three colors. Identifying bound squares and triples doesn’t necessarily “solve,” in the sense of being able to put a particular ball in a particular cell, but it adds constraints to the puzzle which may make it possible to solve cells in affected rows and squares. To help our analysis, I designed and 3d printed double- and triple-cell shapes which can be placed on the game. Colored balls can sit on these shapes, and it indicates that the color is not specifically located, but can be in one of two, or three, spaces. A bit like quantum particles which exist in two spaces for a while. We have found this method to be quite helpful. Should someone be interested in printing these, I can post the .stl files on Thingiverse. We have yet to tire of colorku, and continue to love the time together, the mental stimulation, and the rush of completion. We do worry that the supply of puzzles is limited to three packs. The game designers map the nine colors to the numbers 1-9, so it is possible to take a numerical game and translate it to a colorku game. This, however, is a bother. It would be great if the designers would come out with more puzzles, or possibly some program or app that would take numeric Sudoku puzzles and print out color puzzles/solutions.

Great

Game for two works to learn how to be together

It is amazing and fun to play sudoku in colors! I am already addicted to this game. I do have some recommendations for earlier reviews mention problems that the colored balls rolling out from the wooden board while playing. To prevent, you can play with the wooden board place inside the box, don't take it out. So you can prevent the balls from rolling out and lose it. Should the ball roll out from the slot, it will still be inside the box. Hope it helped to solve the problem 😊

The package arrived on time and in great condition. The game is great for ages 8+. I think the game is expensive, but well worth the money.

great challenge, and well made components