Press Kit

Fact Sheet

Description

Sudowords combines the logic of Sudoku (left brain) and the creativity of Crosswords (right brain) for a whole-new, whole-brain challenge!

The objective for each Sudowords puzzle is simple, yet surprisingly challenging: Unscramble words and fill in puzzles until each row and column is a unique word.

Sudowords comes with multiple board sizes, two complete dictionaries, and two distinct game modes. You swap letters around in the Shuffle game mode and fill in the blank spots in the Classic game mode.

The game starts with simple 3×3 crosswords in Shuffle mode. These early levels only take a few moves to unscramble words and give you all the crossword puzzle clues you need. As you progress, the levels get bigger, the words get trickier, and the clues for the crosswords go into hiding. Once you’re comfortable with Shuffle mode levels, you’ll want to try out Classic mode for some supremely challenging fill in puzzles!

Letter blocks change color when you find a word and light up when you find a solution. You can also use the dictionary button at any time to learn the full definitions of words on the board. Words range from common American/British English words in the Standard wordbook all the way to the near pseudowords (pronounced just like Sudowords 😉) in the Scholarly wordbook.

If you get stuck trying to shuffle letters or fill in the blank, you have multiple hints at your disposal. You earn Sudowords (SW) coins after every level, which can be used to reveal a letter, a word, or an entire clue for those extra tricky crosswords. The fewer moves you take to solve a puzzle, the more stars and SW coins you’ll earn!

Can you earn 3 stars across all 700 levels? Go for it and give Sudowords a try anytime, anywhere for free!

Game Features

  • Over 50,000 unique Sudoku Crossword puzzles spread across 700 levels
  • More than 70,000 possible clues in the crosswords for virtually endless variations
  • Complete definitions for learning over 25,000 English words
  • 2 complete wordbooks (dictionaries) for a huge variety of puzzles
  • 2 distinct game modes: Shuffle to unscramble words, and Classic to fill in puzzles
  • 4 board sizes, ranging from breezy 3×3 cinches to sage 6×6 head-scratchers
  • 50 challenges for every wordbook, game mode, and board size combo
  • 3 types of hints to help you get unstuck at any time

Fun Facts

  • The title screen background involved a full day of kayaking, multiple sketches of a human brain, and several days’ worth of “cloud photography” to start
  • More than 20 custom programs were written to help develop this one game, including a complex puzzle generator and even a “special effects” creator
  • All music was composed with just a mouse and keyboard due to a lack of MIDI equipment on hand
  • The split-second “whoosh” sound effect for swapping a letter involved swinging half a dozen objects in front of a microphone and many “takes” to perfect
  • The 30-second game trailer took approximately one month to create, about 90 hours for the first trailer (which was discarded) and 90 hours for the final one
  • The sum total of all time spent on everything related to the game’s development is currently estimated to be well over 3,000 hours, but it was worth every minute!

In line with the “fully original” company mission of One Duck Theory LLC, virtually all media and code in the game was lovingly crafted from scratch. Whether it involved kayaking, drawing, composing, or coding, it has been quite a journey to bring this game to life. I hope it’s as much fun to play as it’s been to create!

Company History

One Duck Theory LLC was founded in 2020 by me, Christian Muhler. As the sole company member, I also did all development work related to the company’s first game, Sudowords. However, the game would not have been possible without the incredible work and support of many others who I describe in full within the game’s credits (without them, I may have never finished and also the game would be missing a lot of fonts, words, AND definitions, which would be pretty devastating for a word game!)

Anyway, for a little history, I’m an indie developer who’s been creating games as a hobby since childhood. I created my first “games” back in the 90’s in a small computer lab with MS Paint and PowerPoint. By the time I reached high school, I had discovered programming and started creating prototypes for “real” games. For many years, I worked in IT and created a variety of game prototypes on the side, but never finished a complete, polished game.

In December of 2019, I made the extremely difficult decision to leave my job – it was a small IT consulting company that felt like a family and I had the opportunity to learn a great deal during my 7 years working there. It was a gut-wrenching decision to go, but I have since continued on my indie developer quest full-throttle. It has been my dream since childhood to publish a finished game. Thus, One Duck Theory LLC was formed and named after its guiding principle. The company mission, however, is to make fully original games to give the world something brand new to play!

More info about the company name and history can be found here

Video Trailer

Images

There are even more images! Download all images as a .zip file

Logos/Icons