Unolingo: Done With Sudoku? So Are We!

The dedicated among our readers are likely aware of the fact that we (or I, anyway) freaking love puzzle games. I don’t care what it is that you’re trying to hock to me, if it’s got a solid puzzle premise, a red hot concept, and several hundred hours of puzzling gameplay, then I am all about your app. However, this means I’ve also got a pretty good handle on what makes a great puzzle game for iOS. With that in mind, I can confidently say that Unolingo is above and beyond a great puzzler for the platform, and will soon become a classic puzzle concept in general. It’s a bold claim, but if you want the proof, you’ll need to slide on down below the break to get to the pudding!

Concept and Gameplay

To begin with, all good puzzle games need to come with some kind of concept. It must be unique, inventive, and good enough to keep us coming back for more every time. Thankfully, Unolingo brings the goods on all accounts.

It’s one parts crossword, two parts sudoku, and a bit of Scrabble. Essentially, the game presents you with a crossword, as well as a set of the entire alphabet—that is to say you’ll get one chance to play each of the 26 letters. Now, you must place those letters in the crossword so that they spell words upwards, downwards, and sideways, and across the entire board. In this way, it’s a lot like Sudoku, only it uses a finite set of letters rather than numbers. We prefer this setup quite a bit, actually, but we’re more partial to wordgames, anyway. Overall, though, it’s a fantastic idea, and honestly it’s one we wish we’d thought of first. The end results are crazy fun, and can be extremely challenging, too.

Design and Graphics

Unolingo for iPhone

At first, we were very ready to complain about the game’s graphics: It’s not the most branded or most unique interface we’ve ever seen. Keeping that in mind, it’s certainly passable. So what are we trying to say? More or less, we’re saying future updates could easily make Unolingo more of its own thing, but in the meantime, we ended up being too distracted by the incredible gameplay to pay much attention to the looks. Overall, it’s a solid if not visually award winning effort.

Overall Value

If we could give more than five stars here we absolutely would. The app is completely free, comes with a mammoth (we say that a lot, but we truly mean mammoth) amount of content, and will keep you entertained potentially until the sun explodes. Note that the first 20 puzzles are free and additional puzzles are available through their Shop as in-app purchases. If you’re into puzzle games for iOS, word games, or both, this is easily one to invest some time into. Don’t take our word for it: Try Unolingo out now. Also, besides the iOS platform the app is also available for the following platforms: Nook, Kindle Fire, and Android.

Unolingo requires iOS 4.3 or later and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. A small expedite fee was paid by the developer to speed up the publication of this review, as well as a video production fee.