Gameschooling with Colorku: It’s Sudoku in Color

JanuaryJeni1

Colorku, the color Sudoku puzzle, is great in theory. Terrible in execution. Timberdoodle sends us a ton of great items to review, and we’ve loved nearly everything, but this was a total miss for our family. My candid review follows.

If you’ve played Sudoku, where numbers 1-9 must be contained in each row, column and square of puzzle without repeating, you understand the rules of Colorku — just sub out colors for numbers.

Infinitely more instagrammable.

But compared with traditional Sudoku, that’s where the pros stop and cons begin. Let me count down our issues with Colorku.

  1. It’s a box full of tiny balls. I generally hate any games that come with tiny pieces that roll in all directions and pose as choking hazards.

    There are 81 tiny wooden balls.

    If you have kids under the age of three, like we do, you may want to reconsider this one. Not a total deal breaker — but wait, there’s more.

  2. When I opened this box, my living room smelled like we’d just stepped into a nail salon. The smell was so overpowering, I stuck the game in the garage for a week to air out.

  3. The game appears to be cheaply made and not really well designed. Manufactured in China (many good things are now a days but thought I’d note for anyone curious), the box isn’t a good design. First of all, you must tear apart the flimsy perforated cards. Call me lazy, but I hate that.

4. The game comes with a small storage box you put together to hold the game cards after you assemble them. However the game box doesn’t account for the extra width of the stacked cards. So the lid doesn’t fit. And no the board isn’t hollow underneath.

5. The outside box doesn’t indicate how many players. I thought this was odd. Inside in the directions it says to be played alone or others can help. Ok. I get that its modelled after Sudoku. But I was hoping it was in some way adapted to be collaborative since it’s in board game form. Nope it’s literally just Sudoku on a game board. Which brings me to my next point.

6. Why do you need a game board to play this? It’s a big, solid block of wood that’s been CNC-ed (is that a verb? It is now) to have grooves to hold the balls in place. It takes away the convenience of Sudoku puzzles and turns it into a big clumsy thing that takes up space. Where previously you could easily transport and play Sudoku in any space, this takes a step backwards from the traditional format. Nope really can’t play this to pass time on the go. Not ideal for car travel or other trips. I’ll take the original version.

7. Setting up each challenge is a pain. Printed Sudoku is ready to go. Needing to have it in wooden puzzle form is just unnecessary. But it’s pretty. Ok. It is prettier.

8. So here is the breaking point for me — much of Sudoku game play is trial and error. There’s no way of knowing which piece is the existing puzzle you’ve just set up to solve and which is the green ball you set down a couple steps ago. Yes the directions say not to put down a ball until you’re sure, but then you’re holding them mentally and physically (you argue but hey memory skills! Fine motor! Ok sure). But sometimes you think a ball belongs but you’re just wrong. You must keep referring back to the tiny card, and it’s kind of a pain especially with multiple kids. It’s really just not a collaborative game.

I kept thinking, I’m going to get my kids regular Sudoku books to play individually.


If you’re looking for a similar but much smarter game — the last color challenge game from Timberdoodle that we reviewed was so much more fun. The pieces only rotated into place once you were sure it was correct. No choking hazards. Game cards store INSIDE the (laser-cut) box. No harsh chemical smell. Though I will say the Colorku smell did fade and was undetectable by the time we played thankfully.

So, y’all, there’s my unvarnished opinion.

I’m sure others loved Colorku.

Somehow.

I did not. My big kids did not. My husband did not. My toddler probably would have loved it — but mostly for the rolling choking hazards.

While we were playing, I did think, Hey, I’d LOVE to see Colorku available in a book or worksheets instead… though then you’d need a bunch of markers to go with it… And then they’d need to be erasable I guess. Yeah. Maybe Color Sudoku is a bad idea. I’m picky about what we play and what I recommend, so we’ll stick with the original Sudoku.

That said — Colorku is part of the 4th grade curriculum kit — so if you think despite all these points I mentioned, this sounds just up your alley, you can give Colorku a go yourself. OR what I love so much about Timberdoodle is that the kits are totally customizable. You just go in and swap out what you don’t want under the “Custom Homeschool Curriculum Kit” tab.

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