Nintendo’s Touch Generations line has always been a great example of how to provide simple and engaging gameplay with top notch production values and better than average longevity. With Picross DS, Nintendo and Jupiter Multimedia continues this tradition by providing an addictive and terribly fun gaming experience that belies its bargain basement price.
Picross puzzles are a combination of crossword puzzles and 8-bit MS Paint style pictures. The puzzles consist of a blank grid of squares with a picture hidden in each grid. Each column and row of the grid are labeled with a series of numbers that tell the player how many squares in the row or column must be filled in. For example, if a row is labeled with a 5, that means that a string of five squares and only a string of five squares must be filled in. A sequence of 1 2 5 means that one square must be filled in, followed by at least one space, then two filled in squares, then at least one space, then five filled in squares. Once all of the squares are filled in, the picture is revealed. It seems simple, and when dealing with 5 x 5 grids, it is, however when you’re working on a 15 x 15 grid and the row is labeled with a 1, it’s not quite so easy.
Picross offers a variety of modes to not only provide the player with some instruction as they proceed, but also to provide some quick puzzle action when you don’t have the time for a 20 x 25 grid. Normal mode, used with easy to intermediate puzzles, tells the player when they’ve filled in a wrong square, but this information comes at a price. As each wrong square is filled in, time is added to the puzzle completion time. If your puzzle completion time exceeds an hour, you won’t be treated to the charming puzzle completion picture animation. It’s an unlikely carrot, to be sure, but you’d be surprised how many times you attempt the same puzzle just to see a winking giraffe.
Once you’ve graduated from the intermediate puzzles, you can attempt Free mode. In Free mode, you’re free to put marks down wherever you want, with no time penalties. The challenge here is that it becomes very easy to literally paint yourself into a corner. Thankfully, an overlay mode is present that allows you to try out various patterns and then quickly add them to the grid should you find the one that works.
Finally, Picross offers a handful of smaller, less time intensive modes. Daily Picross is a quick puzzle mode meant to be played every day, as the name implies. Players are challenged to do a set number of puzzles with various constraints; completion times are tracked from day to day, a la Brain Age, and more modes are unlocked the more you play.
As you complete rows of puzzles in Free and Normal mode, you can attempt small puzzles that have you either tapping all of the filled in squares in a set amount of time, tapping moving squares before the time runs out, or freeform “sketching” to replicate the provided picture, again, before the time runs out. These puzzle modes are simple, and inconsequential compared to your efforts to become a digital Seurat but provide a nice break from some of the mammoth puzzles you’ll come across as you progress deep into the game.
Once you’ve finished all of the puzzles, you can go online to challenge up to five friends in a two puzzle death match or download custom made puzzles from your friends or from Nintendo. (As of this time, there are no puzzles available from Nintendo). You can also create your own custom puzzles so that the entire world can revel in your digital renditions of mundane objects. To build up the ranks of Picross converts, Picross DS allows you to send a puzzle to any DS via the WFC connection so that your friends can try before they buy.
Picross is well suited to the DS’s touch controls as would be expected for a game that relies on speedy drawing. An alternate control scheme using the face buttons is available; however it’s not as useful. While playing, the lower screen acts as the play area while the upper screen shows a zoomed out view of your progress. This works well for puzzles of 10 x 10 and lower; however anything larger requires the player to zoom in and work on subsections of the grid at a time. The upper screen still shows the zoomed out view, however it also shows the bounding box of the current zoomed in view as well as lines dividing up the grid into 5 x 5 subsets. This can be a bit much to take in at once, however once you get a few larger puzzles under your belt, zooming in gets easier to handle. Still, you will find yourself wishing that there was more real estate to handle the larger puzzles.
As with the other Touch Generations games, Picross has an incredible amount of polish to it. Menus are vibrant and colorful and everything from the tutorials up to the puzzles themselves, including the finishing animations, has a bright, upbeat feel. The sound is less impressive as it is repetitive and forgettable, however once you get on a tear you won’t remember hearing anything, including the significant other you’ve been ignoring for an hour while trying to unlock the animation of an 8-bit water buffalo.
“Easy to pick up but hard to put down” has become a trite phrase but it fits Picross DS perfectly. It’s hard to believe that such a fun and puzzle packed game only costs 20 bucks, especially when many “next gen” games clock in at three times the price with barely as much content. Fans of logic puzzles as well as those looking for a fun diversion will be well served by giving Picross DS a try.
