PictoQuest

Genre: Picross Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in the Indie Gems Bundle – Nonograms Edition along with Piczle Cross Adventure.)

PictoQuest is basically just Picross with an JRPG skin on top. Well, okay, there’s a little more to it than that, but at its core that’s what it is.

As you go through the levels, you’ll find four different types of game boards. There are chests, which are just a traditional Picross board, enemies, which give you a time limit of sorts in that the longer it takes you to complete a puzzle the more enemies whittle your health down, bosses, which are like regular enemies but can undo some of your puzzle’s progress with their attacks, and then there are challenges, which impose a win condition to fully complete a level, such as a time limit, or making zero mistakes.

The results of this are a bit frustrating, because it means that on chest levels you can go at a leisurely pace, while on other levels you may have to really rush to complete a level in time. I would go as far as to say that this game has an absurdly high challenge level, except that you can replay a level after losing, and the puzzles don’t change, meaning that if you remember what tiles were uncovered in your last attempt, you can easily cheat without penalty.

The game looks cute but not especially noteworthy, and gives players a selection of songs to play to (none of which really caught my fancy), but the game has a nice, clean look that works well enough.

What’s really frustrating about PictoQuest is that it does have that addictive quality you look for in a puzzle game, but its wildly inconsistent challenge level makes it really hard to recommend. And since the Switch has a wealth of Picross games on it, I can’t see a good reason to recommend this one over any of the countless others.

tl;dr – PictoQuest is a take on Picross that presents itself like an RPG. Unfortunately, the challenge level is wildly inconsistent, and with so many other Picross options on the Switch, it’s hard to recommend this one.

Grade: C-

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