Last updated on November 30th, 2025 at 12:52 pm
Kakuro Challenge – Cross Sum – Puzzle Game Review
Kakuro Challenge – Cross Sum is a Puzzle/Board game from Stanley Lam, first launched in 20th December 2016.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 64+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Kakuro Challenge – Cross Sum Stand Out
Kakuro is one of the oldest logic grid puzzles. Kakuro is like a crossword puzzle with numbers. Each word must add up to the number provided in the clue above it or to the left. A given number can only be used once in a word. Every kakuro puzzle has one and only solution, and can be solved through logic alone.
Dot Kakuro is a new variant of Kakuro puzzle. No digit can be duplicated in a row or column. If difference between two numbers in neighboring cells equals 1, then they are separated by a dot. If a dot is absent between two white cells, the difference between the numbers in these cells is more than 1.
Kakuro Challenge features
Content
- 5 difficulty levels for standard Kakuro puzzles
- 3 sizes for Dot Kakuro puzzles
Features
- Cheat sheet helps you to solve the puzzle
- Pencil mode
- Hint feature
- Autosave the process of unfinished levels
- Record best completion time for each level
This Puzzle game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Kakuro Challenge – Cross Sum is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 10th July 2025
Recent improvements include:
- Bug fixes and performance improvements
Download & Availability
Kakuro Challenge – Cross Sum is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Kakuro Challenge – Cross Sum on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
We have really enjoyed this game. Each time we learn some othertrick or nuance. We would love to see an app devoted to dot Kakuro, so there would be more to choose from. Good job.
We enjoy the game ,but it is not hard enough.
Very creative variation of kakuro and a lot of fun. Seems a bit more challenging at start.
Works very smoothly. So good for keeping sharp with numbers and absolutely addictive. You learn numbers with very limited possibilities quickly and the game speeds up.
We'd say this game is pretty good. So far we've played Kukuro, and Dot Kukuro which we like because you get to use the type of logic required for Sudoku in a Kukuro puzzle. We didn't rate it higher because you only get 35 free puzzles. Then each set of 25 puzzles is 99 cents each. Seriously way too expensive. Other apps we've used are much more generous. On the other hand, out of the three we've tried, this one is the easiest to use, has the best design. This app is worth downloading to play 35 free puzzles. After that, we'd look elsewhere.
This was our favorite Nakuru game but it has a limited number of puzzles. After you solve all the free and the paid puzzles your only option it to do the previously solved puzzles over again. They havent added any new puzzles.
Great game, but the numbers mainly 123 do not work most of the time.
We downloaded dot Kakuro because it reminded us of kropki. Dot Kakuro is fun to play and is one of our favorite number games.
Much more convenient than by paper and pencil.
Update: we were wrong – the puzzles we thought had multiple solutions do in fact have unique solutions! While taking into account the rule that cells with a dot between them would differ by exactly 1, we missed the second rule that cells without a dot would differ by more than 1 – always. Apologies to the developers on our earlier review! Upgrading to 5 stars. Leaving in our original review since it emphasized that puzzles were enjoyable and challenging even when we thought there was a logic oversight: The dot variation puzzles have several rule twists that make us stop and think – in a good way. We hope more are programmed! We agree with another reviewer that several dot puzzles have multiple solutions. We'd half expected they weren't understanding all the rules, but sure enough, there are pairs of numbers at the end for which there is no way to pick the correct numbers using logic. Getting the puzzles to that point was still challenging – almost more so since you never knew until the end if every cell could be solved. Still it would be nice to fix this in a future release, hence the one-star deduction. There are several free puzzles to enjoy while deciding if it's worth buying additional sets.
This app shows promise for being a good game, particularly the dot Kakuro, which is a nice twist. However, several of the sample games have multiple correct solutions rather than having one unique solution. This is frustrating because the solution you have chosen, even though correct, may be flagged as incorrect if it is not the solution the developers have chosen.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.0.17
- Size: 11.24 MB
- iOS: 13.0 or later
- Languages: EN, JA, ZH, ZH
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: Stanley Lam
Last updated: 10th July 2025 | Genre: Puzzle, Board | Developer: Stanley Lam