Sudoku Zenkai - Interview with the developer of a fantastic app

Did you have any prior development or coding experience?

Yes, I’ve started making apps back in 2011 for Windows Phone, since then we evolved from simple apps to more and more complex games. Today we have dozens of apps published on all mobile platforms, games on Steam, Switch, and Xbox.

What was the most challenging aspect of developing mobile app?

The Co-Op functionality, since we never made real-time multiplayer games, we had to learn everything from the beginning before starting to actually implement it. Fortunately, it wasn’t that big of a deal, because we didn’t require low latency, but it still gave us a lot of work and worries.

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ImaginationOverflow is a team of people that comes together in order to make apps or games. Technically , the team consists of two full-time developers, but for every project, they usually invite other developers, graphical and audio designers to help them make our apps and games. ImaginationOverflow started publishing apps in 2011 and games in 2016.

Name a few of your favorite apps and reason you love them.

The apps I mostly use are for work, most of them are internal apps made by us that keep us updated on our project’s analytics and customer feedback. Besides our own internal apps, we use Twitter a lot to get in touch with our players and 9gag/Imgur for time-wasting. For games, I mostly play Pokemon Go.

How long have you been working on this app?

The entire development took us 6 months, from prototype to release, since then we’ve added a bunch of content and mode updates. I’ve been maintaining it and updating for almost 2 years now.

What need of the user did you have in mind when developing this app?

Well, this started off because I and my girlfriend played a lot of Sudoku while commuting. But since we liked to play together, we only played on one phone, and it was honestly a pain because we have different ways of solving sudokus. So why not make one that allows us to play together but on our own phones? After that, it was just a matter of putting it to code.

In what way do you think your app is better than similar apps on the market? Please describe in detail what innovation you think you bring and what you are proud of in your app.

Innovation is a world throw around too much these days, true innovation is rare and definitely not something that an app can do, in my opinion. What we did differently has added a co-op mode, at the time it wasn’t something that any other of the Sudoku games had (at least working), so the biggest difference is that. We also took special care with the game annotation system and overall interface to avoid confusion or distractions while the player is solving the puzzle.

What are your future plans and expected features of the coming new versions of this app?

We have a battle mode almost complete, where players can fight each other and send difficulties around by making squares in the game. It’s basically adding a layer of tension on Sudoku plus the enjoyment of winning and the frustration of losing.

Assuming new users of your app are reading this page. What do you want to ask them to do (contact you about X, Share the app, etc.)?

Have fun! We make apps and games to solve people problems (even if it is a little one) and pure enjoyment, of course you can contact us anywhere, email, directly, our discord server, etc. The second thing I wish to say is thank you! Every download help us keep motivation and focus on our work.