Nikoli’s Pencil Puzzle

Genre: Compilation / Puzzle

Players: 1

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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. Nikoli’s Pencil Puzzle, released on Nintendo 3DS in 2011, is a game that features four of Nikoli’s numerous types of puzzles: Sudoku (with 300 puzzles), Shikaku (with 110 puzzles), Akari (with 120 puzzles), and Hashi (with 70 puzzles) – if you’re counting, that’s 600 puzzles in total.

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Sudoku

For those who have yet to try their hand at Sudoku, the simple premise is that players are provided a grid divided into 3×3 fields, with each field further divided into 3×3 squares. The grid already has some numbers filled in, and players must fill in the rest of the grid while following these simple rules: each row and column must include the numbers 1-9 with none repeating, and each 3×3 field must also contain the numbers 1-9 with none repeating. Players solve this puzzle largely using a process of elimination – once you know what numbers can’t be in a square, you can narrow it down to what must be there.

Compared to other versions of Sudoku, the one present here is mostly pretty good, but it unfortunately suffers a few fatal flaws. For one thing, a common feature in Sudoku videogames is the ability to add “notes” to a square to mark what numbers can (or can’t) fit there, and while Nikoli’s Pencil Puzzle does allow you to do this, you can only do it for four numbers per square, not the full nine.

What’s more, this game automatically notifies players when they make a mistake, and there’s no option to shut this off and let players figure this out for themselves, nor to check the puzzle to see if they made any errors – there’s only a limited “hint” system, and that’s about it. There are no options here that affect the gameplay, only a few display and sound options, and a left-right-handed control option.

This may seem nitpicky to casual players, but more experienced players will know it’s some pretty glaring omissions.

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Shikaku

This Puzzle game is vaguely similar to Numberlink, but rather than filling a grid by drawing lines between pairs of like-numbered points, players are filling the grid by extending out rectangles with the same size as the numbers printed on the grid. Block-A-Pix Deluxe is another example of this sort of puzzle.

This version of Shikaku is good, though it lacks the colored picture element that other games (like Block-A-Pix Deluxe) provide.

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Akari

This puzzle has players placing lights on a grid, with each light creating full vertical and horizontal lines. Lights cannot shine on each other, and every number on the grid must be adjacent to that number of lights. Within those rules, players must fill all empty squares on the grid with light.

This was my first time playing this style of puzzle, and honestly I think it’s quite possibly the best part of this collection.

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Hashi

This is similar to Akari, though it took me a bit longer to catch on to how it works. Players are presented with a grid that has some numbers on it, and each number must connect lines horizontally or vertically to other numbers (with a max of two lines in any one direction), with the number of connecting lines attached to each number equaling that number.

Once you catch on to how this game works, it’s also pretty compelling.

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Presentation and Features

All of this game’s puzzles are presented with simple, clean visuals on the bottom screen, with the option of showing different things on the top screen – either a simple 3D timer, or a simple 3D scene depicting architecture, Bomberman chilling on an island, or some other simple setting that’s unrelated to the puzzle itself. This is backed by music that sounds like… well, like elevator music. Not exactly inspiring, but I suppose it works for the game.

Furthermore, each of these games offers players 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.

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Conclusion

Nikoli’s Pencil Puzzle drops the ball on its most prominent puzzle, Sudoku, due to how it fails to have options and features that we’ve come to expect from games in this genre. Shikaku mostly works okay, but lacks some of the appeal that other versions of the game offer. The real treat here is Hashi and especially Akari, both of which are compelling in their own right, and generally make up for the issues present in the other games here. And thankfully there’s enough puzzles of each game type that this Collection can weather a few sub-par entries. And since you can tend to find this game on eBay selling for under $10, I’d say the amount of good Puzzle gameplay present here makes this well worth the low price.

tl;dr – Nikoli’s Pencil Puzzle is a Compilation of four types of Puzzle games – Sudoku, Shikaku, Akari, and Hashi. The version of Sudoku here lacks some important features, and the version of Shikaku is functional but a bit bland. However, Akari and Hashi are excellent, and with 600 puzzles total, this package offers more than enough good Puzzle gameplay to justify the low price it’s currently demanding on eBay.

Grade: B-

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