Bitcoin Sudoku, available on both iOS and Android, is built similarly to other Bling games like Sweet Bitcoin, Word Breeze, and Ethereum Blast. It’s a simple take on a familiar, free-to-play mobile puzzle game premise, albeit packed with unskippable video ads between play sessions.
But sudoku is, by nature, a slower-paced game than those quick-hit puzzlers. In those games, you might play for 30 to 60 seconds and then be forced to watch an ad that lasts just as long, if not longer. With Bitcoin Sudoku, though, I typically spent several minutes noodling over each puzzle before wrapping up and then enduring the next obnoxious ad.
Luckily, because the game sessions last longer, Bitcoin Sudoku hands out larger chunks of points after each round than other Bling games, which ultimately works to your benefit. It doesn’t feel like as much of a grind, which would’ve been a weird contrast for a simple sudoku game.
Bitcoin Sudoku isn’t breaking any ground when it comes to gameplay, but this is a solid rendition of the classic number-plotting game. It’s easy to play and understand, letting you tap any square on the grid and drop in a number, all while highlighting the relevant rows, columns, and squares. There are multiple difficulty settings available, along with hints and other options.
Granted, as with other play-to-earn mobile games from Bling Financial and contemporaries, you aren’t going to earn a whole lot of crypto. I played about an hour of the game and ended up with enough points to cash out 155 satoshis (aka 1/100,000,000 BTC)—about $0.11 worth at the current price of Bitcoin (about $72,700).
That’s pretty close to the hourly amount I earned through Bitcoin Solitaire, and more than through bubble shooter Bitcoin Pop—although Word Breeze beat all of them by that metric. It’s all peanuts, though, so don’t come into Bitcoin Sudoku—or any of these games—thinking that you’ll make any serious cash.
Even so, Bitcoin Sudoku provides a more pleasant balance of gameplay and ads than other games of this sort, with a tiny bit of BTC earnings on the side. If your goal is to stack sats whenever and however you can, you could do a whole lot worse than playing sudoku on your phone or tablet.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.