Who better to judge when a new app is ready to be released than, well, a judge? Especially when the genesis for the app came from the judge himself.
As Stephane Cotichini and his team of developers at the Port Moody game studio 81 Monkeys were putting the finishing touches on Sudoku Scramble, a multi-player version of the number-placement puzzle game they’d been working on for the better part of a year, they looked to Cotichini’s step-father who is a judge in Brampton, Ont., for a verdict on its fun factor.
After all, it was his board game invention that sparked the creation of the app for mobile phones and tablets.
“He’s a critical guy,” Cotichini said.
Cotichini was working on some individual projects out of his Anmore home after 15 years of toiling long hours for major gaming studios when his step-father showed him a multi-player board game version of sudoku he’d been working on.
Cotichini said he’d never played the puzzle game that is usually played solitaire, let alone thought about it. But the idea of turning the board game into an app intrigued him. A dig into the numbers that showed there were 400 million sudoku players around the world just a few short years ago and an estimated 50 million downloads of the most popular solitaire sudoku app excited him.
“That’s an opportunity to be innovative,” Cotichini said.
He started to study the game, played it obsessively to learn its strategies. Then Cotichini set about recruiting a small team of developers from his students at the Art Institute where he was doing some part time teaching. They were Cameron Gomez, Kmin Spencer and Nate Wiesel. Cotichini’s wife, Adel, helps with the writing and promotion.
Everyone was a sudoku neophyte.
Over countless boxes of take-out pizza and breaks to play strategy board games, the project came together.
Three times a version of the app was released for free download and then pulled back as the team refined it further according to feedback from users. Several times they had to reign themselves in so the game wouldn’t become bloated with too many features and esoteric challenges.
But the most important opinion of all, before the game could be considered complete, belonged to Cotichini’s step-father, Paul Currie.
“That’s when you know you have the right ingredients,” Cotichini said. “Before that it’s just a hope.”
The app is free for both iOS and Android platforms. The studio makes money from ads that appear during gameplay and from some in-app purchases of special features and additional challenges. Cotichini said it can be a delicate balance to create a fun experience for users without pestering them with ads or holding their game hostage for additional purchases.
“If it’s an enjoyable experience, then you can make money,” Cotichini said.
And the verdict of his step-father?
“He loves it,” Cotichin said. “He plays it every day.”
• For more information about Sudoku Scramble, including a trailer, screenshots and links to downloads, go to http://www.81monkeys.com/sudoku-scramble
