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Reviews » Picross DS [DS]

After a nearly 7 month wait since the Japanese release, and another several month wait since the European release, Picross DS has finally been released in North America. Ok, great, but what is it? Picross is a game that's been around for about 20 years on a variety of platforms from "paper" to the original Game Boy. Additionally, you might have heard of it under a variety of names: Nonogram, Picross, Paint-by-Numbers, Griddlers, Crucipixel, Illust-Logic, and so on. They all describe the same game concept, though.

In Picross, you're presented with a blank grid (usually square, but sometimes lopsided), with listings of numbers running across the top and down the left side. At first glance you might think "O HAY THIS IS JUST LIKE SUDOKU RITE!?" but no, it isn't. For starters, when you solve a Picross puzzle you don't just end up with a horrible mess of numbers, you end up with a little two-tone pixel drawing. In Picross the numbers tell you how pixels are arranged in that row or column. They don't tell you the placement, just the order of consecutive segments. In a 10x10 puzzle, a row with the numbers "7 2" tells you that somewhere in this row is a filled segment 7 blocks long, followed by an empty block, followed by a segment two blocks long. Since it's a 10x10 puzzle and you know there can only be 10 blocks per row, you know exactly how that row should be filled in, since 7 + 1 + 2 is 10. This is about the second nicest case you can expect from Picross, right after "every block in this row is filled" or "every block in this row is empty". It gets difficult when you're confronted with a row that simply says "2" in a 25x20 puzzle. There are many simple and complex techniques for solving stuff, but I'll leave that for Wikipedia, if you're interested.

When Picross DS was first released this January, there were already a couple other games along these lines for the DS. I wasn't incredibly impressed with them. They lacked the ability to – with just a couple clicks – dive right into a game. They also lacked a really solid user interface, and when it comes to Picross games, the user interface is really the make-or-break feature, because there's not a whole lot of ways you can screw up the incredibly simplistic gameplay mechanics. With Picross DS, Jupiter did absolutely everything right, they came up with an innovative and simple user interface, filled the game to the brim with puzzles, made a usually complex game accessible to new players, and tossed in some extras that just haven't been seen in other Picross games.

Picross DS has two core modes: "Normal" and "Free Play". Both modes have 11 levels a piece, each made up of 15 puzzles ranging in sizes from 10x10 to 25x20. The key difference between the two modes is that in normal mode errors are pointed out for you. So if you incorrectly mark a block as filled your clear time gets penalized by a few minutes and the block gets marked as known-to-be-blank. Over in Free Play finding and fixing errors is your job, so if you screw up, you're left to your own devices, which is much more like other Picross games.

The user interface for any puzzle mode is the same. Up on the top screen at all times is a zoomed-out gridless view of the puzzle as you solve it. Down on the bottom screen is your actual working area, and the controls are very intuitive. With the stylus mode, your off-hand controls what your stylus does. On the dpad (or abxy buttons if you're a lefty) the default action is the right button, which lets you drag the field around to see what you're working with. The buttons you'll generally be swapping back and forth between most of the time are up and down. Holding the up button activates block marking, so you just hold up and start tapping blocks or drawing lines where you think blocks should exist. If by process of elimination you've determined that some blocks have to be empty, you can mark them as known-empty by holding the down button and marking like usual.

Where Picross DS really shines is in all the little niceties you'll find everywhere you go. For instance, when you're zoomed in and scrolling around, to make it easier to tell what numbers you're dealing with Picross DS shows little floating numbers that tell you the clues for the row and column you have clicked, as well as the rows and columns on either side of the one you're on. This might sound like it's not a big deal, but it makes large puzzles much more manageable, since it means you can actually stay zoomed in. Other implementations I've seen of Picross on the DS have forced you to always use a zoomed-out mode, and that really sucks if you're trying to use the stylus. The game also keeps track of what numbers you've cleared properly, though this can only really be trusted in Normal mode, since in Free Play there could be any number of different ways you could fill a line that matches a given clue.

In addition to the 330 puzzles built into the game, Picross DS is expandable in two ways. First way is over WFC. Nintendo hasn't pushed any packs yet for North America, but over in Japan they've released around 30 downloadable packs that have 10 "classic" puzzles from previous Nintendo Picross games like Mario's Picross and Mario's Super Picross. In the three months it's been out in Europe, they've released a couple of these puzzle packs, but nowhere near the number that are out in Japan. The point is that if Nintendo releases all the packs they've done in Japan, they'll effectively double the number of puzzles in the game as time goes on, giving Picross DS an incredible amount of lasting appeal.

Picross DS also has a "My Picross" mode where you can make your own Picross puzzles, to share with friends either over local wireless or over WFC. Other multiplayer options have you racing with friends over local wireless to complete a puzzle first. Additionally, there's a "Daily Picross" mode that has you doing little timed drills on a daily basis with performance tracking like in Brain Age.

I'm not really big on that stuff, though. I really just see them as bonuses to an already wonderful game. Picross DS does everything I want in a Picross game. It has a great simple intuitive user interface, it has a TON of puzzles (so many that I still haven't finished them all on my Japanese import), it has puzzles that will hopefully be added constantly, and it has two modes for me to pick from based on how much I want to think today.

If you like Picross or like puzzle games, Picross is a no-brainer. You need it. If you're not super big on puzzle games, that's fine, I know not everyone likes puzzle games. But then again, I don't know of anyone who doesn't at least have a passing interest in puzzle games, especially incredibly well-done and accessible puzzle games like Picross. Granted, we're not talking Tetris-level accessibility, but it's still pretty high, and high enough that I'm giving this a Highly Recommended.

Picross DS - DS

Presentation

Unlike a lot of the other Picross games I've played for the DS, Picross DS has slick graphics and catchy music, just like you'd expect from a game Nintendo had a hand in.

Gameplay

Picross DS is by far the best implementation of Picross I've ever played on any platform. Some of the PC implementations have come close, but really Picross DS is just perfect in this respect.

Replayability

While you won't necessarily be going back and re-playing former puzzles (unless it's to get an under 1 hour solve time), there's a ton of content in Picross DS. 330 puzzles built in, with average clear times of anywhere from a minute to an hour (or more!). Even if you assume an average of 5 minutes per puzzle (which is incredibly low), that comes out to 27.5 hours of gameplay, and when was the last time you got that much play time out of a handheld game? Seriously?

Value

It's retailing for TWENTY DOLLARS. That's 16.5 cents per puzzle. Less if you count Easy Mode and the puzzles Nintendo will be releasing over the coming months.

Overall

Picross DS is the best puzzle game I've played all year. I've repeatedly seen how easy it is to screw up Picross thanks to lame UI's or trying to do too much like multi-color puzzles. Picross DS is solid, full of content, cheap, and an absolute must-buy if you enjoy puzzle games.