Kakuro by Nikoli

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local Wireless)

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Review:

The name Nikoli may not mean much to American gamers, but the company has had a massive impact on the world of Puzzle games. Founded in 1980, Nikoli is a Japanese magazine publisher, and they have made a name for themselves for popularizing a wide variety of logic puzzles. The most noteworthy of these is undoubtedly sudoku, which Nikoli helped to flourish in popularity in Japan, which then in turn spread worldwide. However, the company has published dozens of different types of puzzles, many of which have become popular in their own right as well, such as Numberlink.

As a result of this powerful impact the company has had on the world of Puzzle games, numerous Puzzle game releases on the PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch bear Nikoli’s name. Kakuro by Nikoli, released on Nintendo 3DS in 2012, is a $5 release that has players tackling 50 puzzles of various difficulty levels in a style of game that is somewhat similar to Sudoku.

For those unfamiliar with Kakuro, the premise here is that you have a crossword puzzle-style board, where “down” and “across” spaces don’t correspond to trivia clues, but to a total number that the included cels must add up to. Cels can only be filled with numbers ranging from 1-9, with no cels repeating within one consecutive line of cels. Using these rules, players must deduce which numbers belong in every cel in the puzzle.

As an example, a line of two cels with an indicating number of 4 can only have an answer of some combination of 1+3, because 2+2 would repeat a number. Likewise, a line of three cels that equals 6 must be 1+2+3, and a line of three that equals 7 must be 1+2+4. Those numbers could be in any order, but when you look at other adjacent numbers you can narrow down which number belongs where.

As with Nikoli’s version of Sudoku, the game does let you add “notes” to a square to mark what numbers can (or can’t) fit there, but you can only do it for four numbers per square, not the full nine, which really limits your ability to pare down the numbers that can and cannot fit in the puzzle.

In addition, this may be personal preference, but I found the control layout here to be unnecessarily cumbersome, and I repeatedly entered numbers into fields or deleted them unintentionally due to this.

However, the flaws here extend beyond the gameplay to the features and presentation.

All of this game’s puzzles are presented with simple, clean visuals on the bottom screen, with a top screen showing a completely-unnecessary zoomed-in view of the puzzle. This is decent enough, but terribly bland. However, making things worse is the game’s soundtrack, which plays extremely repetitive music that becomes very annoying very quickly.

This game can’t even be bothered to provide players with an interactive tutorial, instead only offering a non-interactive “tutorial” that explains the rules and basic strategies of the game but doesn’t really work to ensure that players understand those rules. There is at the very least a 4-player competitive mode here, but I’m not sure I’d want to rope in three other people to play this bland and not especially well-made Puzzle game.

In the end, while Nikoli may be famous for helping to popularize great Puzzles, Kakuro by Nikoli seems like it could have been handled better. It’s still enjoyable despite these flaws, but players who are looking for a great Puzzle game on Nintendo 3DS have plenty of better options.

tl;dr – Kakuro by Nikoli is a version of a style of Puzzle game that’s like a mix of Crossword Puzzle and Sudoku, with this game offering players 50 puzzles for $5. Unfortunately, the lack of multiple features and an extremely lacking presentation make this a game that even Puzzle fans will likely want to skip, as there are numerous better options out there.

Grade: C-

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