Kakuro Beaches - One More Puzzle from Japan

The whole world has recently seen the growing popularity of Kakuro- a puzzle that appeals to one's attention and knowledge of arithmetics. Like Sudoku, Kakuro was invented in Japan and is an arithmetical version of Cross Word. In Japan, it is the second favorite puzzle, played at any age.

Previously, you would see Kakuro puzzle printed on a paper sheet just like a cross-word in black and white.

Kakuro is a grid consisting of cells with clue digits and blank cells to be filled by a player.

The point of the puzzle is to fill these empty cells with numerals 1 through 9, so that the sum of the numerals you put into a certain number of cells would equal to the clue digit, which turns out to be a pretty challenging task as you put this idea into practice.

But solving kakuro on the piece of paper would be also very annoying, since one is unlikely to avoid nervousness while having to erase the fault numbers with a rubber and put them again with a pencil. This is what has made kakuro a real treasure for puzzle game developers.

After being presented  on a pc screen and thus, mistakes correction became tremendously easy, the puzzle has obtained a new look and feel.

Through the last year the casual world has been seeing an enormous popularity of Sudoku and Kakuro puzzles. As a result a great number of game developers have published their own titles.

Why not looking into one - Kakuro Beaches, by Absolutist. What makes this game special is the fact that exercising in addition turns out to be engaging on the graphical backgrounds of exotic seashores.

The main feature of the game interface is that here a Kakuro grid is placed simply on a graphical picture of some exotiñ sea.

Along with serene background music, the game play has a soothing effect upon a player.

Due to this fact, Kakuro Beaches can be called a meditative puzzle.

That's a nice getaway from your everyday cares. As you play it, you get an impression that time runs slower.  

Comprehensive information on kakuro rules can be found in the help menu. But the problem is the font size of the help text makes it impossible for a player to read the rules. This seems to be a drawback by artists.

Each game mode in Kakuro Beaches offers some 10,000 puzzle variations

The game features three skill levels and several grid types, which makes it interesting for both newbies and professionals in kakuro. If you're new, you'd better start at an easy level and choose the smallest grid.

As you get an idea of the game and proceed to a more complicated grid, you'd be astonished at how difficult it is to solve kakuro. And if you forget about your to-do list, you can spend a couple of hours filling the same rows and columns several times and striving to solve the puzzle to the very end.

Professional kakurists: ) would definitely find this game of a great value since it offers some 10,000 puzzle variations.

Moreover, once you can take your Kakuro puzzle with you everywhere. Just print it out from the game.

Create kakuro puzzles yourself with Puzzle Creator mode and share them with your friends

Puzzle creator, a game mode that enables player to create own puzzles is designed for passionate kakuro fans that cannot get enough of the available puzzle variations and badly need to create their own ones. Due to Kakuro Beaches, not only can one invent new puzzles, but also e-mail them to friends. 

To me, Kakuro and Sudoku remain something remote like a very sophisticated dish of the oriental cuisine. Being arithmetically challenged, I would give up once after I discover I have put the wrong figures. But Kakuro and Sudoku are designed for the true connoisseurs of the puzzles, who gladly spend their efforts and time trying to fill the grid with numbers.