Hitori by Nikoli

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local Wireless)

.

Review:

The name Nikoli may not mean much to American gamers, but the company has had a massive impact on the world of Puzzle games. Founded in 1980, Nikoli is a Japanese magazine publisher, and they have made a name for themselves for popularizing a wide variety of logic puzzles. The most noteworthy of these is undoubtedly sudoku, which Nikoli helped to flourish in popularity in Japan, which then in turn spread worldwide. However, the company has published dozens of different types of puzzles, many of which have become popular in their own right as well, such as Numberlink.

As a result of this powerful impact the company has had on the world of Puzzle games, numerous Puzzle game releases on the PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch bear Nikoli’s name. Hitori by Nikoli, released on Nintendo 3DS in 2012, is a $5 release that has players tackling 50 puzzles of various difficulty levels in a style of game that is fairly different from Sudoku, but still has players working through logic and process-of-elimination.

For those unfamiliar with Hitori, the premise here is that players are presented with a grid, and they must paint the cels within that grid in a way that obeys the following three rules:

1. Each column and each row must contain only one of each number (though unlike Sudoku, rows and columns do not have to have every number), with players “painting over” numbers to remove them.
2. Every cel adjacent to a painted cel must remain unpainted.
3. All unpainted cels must be contiguous once the puzzle is completed. In other words, unpainted cels must not be sectioned off from the rest of the puzzle by the painted cels.

It takes a bit of time to get used to these rules, but once you do this is a decent puzzle that seems like a halfway point between Heyawake and Sudoku.

Unlike Sudoku, this game doesn’t have you writing different numbers in cels – they can either be painted, marked as unpainted, or clear, that’s it. As such, the controls are simpler, and the game doesn’t suffer from the control issues that Nikoli’s version of Sudoku has, nor have much of a problem with marking cels with “notes”. Rather, this is just good Puzzle gameplay, without caveats.

However, there are still flaws in the features and presentation to contend with.

All of this game’s puzzles are presented with simple, clean visuals on the bottom screen, with a top screen showing a completely-unnecessary zoomed-in view of the puzzle. This is decent enough, but terribly bland. However, making things worse is the game’s soundtrack, which plays extremely repetitive music that becomes very annoying very quickly.

This game can’t even be bothered to provide players with an interactive tutorial, instead only offering a non-interactive “tutorial” that explains the rules and basic strategies of the game but doesn’t really work to ensure that players understand those rules. There is at the very least a 4-player competitive mode here, but I’m not sure how many people have a lot of friends who want to play competitive logic puzzles together.

In the end, Hitori by Nikoli is a decent Puzzle game that doesn’t suffer from the issues of many of the other games in this series simply because the mechanics of the Puzzle don’t call for complex controls. Instead, you’re left with 50 puzzles for $5, making this a decent package, though not a spectacular one, with the presentation and lacking features still holding it back some. Still, if you’re a Puzzle game fan, this may well be worth a look.

tl;dr – Hitori by Nikoli is a Puzzle game where players must “paint” cels on a grid according to three basic rules. This is a solid Puzzle game, though it’s held back by a poor presentation and lacking features. Still, at $5 for 50 puzzles, fans of logic puzzles may want to give this one a try.

Grade: B-

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Ben, Andy Miller, Exlene, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Talissa, Eli Goodman, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Ilya Zverev, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}