Zen of Sudoku and Natural-Selection

[FoughtFoo]

Zen of Sudoku fetured on Penny Arcade! http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/06/28/#21838

Zen fo Sudoku on Digg.com! http://digg.com/gaming_news/Zen_of_Suduko_game:_new_from_the_creator_of_Natural_Selection

What does this beautiful Sudoku game have to do with the Half-Life 1 mod Natural Selection?

They were both created by the same group of people. Well, some of them anyway.

Charlie "Flayra" Cleveland is the programmer for both Natural-Selection and Zen of Sudoku and his partner from the NS dev team, Cory "Squeal Like a Pig" Strader, he's he guy that did most the NS artwork and of course the artwork for Zen. There is also an outside composer that did the music just for Zen.

What is Zen of Sudoku?

The Zen of Sudoku removes the tedium and difficulty of Sudoku and focuses on the relaxing, satisfying aspects of it. It is designed to be the most pleasant way to play for both beginners and experienced Sudoku masters.

ZoS is a really beautiful game, Cory does a really good job on the background and tiles, and it really is tranquil. Butterflies will fly when you beat a puzzle witch is nice. The music is really well done also; a slow quiet Japanese styled melody plays throughout but surprisingly doesn’t get annoying.

The tutorial level I played was very helpful to a Sudoku nub like me; I never really understood the game until it was explained in the tutorial. The game play features everything a Sudoku game should feature such as pencil marks, shows errors, shows dupes, highlights and spotlights of rows and lines, and the most wonderful one of all SHOW HINTS! Full screen and windowed modes are available as well as four difficulty levels. Easy, Novice, Expert and Master. All the mentioned options are available to you if you wish; they can also be unselected in the options menu for you Sudoku "purists".

There are a few more great features such as a Save and Quit feature. ZoS also supports multi-user accounts. ZoS has hotlinks to the ZoS forums and feedback pages. It also knosw when you play ZoS because this is displayed at the top of the main page

There are currently [x number] users on the path to enlightenment

where "x number" is the number of people with the client running. ALL updates will be FREE no matter when you purchased the game and for $12.95 you can’t go wrong!

Changelog and new features can be viewed here.


Why did he make this game instead of NS:Source?

Answer: $$$

If you're interested in directly supporting NS and Unknown Worlds, I know of no better way than to try and buy this game, and especially, to spread the word about it. Tell your friends. Post on forums. Tell your parents and their friends (they'll love it, seriously). There's even an in-game "Tell a Friend" feature! We keep the vast majority of the funds on each sale, and are attempting to stay off the big icky portals to do so. If this game does well, we will surely be able to begin real work on Natural Selection: Source. Hopefully that's incentive enough.

Download here and here.

http://www.zenofsudoku.com
http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/

 

[RoBeRt GoULeT]

I like ukw, I supported them through the constellation program via the original NS. I hope NS:S becomes a reality.

 

[hungryduck]

nifty....glad they were at least up to something!

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

I enjoyed ns and donated in those days, maybe i'll check this out idk.. don't have any extra money atm.

 

[destrukt]

ns brought alot of fun @ lans so i might buy it.

any ns:source media like screenshots or .. ?

 

[pvtbones]

I don't think they've really started work on NS:S yet due to the recent problems.

although I do remember way back that some fans on the forums recreated some NS maps in source... it was beautiful.

*edit* don't think they were released

 

[Ennui]

ah, so this is what flayra was talking about when he said they'd release a small game so they could raise funds for NS:S

im getting this, remember that the money you pay for this goes towards supporting NS:S!