Erotic Sudoku with Evelyn Lory

There can't be many things less suited to be paired-up with the word 'erotic' than sudoku. Thanks to the endorsement of re-born sex goddess Carole Vorderman, sudoku is sometimes seen as the shiny pastime of the chic, when really it should be fronted by the Vorderman of ten years ago, when she looked ten years older by some virtuoso demonstration of reverse ageing.

Anyway, Erotic Sudoku proceeds down the current stream of modern logic, borrowing a spool of wool from Carole's PR patchwork to pull cute pink eyepatches over our naively willing eyes. So, yes, today sudoku is sexy, but what we're more interested in is the question of whether it's any fun.

Erotic Sudoku is fronted, this time in a very literal sense, by Evelyn Lory. As you might imagine, the game titillates you by making the player complete puzzles in order to reveal pictures of Lory in all her glory. Whilst the puzzle remains unsolved, we just get a half greyed-out version of an erotic little pose behind the puzzle itself.

The shots themselves are tasteful enough and of a decent resolution to sate the desire for some low-rent thrills, but anyone hoping for multi-frame fun should note all the erotic imagery is of the still variety. Once the still has been unlocked, you get to access it from the main game menu as often as you desire.

Unlocking these pictures arguably replaces any need for a narrative in the game, but we are still offered a difficulty curve in the shape of five different levels of difficulty, although none of these settings have to be unlocked. In fact, they're all immediately accessible from the beginning using the main menu.

Now that we've dealt with the first word in the game's title, it is perhaps time to don our NHS thick-rimmed glasses and move on to the second.

Given the brainpower involved in tackling anything but the easiest of sudoku boards, there was some doubt when the first sudoku games were released on mobile gaming platforms of how best to go about replacing the furious scribbles and workings out that usually grace the margins of any self-respecting paper-based sudoku puzzle.

The answer was to have a 'pencil' option, where the player could input up to eight little numbers in each box. Unfortunately, Erotic Sudoku breaks the cardinal rule of mobile sudoku by casting aside this feature and enabling the player to only input a single number into each square at any one time. Granted, the game does make it possible to leave the number in question blinking, reminding you that you're not so sure about the square, but it's certainly no replacement for the tried-and-tested method generally used.

The effect is that the game feels clunky, making particularly difficult puzzles hugely frustrating. It's really a pity, given that Erotic Sudoku includes a fair amount of puzzles – a fairly generous 20 for each difficulty level, making for 100 in total.

However, in spite of this fairly decent value for money factor, the pure shortcomings in terms of game interface place this title way below many others in the field of digital sudoku, and there certainly isn't enough sauciness here on show to make the numbers add up convincingly.