Sanrio Characters Picross

Genre: Picross Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

Sanrio Characters Picross, released on Nintendo 3DS in 2018, is a family-friendly Picross Puzzle game featuring the popular characters from the Sanrio franchise, such as Hello Kitty and Keroppi. Given the casual appeal of the Sanrio license, this game seems to aim to being an accessible version of Picross, and in that respect it largely succeeds.

Players can access three tutorials at any time from the main menu, one explaining the game’s basics, one explaining more advanced techniques, and one detailing the advanced mechanics of Mega Picross. These optional interactive tutorials do a great job of breaking down how the game works and the sort of thinking needed to play the game, and I feel like this is one of the better introductions to Picross that a new player could have.

Once you get into the game proper, you have 150 standard Picross puzzles, 150 “Mega Picross” puzzles with hints that span across two rows or columns (evidently all the same pictures as the standard Picross puzzles, just with Mega Picross hints), and then 3 unlockable “Micross” Puzzles each consisting of 44-49 small “Clip Picross” levels that combine into one larger picture. For a $8 price tag, this is a pretty decent value, I think.

Players can use standard gamepad controls or touchscreen controls to fill in puzzles – the latter are good, though a little inhibited by the small size of the Nintendo 3DS screen. Those who played Pokemon Picross will find the control setup to be similar here, though this game’s options settings are more straightforward and traditional, allowing them to individually turn on and off different helpful features like row/column hints, error notifications, and “hint roulette”. Honestly, this is pretty ideal, and I would say that the controls and options here place this among the best Picross games I’ve played.

The presentation here is decent but nothing special, featuring colorful pastel visuals and occasionally drawings of the Sanrio characters themselves. This is all backed by gentle, plunky music that gets a bit annoying after a while and is probably one of the worst parts of this game – I wish you have more music options to choose from here.

There is one other element of the game I should mention – as you solve puzzles, you’ll unlock “stickers” you can use to customize the game’s backgrounds. It’s a cute additional touch that works well with this game’s license and should appeal to the casual demographic this game is targeting.

All in all, Sanrio Characters Picross is probably one of the better Picross games for more novice players first being introduced to this style of Puzzle game, and while I would have liked more music options, for the most part it’s hard to complain about this excellent version of Picross. If you enjoy Puzzle games, this is a great game to add to your Nintendo 3DS collection.

tl;dr – Sanrio Characters Picross is a Picross Puzzle game that is a really well-crafted entry in the genre with a good amount of content, good controls, and that is overall an excellent entry point in the genre for newcomers the Sanrio characters might appeal to. I would have preferred more music options, but otherwise this is definitely a game Puzzle fans with a Nintendo 3DS should consider getting.

Grade: B+

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