How does NintenDoku work?
NintenDoku is a 3x3 grid. Three categories sit above the columns in red and three more to the left of the rows in blue. Each of the nine cells needs a Nintendo game that satisfies both at once. If the column says "Nintendo Switch" and the row says "Role-playing game", that cell needs an RPG that first launched on Switch. Tap a cell, type a title into the search box, done.
Two rules set the difficulty. First, you get twelve guesses for the whole grid, and every entry counts, including a wrong one. Nine are spoken for by the nine cells, which leaves three misses. Second, no game may be used twice in the same grid, even when it technically fits several cells. The puzzle ends once every cell is filled or the twelve guesses are gone.
Those two rules are where the appeal comes from. A well known title often fits four of the nine cells, and the temptation is to spend it on the first one where it stands out. Later a cell sits open for which that exact title was the only answer you could think of. Working the grid from its tightest cell outwards gets you through with noticeably fewer misses.
Which categories are there?
The database knows several hundred categories across six groups. Only those with enough games to stay solvable actually appear in the puzzle. Very narrow categories with a handful of titles are filtered out, so in practice a smaller, playable subset remains. For many categories, tapping the label shows a short explanation.
- Platforms: every console individually, from NES and Game Boy through N64, GameCube, DS and Wii to Switch and Switch 2, plus umbrella categories such as "Handheld (all)".
- Franchises: from the major lines such as Mario, Zelda, Pokémon, Metroid and Kirby down to smaller ones like Advance Wars or F-Zero, provided enough titles come together.
- Genres: platformer, RPG, racing, strategy, party & minigames, fighting, rhythm and more.
- Companies: developers from HAL Laboratory, Intelligent Systems and Game Freak to Monolith Soft or Camelot. Nintendo's internal teams share "Developed by Nintendo", subsidiaries like Retro Studios or Monolith Soft have their own categories. Publishers (Published by Konami) and the home country of the lead studio (Made in Japan, Made in Europe) are part of this group too. Only well-known companies appear as a category.
- Release period: decades such as 1990-1999, offset ten-year blocks such as 1995-2004, plus pre-2000 and post-2000.
- Special: everything derived from the values, for instance a main story under 5 hours, more than 3 million copies sold, released on multiple platforms, launch title or remake. Also the US age rating ESRB, games with music on Nintendo Music and games that only run with an add-on.
Not every conceivable pairing shows up. Before a daily puzzle goes live, the generator works out each combination of row and column: how many games satisfy both conditions at once? If the count is too low, the pairing is dropped. A cell with exactly one correct answer is no longer a puzzle, it is a test of whether you happen to know that one game. Category groups also rotate, so the same types do not define the axes several days in a row.
How does the scoring work?
Each correctly filled cell is worth 50 to 100 points. Nine cells therefore add up to 900, and the guesses you did not need are converted at the end, one unused guess being worth 100. A flawless grid leaves three of them over, which puts the daily maximum at 1,200 points.
What a single cell is worth depends on how often that title was named by other players in earlier puzzles. The current puzzle does not count towards it, otherwise the score would depend on who plays when. This way everyone can reach the same score for the same puzzle. A full 100 is available in every cell. What pulls a cell down are the titles that get named often in their category, and it takes a really obvious pick like Zelda: Breath of the Wild to slide towards 50.
In practice that means two things. Wrong guesses cost twice, because every guess left over would have been worth 100 at the end. And getting near the top means avoiding, in the wider cells, the titles that are almost always named there first. How lopsided that is shows in the analysis of every puzzle so far: within a single cell, a substantial share of all correct answers goes to the same title, even though well over a dozen games would usually fit. The exact figures are on NintenDoku in Numbers.
Running alongside is your streak. It counts how many days in a row you have played the daily puzzle and is stored locally in your browser. Skipping a day resets it to zero.
Which game modes are there?
Daily puzzle: A new puzzle appears every day at 06:00 German time, identical for everyone worldwide. It is generated on the server the night before and can be played once per day. Finishing it gives you your score, the solution and the option to share your result. On top of that comes a detailed daily breakdown: how many people played worldwide, the average score, how often each individual cell was solved and which titles were chosen there.
Unlimited mode: As many random puzzles as you like with no countdown, switchable between easy and hard. No streak and no daily scoring, but the right place to practise.
??? Nintendo experts can unlock a further mode through an exceptional result in the daily puzzle.
Which games are in the database?
The database holds more than 7,700 titles from NES to Nintendo Switch 2. It covers Nintendo first-party productions, games from other publishers released exclusively on a Nintendo platform, and Nintendo mobile and arcade titles. Only first releases are recorded, so no ports and no re-releases. Remakes and remasters get no separate entry, the original is what counts.
Scores come from Metacritic, kept separate for critics and users. Playtimes come from HowLongToBeat and refer to the main story. Sales figures come from publisher reports and are recorded per platform, so a collection released later does not count towards the original game.
Those sources have limits that show up in play. Review scores only exist comprehensively from around the year 2000, so an NES classic often has no Metacritic entry at all and can never be caught by a score-based category. For playtimes, no value is shown at all when too few data points exist, rather than asserting a poorly supported one. Sales work the same way: only documented figures go in. For many older and Japan-only titles no number was ever published, so a missing value says nothing about how a game did. Sales-based categories therefore only ever draw on the titles that have a documented figure.
Why one series can be many different answers
A franchise in the database is not a single genre. "Mario" covers platformers in two and three dimensions, racing games, party games, sports titles and turn-based role-playing games. For the puzzle that is an advantage: if "Mario" sits above a column while the rows switch between racing, role-playing and platformer, each of those cells needs a different Mario title. Since no game may appear twice in the grid, a broad series is valuable, it supplies a separate answer for several cells at once. Pokémon behaves the same way, with dungeon crawlers, a photography game, puzzle titles and fighting games alongside the main line.
Some games shipped in two parallel editions with different content from the very start, the Pokémon principle: Red and Blue, later Sword and Shield, Ruby and Sapphire. Both editions together form exactly one database entry, not two, with the name carrying both editions joined by a slash, for example "Pokémon Sword / Shield". Two separate entries would count the same release twice and skew both the puzzle's answer logic and the popularity analysis. If a name like that shows up as an answer, it is still a single answer, not a special case.
Tips for getting started
- Start with the tightest cell. Find the field with the fewest possible answers and fill it first. The wide fields will still be there later.
- Save your multi-fit titles. A game that works in three cells belongs in the one where nothing else does.
- Think first release. The original version is what counts. A game that debuted on Wii U and came to Switch afterwards belongs in the Wii U cell.
- The search box is forgiving. Capitalisation, hyphens, colons and accents do not matter, and partial words are enough.
- Go unusual on purpose. Scoring rewards the rare correct answer over the first one that comes to mind.
What is new in NintenDoku?
Latest update to N-Puzzle: November 9, 2026.
- November 9, 2026: Every genre now has a short explanation behind the info icon.
- November 9, 2026: Updated sales figures, and 70 games have them for the first time. "Music on Nintendo Music" now also counts the original if a re-release has the same music. Plus some fixes based on your reports. Thanks!
- November 6, 2026: New categories: ESRB age rating, publisher, the studio's home country, add-on required and music on Nintendo Music. "Party" is now "Party & minigames", and dance games like Just Dance no longer count.
All changes and upcoming features are listed under News and roadmap, where you can also vote on what should come next.