Piczle Cross Adventure

Genre: Picross Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

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

Piczle Cross Adventure is a Picross Puzzle game released on PC and Nintendo Switch in 2020. It is the fourth game in the Piczle series of puzzle games, and while the prior three games were focused on Numberlink Puzzles and color Picross Puzzles, this game’s focus is on traditional black-and-white Picross Puzzles, with the game containing over 300 to complete, spread across an “adventure” that has you fixing various people and objects that have been sapped of their colors.

In terms of presentation, this game drops the hand-drawn characters of the first two Piczle games and the 3D rendered characters of the third game in favor of a retro pixel art style and chiptune soundtrack that work pretty well for the game. It’s nothing impressive, but this is a Picross game, so it doesn’t really need to be. However, I can credit this game for making sure its puzzles are easily readable even when they start to get bigger.

When it comes to the gameplay… don’t read too much into the “adventure” stuff – the story is silly and not especially interesting, and although the characters are amusing and make fun quips here and there, the real star here is the puzzles, and the “adventure” is just a slightly more elaborate way to allow the player to select which puzzle to work on, with later areas gated off until you gain enough “experience” solving earlier puzzles. It works, there’s nothing wrong with it, but the story here definitely isn’t as compelling as what we saw in a game like Murder By Numbers.

Having said that, the gameplay for the puzzles here is pretty spot-on, and the game gives players plenty of options both in how much assistance they want in puzzle completion, as well as in how they want their puzzles displayed. In a game like this, these sorts of options make all the difference, and it’s nice to see this game doesn’t skimp on them.

Well… except in one key area. Piczle Cross Adventure sadly lacks the ability to play the game using the Nintendo Switch’s touchscreen, which is a huge missed opportunity in a genre like this where touchscreen controls seem like they’d be ideal. The traditional controls work fine, but the lack of the option here is disappointing.

However, lack of touchscreen aside, on the whole Piczle Cross Adventure is a solid entry in the genre. It doesn’t do anything especially new or unusual for the genre, but as Picross games go, the gameplay here is well-crafted and well-presented. Players looking for their next Picross hit on the Switch should find this game to be well worth picking up.

tl;dr – Piczle Cross Adventure is a solid Picross Puzzle game that doesn’t do anything extraordinary for the genre, but nevertheless features well-crafted gameplay for the genre, with the only major flaw here being the lack of touchscreen support. Otherwise, this is an excellent entry in the genre.

Grade: B

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