Last updated on January 18th, 2026 at 01:01 am
Real Kakuro™ – Puzzle Game Review
Real Kakuro™ is a Puzzle/Entertainment/Board game from Luiz Deucher, first launched in 30th August 2011.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 2,580+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Real Kakuro™ Stand Out
Featured as "What's Hot" in puzzle and board categories in US app store
Now with 3000 puzzles. Can you solve them all?
Real 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. Words can only use the numbers 1 through 9, and a given number can only be used once in a word. Every kakuro has one and only solution, and can be solved through logic alone.
Real Kakuro is a very elegant game, providing fabulous gameplay experience with 3000 unique games.
- Clean board, providing hours of pleasure gameplay;
- Handmade unique challenging games. All games and categories were designed to fit a 10×10 board without compromising quality and the need of zooming;
- No locked levels. Play whatever you want whenever you want;
- Autosave game. You don't need to worry if you don't have much time to play. It will automatically save all unfinished games;
- Simple menu context. Your game is just a few clicks away;
- No in app music. You can play while listening your own iPod library;
- High definition graphics for iPad, iPhone 4/4s/5 and iPod Touch;
- Game Center statistics. Compare your results worldwide.
This Puzzle game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Real Kakuro™ is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 3rd July 2023
Recent improvements include:
Minor bug fixes
Download & Availability
Real Kakuro™ is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
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 loved this app! However, we finished them all. Please update.
One enhancement would be if we could save the puzzle at a certain point and then return to that point once its obvious Ive made a mistake. Just one level of saves. (Im now using our phone to take a pictures, which is tedious.).
Its not about spelling, its about numbers! Lol This is the best Kakuro app on iTunes and it has been for a really long time now. Other apps are a mix of crossums, Ken-Ken, and Sudoku, but this one is all Kakuro. U get all of the puzzles too, not just a couple, all of em, for free. We constantly delete and re-download it to complete all puzzles over again. If Im not on our phone playing this, Im hitting up Krazy Dad online for free printables.
The game is excellent, nice tutorial for beginners too. Ive never played a game in our life until we tried this. Very beautiful and quality hand play. They dont collect your data and the ads are not intrusive. Highly recommend.
Nice we can use it without internet, also finally figured out the secret.
One of the best mind games and number games. Better than Sudoku.
Perfect app. No complaints! Endless possibilities and challenges.
We have used this number puzzle app for maybe 10 years. We like it better than Sudoku. A couple of friends are hooked on this app too. Seemingly endless puzzles organized into different challenge levels. It is beautifully designed, easy on the eyes, with an intuitive interface. Excellent simple instructions. We have never noticed any bugs. The minimalist haptic soundyou can turn it off easily. The adsif you keep themdo not interrupt your game play and only appear when you fully complete a puzzle. People: this developer DOES NOT COLLECT YOUR DATA and still maintains this clean fun well-designed app. If you enjoy the app and do not like the ads, simply pay $2.99 for ad-free. The concern about light and dark mode may have been intended for another app because this app is in pleasing browns. The concern about small fingers in small spacesThis app is actually superior in how its design allows you to put possible numbers in each square. Some apps do not allow that. On small phone screens, we do not see how this could be different. Get this privacy-respectful app, pay 2.99 for ad-free, and enjoy peaceful satisfying puzzling for years.
We find ourselves making excuses to take breaks to play. It requires a constant review of addition factsbut sometimes thats not enough to get the job done. We love it.
Taxes brain power of logic and deduction reasoning.
Love the game and we like how the game was setup. Thank you.
Fun game even for someone used to this game on paper.
We do the kakuro puzzle in the Epoch Times and this app is just as fun and easy to play. Plus its free which is really nice.
We love this puzzle, everything about it — except when we "win". When we "win" we get a "reward" — and that reward is having to sit through an advertisement for another game or puzzle which has so little to do with solving kakuro as to be laughable — except that after a couple of hundred it is REALLY annoying. We know that this "reward" system has something to do without how Kakuro floats its boat (so to speak) but doesn't it seem like it would make sense to provide an actual reward — like points toward some acquisition, perhaps? We don't know — we just know we don't like it the way it is. Te way it is we have to pay the 'ultimate sacrifice' just for winning. P.U.
Ive been playing this game for years and it never gets old.
There is no dark mode and tiny text so we get eye strain playing on our small phone screen before bed, but the MOST annoying thing about this app is that the obnoxious sound effects cannot be muted except by silencing our device altogether. We cant listen to music while we play unless we play music on a separate device. Why even program sounds at all? They add nothing to the gameplay. Theyre just annoying.
We love this game. We have it on 4 devices.
All solved grids are blank. What a disappointment. Only in-progress grids show anything. What a shame.
Ive been playing Kakuro/cross sums for many years. Ive tried many app versions and this is by far the best. The ads are unobtrusive; which is the exact reason we paid for the ad free version.
Fun to play. Highly recommend. Game play excellent. Ive played for many years for brain training and relaxation. Good features. Gives you a pencil for options and pen for final. Just like playing on paper. Hints if you want them or disabled for challenge. We play for fun so we use easier version. Very honest developers. Collect no data. No ads. Really great.
We wish there was a way to get a hint on the very challenging puzzles. There are some that we havent been able to solve and we would love to finish them. However we have spent many hours playing this wonderful app.
Im new to Karuko but we love this app. Im still learning how to figure out the puzzles so its very helpful to have in game guidance. The interface is beautiful and it runs flawlessly.
Easy enough to learn for a beginner, but challenging enough at the higher levels to make this worth getting the ad free version. Five levels of difficulty keeps your interest as you get more experienced. Im on the 4th level now, and have had to skip finishing 3 or 4 puzzles as the answer eludes us. Depressing the see Ive spent over 3 hours on one puzzle, but what an endorphin rush Ill get when we finally nail it.
We had herd about this puzzle. But tried for the first time. It is a wonderful vitamin for our aging neurons.
We enjoy this game. It is fun to play but exercises your brain.
When we were young we spent a lot of time with Dell puzzle books and our favorite puzzle was Cross Sums. We dont remember how we came upon Kakuro but Im so glad we did, only to find our good old friend. We still get so much satisfaction when we solve one, especially the harder levels.
Awesome game! Love the extreme puzzles! Ads are a pain but only 5 seconds so not too bad.
This is our go-to game for keeping our mind sharp. Ive probably played a thousand games and we still enjoy the challenge. Most games are easily mastered and we get bored. But this game has LEVELS! Easy for the first few levels but almost impossible to logically solve the highest levels. If you really crave a logical challenge, try this one.
We love this game. It makes you think. There arent many ads and putting options in pencil helps. We like if you put a wrong answer, erasing it gives you the penciled options back.
We have been enjoying Kudoku for years. It is challenging and could become addictive. It increased our enjoyment when we discovered the hint feature. Even with that assistance, it requires thinking about the effect of each move in different directions. We have to restart the puzzle when we mess up. Can be frustrating but it is fun.
We play this all the time. We are a huge fan. The odd thing is though that some of the easy ones can be hard and some of the extreme ones are not so extreme. Its OK though cause its always a challenge trying to beat the clock at the less challenging levels.
Without a doubt our go to when we need some us time! Ive completed all of the Extreme level games first, then the Challenging, almost done with the Hard level and we think Ill go back and redo the Extreme level again once Ive completed all of the hard level games just to keep our mind intact for as long as possible. Love, love, love this game; and yes, just like another viewer wrote this is a cousin to sudoku which we mastered years ago, but this requires math skills, with 45 being the highest possible sum, so yeah you got this! We love a challenge.
We have enjoyed doing them all, then going back to beat our former times. One thing we would like to see is an UNDO feature so you can go back to a former point and work from there.
Love it! Just enough challenge for us on the extreme level. We can get a ribbon on every challenging level, have to skip some on the extreme level. Have played, deleted, then started all over again several times. Terrific! Still love the game. But Im 70 now, and can no longer do the extreme level without a great deal of frustration. Challenging level is perfect for us now! Love it. We want to keep our brain working.
We used to do these puzzles in Dell puzzle magazines many years ago. They were called cross-sums there. This was long before Sudoku became popular. Sudoku puzzles were included in the magazine as well even then, but they were called number-place. Nice to see both become widely played! You can remove ads for $2.99, but most are easy to put up with. However, some are sticky in that it is hard to get back to the game. We will NEVER play Royal Match for just this reason. Others stay around for 20 seconds – too long – 10 will do just fine. Make your choice, but play Kakuro.
So much better than Sudoku! Any addiction to Sudoku will be substituted by Kakuro.
Real Kakuro was and still is our favorite relaxing game on cellphone.
This is a very well done game. The only negative comment we have, as you can see it doesnt lower the star rating, is this: When you are using the pencil marks (much needed and appreciated at the hardest level) and then you write a number in pen in that row or column, the pencil marks dont update to reflect that you can no longer use that number. Still, we love this game.
No more — or less — to be said about it.
Please enlarge the keypad size. Besides that inconvenience, we love the App.
Perfect for sleepless nights or waiting around. Some odd crazy bugginess which causes input to continue without actually entering values into the game, and game crashing when finishing a round in the Expert rounds are minor annoyances.
Nice app All of them are circles so to speak. Would like some of the standard ones with challenging centers.
This game is super awesome. We even paid for it, which we are wont to do in this day and age. Given the number of puzzles, we think 2.99 is a fair price. Our only request to the devs, to make a 5-star rating, please add stats for each round. We have to page through in order to try and find fastest/longest. Would be cool to have a separate stats page. Anyway – great job.
Im a numbers guy so we like numerical puzzles. Ive enjoyed hours playing this game. Probably close to 1000 games. There are adds at the top of the screen that arent too distracting. At the completion of a puzzle it would take you to a short advertisement for another type of game- usually 5 to 10 seconds. Some were less. Now recently theyve added advertisements that last 30 seconds for other games. Im sorry but that is too much for us. Im looking for other alternatives now.
We wish you could pay to eliminate ads.
This is a great app. Well written and definitely fun to play. That said, it is not appropriate for younger players, as about 30% of the ads are for pornographic AI girls. We dont expect that in a game app.
It appears that you may have done a recent downgrade that screwed things up. Even though it says its been around for a couple of years, something definitely changed.
We love playing this game however the graphics havent been updated in several years. As we get older the numbers get harder to see. You cant zoom in and the contrast between the brown background and cream letters strains our eyes.
The time spent in ads for this game has gotten ridiculous! The ad. Lock is 50 seconds long while it only takes us 90-120 seconds to do one of the puzzles. That means 25-33% of our time is spent watching (or ignoring ads when we would much rather play the puzzles. We have already dropped some games because of such things and we are about ready to drop this one, too.
This is a great app for Kakuro until you look for basic features like undo or providing hints when youre stuck – theyre not even available for a price. Theres only so many times youre willing to start a game over because you cant figure out where the mistake is.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 5.3
- Size: 23.70 MB
- iOS: 12.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: [Luiz Deucher]()
Last updated: 3rd July 2023 | Genre: Puzzle, Entertainment | Developer: Luiz Deucher