May 30, 2008

Buku Sudoku developer talks about XBLA title
By Michael Lafferty

“The staggering popularity and familiarity of Sudoku was a massive help in finding an ear”

Sudoku is that insidious little puzzle that turns brains inside out trying to put numbers (among other objects in different variations) into a 9x9 board grid. The game has been a staple in newspapers, magazines and puzzle books, and has even seen a couple of video-game iterations.

Merscom, though, tackled the idea of bringing the game to Xbox Live Arcade, to expand the exposure of this addictive game.

Ben Moy, the game’s producer and one of the designers, was with Merscom when the title was developed. Though no longer with the company (he left and started up his own studio, Digi-Ronin), he was happy to sit down and chat with GameZone about the title.

Question: Up front, how does a Ukrainian developer get involved with Sudoku?

Ben: I apologize in advance if this answer runs long for a first question, but Ukrainian development and Ukrainian development with regards to Sudoku are both interesting topics to me, and are relevant to the game industry and beyond. Every year communications technologies are like snow that is being picked up by this huge snowball rolling down hill, and that huge ball is globalization. Things like the internet and Xbox LIVE are products and contributors. Just think, every time you play games online with people near and far, you're adding more mass, more momentum, and as this ball rolls, distance and cultural differences become less of an obstacle every day. Just recently in the news, Ubisoft's opening of a studio in Ukraine's capital, Kiev, shows that the big players are taking notice of the talent the casual games industry has been tapping for years - just last year there was a huge Casual Games Association conference in Kiev. I guess the real answer is the same as anywhere, by having a passion for what you do. Combining the experience of the west with the eager hardworking ethic of Ukraine was just a natural fit.

Q: What made you think this game would be a good fit for the 360 and XBLA?

Ben: Having worked on multiple PC Sudoku titles, the one thing I always regretted not solving was a worthwhile approach to multiplayer given standard devices - mouse & keyboard. I've tried to play paper Sudoku on the plane with neighbors, at the beach with friends, and PC Sudoku sharing a mouse with a girlfriend, but none of it was a good multiplayer experience. Couch multiplayer and online multiplayer are some of my favorite leisure activities. Both those abilities make the 360 and XBLA a great fit for Sudoku. Add in the fact that pattern recognition is what the brain loves to conquer, gamers' brains especially, and Buku Sudoku 360 becomes an obvious move.

Q:  How hard of a sell was it to convince the powers that be that the game could work on the 360?

Ben: The staggering popularity and familiarity of Sudoku was a massive help in finding an ear. Microsoft was actually already committed to bringing Sudoku to the XBLA when we approached them and had multiple proposals. I just had to put together a proposal that was better than the others and I think the multi-player elements is what really won it for us. After that, it was just having a genuine passion for the project, which I did, and I have to thank my family for that. For all the ones older than me, it's hard for them to understand the Xbox 360 even with the Wii in the news. They're not even casual gamers, but with just the customizable controls and interfaces in Buku Sudoku, a lot of what I loved about being a gamer they finally really understood. Of course, that passion led to hard work, looking at what other games lacked, taking the experience from Disoku (Disney Sudoku) and Buku Sudoku PC, and applying it all to a new design for the 360.

Q: What did you have to do, gameplay-wise, to make this game as accessible on the 360 as it is on paper?

Ben: That was really the largest obstacle in most peoples' minds, and certainly the one I wanted to tackle first. I had the same feelings as many others, that PC Sudoku always felt sluggish next to paper. The answer was to break down each action of entering a number and then to distribute button assignments for speed. Moving the left stick navigates the board, moving the right stick aims at a number, and pressing the left or right trigger enters that number, either boldly in pen or toggling a pencil mark for easy note taking. This is where electronic Sudoku really takes off. Now you can quickly and cleanly enter pencil marks, write over them with pen, or erase pen marks with one motion. After designing this "better than paper" control scheme, other controls were introduced for different levels of Xbox 360 controller familiarity, for one handed controls, and for other controllers to allow multiplayer in houses with only 1 controller and, say, an Xbox360 DVD remote. I'd also like to call out Microsoft's gameplay focus testing for allowing us to really put the controls to task during development. It was really helpful to ensure, well, kicking paper's ass.

Q: Why do you think this game has such broad appeal? To what to you attribute the surge in puzzle-based gaming?

Ben: I like to think of Sudoku as a more accessible Rubik's cube. Though the rules can seem complex initially, it takes less than one attempt to play Sudoku, only a few minutes with it, to learn the rules. It's also really easy to teach, and easy to carry. Add to that a humanly infinite number of possible 9x9 grids to solve, classable difficulties, and all sorts of variations and you have a highly customizable game that only requires symbols to play (like numbers, there's no language specific element). With brains loving pattern recognition, and people enjoying accomplishments in problem solving, Sudoku's popularity is as easy to understand as the game. As for the question of puzzle-based gaming's popularity upswing, especially with electronic games, the answer is clear - accessibility. Now nearly anyone can bring up an easy to learn or already familiar game anywhere, whether it's the prevalent work PC, the internet, the cell phone, or the millions and millions of gaming systems out there. Newspapers used to be the least effort method to have puzzle games handy, but technology has far surpassed that offering in both where and what is available.

Q: How many puzzles will be available at launch and how much support will the game have after launch?

Ben: The free trial offers 12 puzzles to try alone or with up to four players. The breakdown is one puzzle for each difficulty and grid size combination. There are easy, medium, and hard puzzles in 6x6, 8x8, 9x9, and 12x12 grid sizes. Buying the full game gets you 1200 new puzzles. If the player manages to conquer all those, additional packs of 1,200 new puzzles each are available for less than a real-world book 100 puzzles. I won't let players starve for content.

Q: Will the game have achievements or leaderboards (to show off solving times and such)?

Ben: I spent a lot of time designing the achievements to cover all the facets of the game, and give all sorts of players fun extra goals to try and hit. One of these is to finish a 9x9 puzzle in 80 seconds (hint: mortals should use the game's autopencil option to help hit this target). As for leaderboards, these track Duel mode wins and LIVE ranking, as well as point totals across the whole game, whether it's single player casual play or team Vs, solving puzzles earns the player points. Then this ties back into achievements for hitting point totals. I had a lot of fun with this stuff.

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