Glitchy but great
I’m giving only 4 stars because… I’m not sure this game is even playable without a paid account at the moment, because of bugs in the way IAP and ads work. Which I know because my paid account somehow turned into a free one in a previous update. They manually restored it for me, which is very cool, but obviously it would be better if it didn’t happen in the first place. And there have been a few times over the many years where the game just didn’t work for months (e.g., way back when, IIRC, the iPhone 6 came out, it couldn’t handle the extra screen space and would crash if you clicked there). Of course most games from that long ago were just abandoned and won’t work on anything newer than iOS 9 or something, so not having this game for a few months every few years is not a huge tragedy by comparison.
But once you get past that, it’s as great as it ever was, and miles ahead of any other Kakuro app I’ve found.
It can generate puzzles that are genuinely difficult but not unsolvable—the only other apps that have any difficult puzzles have a small number (and often charge you for them) rather than an endless stream of new ones. And the whole UI is designed around assisting you in solving those difficult puzzles. It’s a little messy and maybe hard to figure out at first, and kind of ugly (and changes over the years have made it uglier). But as far as usability once you learn it, it’s amazing.
Also, it doesn’t hide behind a bunch of irrelevant gamification features. There’s counts of how many games you’ve won and a few other little things, but no big 30-second celebration when you win or coins to grind for or cheats to ration or special event modes or any of that. If you enjoy Kakuro as a game you don’t need them, and if not, they won’t help, so this app doesn’t have them.
But once you get past that, it’s as great as it ever was, and miles ahead of any other Kakuro app I’ve found.
It can generate puzzles that are genuinely difficult but not unsolvable—the only other apps that have any difficult puzzles have a small number (and often charge you for them) rather than an endless stream of new ones. And the whole UI is designed around assisting you in solving those difficult puzzles. It’s a little messy and maybe hard to figure out at first, and kind of ugly (and changes over the years have made it uglier). But as far as usability once you learn it, it’s amazing.
Also, it doesn’t hide behind a bunch of irrelevant gamification features. There’s counts of how many games you’ve won and a few other little things, but no big 30-second celebration when you win or coins to grind for or cheats to ration or special event modes or any of that. If you enjoy Kakuro as a game you don’t need them, and if not, they won’t help, so this app doesn’t have them.
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Response from developer
Thank you for such a thorough and in depth review. Whilst this app is no longer economically viable to develop, I will keep it working for many years to come if I can.
Ruined by updates
A previous update to this game has turned what was the best kakuro app for almost a decade into a borderline unplayable mess. And the next update took away features while changing nothing else. And the latest one makes it unplayable. You can’t even start a new game, because all the difficulty levels have weird labels about ads instead of being level numbers, and then, when selected, they each give some different error about some GDPR service. So, that’s that; I can’t play even if I wanted to. But I rarely wanted to anymore anyway, for quite some time. Here’s my review of the previous changes to explain why: First, the new color scheme and “flat” look is hideously ugly. It’s also less usable—a touch interface with tons of fiddly little buttons crammed onto the screen really needs visible borders. (Imagine the iPhone keyboard without the white squares around the keys.) Second, there’s now a banner ad on the bottom, right where you want to click to unselect the current selection. For a game that I paid for (even if the paid version was merged with the free version a few years ago), this is especially unacceptable. Third, it now randomly pops up intrusive ads. Worst of all, it keeps trying to get me to pay for a “Pro” upgrade. (I have no idea what’s included in “Pro”, but whatever it is, I haven’t needed it for the past decade.) It sometimes even spontaneously triggers a payment confirmation that I have to cancel. Presumably the interface tricked me into clicking a “Upgrade” button that appears under my finger when I’m trying to click something else, or something like that. But however they’re doing it, it’s not just seriously unethical, and annoying, but also a serious violation of Apple’s rules. So, what improvements do we get to compensate for all these downgrades? Not a single one of the features people had requested over the past decade (like an easier way to mark the board and rewind to an earlier mark) has been added. They did finally fix the bug where, on any screen bigger than an iPhone 4, there’s a dead space on the top and bottom that can crash the game if you accidentally click it. But because they filled that dead space with a banner ad that pops open an ad page in Safari if you accidentally click it, this isn’t really an improvement. I wish I could go back to the previous version. A new version came out at some point, and I upgraded hoping it would solve some of the problems. But I’ll never find out, because it disabled enough features that it’s not worth even trying. You can’t even start a game above medium difficulty anymore. So now, it’s gone from a game I pick up every once in a while when I’m not too annoyed to deal with the frustrations to one that I will never even think about playing. Nice job ruining it for good.
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Response from developer
Hello, please email support@thechesssolitairesudokufactory.com so that we can get you back your paid for version.
Kakura
Love this game, keeps you thinking.
No hard levels
Please reinstate the harder levels !!!
Better options out there if they are not re introduced
Better options out there if they are not re introduced
Ruined by updates
The previous update to this game has turned what was the best kakuro app for almost a decade into a borderline unplayable mess. And the latest update takes away features while changing nothing else. First, the new color scheme and “flat” look is hideously ugly. It’s also less usable—a touch interface with tons of fiddly little buttons crammed onto the screen really needs visible borders. (Imagine the iPhone keyboard without the white squares around the keys.) Second, there’s now a banner ad on the bottom, right where you want to click to unselect the current selection. For a game that I paid for (even if the paid version was merged with the free version a few years ago), this is especially unacceptable. Third, it now randomly pops up intrusive ads. Worst of all, it keeps trying to get me to pay for a “Pro” upgrade. (I have no idea what’s included in “Pro”, but whatever it is, I haven’t needed it for the past decade.) It sometimes even spontaneously triggers a payment confirmation that I have to cancel. Presumably the interface tricked me into clicking a “Upgrade” button that appears under my finger when I’m trying to click something else, or something like that. But however they’re doing it, it’s not just seriously unethical, and annoying, but also a serious violation of Apple’s rules. So, what improvements do we get to compensate for all these downgrades? Not a single one of the features people had requested over the past decade (like an easier way to mark the board and rewind to an earlier mark) has been added. They did finally fix the bug where, on any screen bigger than an iPhone 4, there’s a dead space on the top and bottom that can crash the game if you accidentally click it. But because they filled that dead space with a banner ad that pops open an ad page in Safari if you accidentally click it, this isn’t really an improvement. I wish I could go back to the previous version. A new version came out at some point, and I upgraded hoping it would solve some of the problems. But I’ll never find out, because it disabled enough features that it’s not worth even trying. You can’t even start a game above medium difficulty anymore. So now, it’s gone from a game I pick up every once in a while when I’m not too annoyed to deal with the frustrations to one that I will never even think about playing. Nice job ruining it for good.
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poor choice
i have over 800 master puzzles solved and you lot cut me down to medium 8 - pathetic
Best layout and dark mode!
This is by far the best version and I have tried many! The layout and submenus are so user friendly. And for those of us who like playing at night before sleep it has the BEST dark mode, no more bright blinding background, that keeps you up! But a beautiful black background and dimmer lettering mode! To give a full review, there is one submenu where the “sliders” at the bottom are still messed up, but now that I know they actually DO read the reviews I am confident they will look into that too!
Update: The developers got back to me and gave me back my paid version! Old review:Used to be the best, USED TO Now, even though I bought it way back when, it wants me to pay to upgrade so I can play the more difficult levels. I already paid. I will not pay again! I would rather find another to pay for than put up with that kind of deceit.
Update: The developers got back to me and gave me back my paid version! Old review:Used to be the best, USED TO Now, even though I bought it way back when, it wants me to pay to upgrade so I can play the more difficult levels. I already paid. I will not pay again! I would rather find another to pay for than put up with that kind of deceit.
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Good game but no longer challenging!
Really enjoy the game but since the new update I can only do up to medium level and I want to challenge myself more! Please bring back the higher levels!
Levels
I have been playing this for some time choosing the hard or very hard levels. For some reason, the highest level I can now play is medium. How do you get to play the higher levels
Can’t even input numbers!
And so clunky! Clumsy, badly thought out app. Pity as the game Kakuro is good on paper.
Yes
One of the best apps out there for this game, thank you.
Good
Good game
Frustrated
Every other button I pushed took me to an ad. Not a bad layout. Not intuitive.
Waste of a download
Terrible app. I downloaded, and could not even see what I was doing. Just saw numbers on a black screen and big ads at the bottom. Not user friendly at all.
Broken
Does not work
Kakuro
Do not waste your money on this game. I have not even been able to play it once. I’ve tried several times to delete and download the game and nothing changes. I am very disappointed that I wasted my money and time on this.
Won’t work on my iPhone
It used to work and now it won’t load so I can’t play anymore.
Update has blown it
Now only get a black screen with numbers!
Was pleased, now I’m a hostage to a crap update
I used to use this app pretty often, and I was really good at it. I purchased it when it was new in 2009. The latest update added ads, the “option” to update to pro; which I would assume is ad-free, but does nothing. So instead I’m forced to watch ads that i can’t click out of and mess with my timing on the app. Then there’s the lack of responsiveness on the app. It went from a fully functioning touch screen to smaller buttons and slow responses. For instance, when clicking a number triangle you see the options but you can’t click the done button because they decreased the size of clickable area and get stuck clicking it a few times until released. I used to enjoy this app but I won’t use it again until they fix this terrible update
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Response from developer
Hello, please email support@mastersoftmobiltsolutions.com . Which device model are you using?
Worst update
Actually hate them for updating this... was in my opinion one of the best kakuro games before via layout and design. Now the buttons are harder to hit, can’t visually see which are hit or not unless you strain your eyes, the timer isn’t working properly now either. So trying to improve to beat my time on master difficulty is basically null and void until they fix it. Also now the only way to not have the apparently 6 second win time on the difficulty is to reset my statistics beating the whole point of trying to improve my record...
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