Daily Doku

About Daily Doku

Daily Doku is Achie's entry for LOWREZJAM 2024, a jam for games drawn at very low resolution, made in PICO-8 around the theme Peaceful. It takes sudoku down to a 4x4 grid split into four 2x2 boxes, and swaps the digits for four pixel icons: a heart, a star, a ball and a sparkle.

The title menu has two choices. RANDOM makes a fresh board every time, and DAILY gives the board of the day, which is the same for every player. Below that you choose a difficulty from easy upward, shown as a row of stars; the daily board does not change with it, only the number of holes you have to fill.

You move a cursor around the grid and place icons until every row, column and box holds each of the four once. A steps counter at the top tracks your moves. When you finish a daily board the game gives you a result line such as #DailyDoku 2024.8.4 with your stars, your time in seconds and your step count, which you can copy out with Ctrl+C. The comments on its itch page are full of these lines from players comparing their days.

It plays in the browser on itch.io and on the PICO-8 BBS, and there are free downloads for Windows, macOS, Linux and Raspberry Pi. It works with a keyboard, a gamepad or a touchscreen.

How to play Daily Doku

1. Open the itch page and start the game in the browser, or download it for your computer.
2. On the title menu choose DAILY, then pick a difficulty; harder settings leave more holes in the same board.
3. Move the cursor with the arrow keys and press C (or the gamepad button) to place an icon.
4. Fill the grid so each row, column and 2x2 box has the heart, star, ball and sparkle once each.
5. When the board is done, copy your dated result line with Ctrl+C to share it.

Screenshots

Tips

• Look for a row, column or box with three icons already in place: the fourth is forced.
• Play the daily on the highest difficulty if you want the most holes; it is still the same board as the easy one.
• Your step count is part of the result, so place an icon only once you are sure of it.
• Use RANDOM boards to practise between days.

Questions