Masyu by Nikoli

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local Wireless)

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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. Masyu 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 Masyu, the premise here is that players are presented with a grid littered with white and black circles, and they must draw lines within that grid in a way that obeys the following six rules:

1. The lines must never cross
2. All lines must eventually connect in one giant (and usually convoluted) loop
3. All white circles must have a line going straight through them with no turns.
4. All white circles must also have at least one turn immediately after exiting the circle.
5. All black circles must have a line that turns within them.
6. All black circles must have no turns in the lines in the one square immediately upon exiting the black circle.

It takes a bit of time to get used to these rules, but once you do this is a decent puzzle that is fairly easy to understand. The game’s “tutorial” (really just a list of non-interactive instructions) prepares players for come common occurrences – for example, white circles on the edge of the grid must have a line going through them adjacent to the side, as you cannot pass through into the side nor turn within the white circle. And black circles in a 2×2 pattern must all be going out at different angles rather than connecting directly to each other. Once you have a feel for these sorts of patterns, you tend to keep an eye out for them because they’re easy enough to fill out first and then you can come back once other parts of the puzzle are more filled-out.

I find this style of puzzle engaging, but I found the control layout here to be unnecessarily cumbersome, and I repeatedly found myself struggling to get the touchscreen to erase a line when I changed my mind on its placement.

There are issues with the features and presentation, as well.

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.

And as mentioned above, 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, while Nikoli may be famous for helping to popularize great Puzzles, Masyu by Nikoli seems like it could have been handled better. It’s still enjoyable despite these flaws, but players who are looking for a great Puzzle game on Nintendo 3DS have plenty of better options.

tl;dr – Masyu by Nikoli is a Puzzle game where players must draw a consecutive line into a loop of a grid, while following six rule, with this game offering players 50 puzzles for $5. Unfortunately, the lack of multiple features and an extremely lacking presentation make this a game that even Puzzle fans will likely want to skip, as there are numerous better options out there.

Grade: C-

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