Nonograms Prophecy

Genre: Picross Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

Nonograms Prophecy is a Picross Puzzle game first released on PC in 2018 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2019. This game includes 138 standard Picross levels, 165 unlockable color Picross levels, and over 80 unlockable clip Picross puzzles, all wrapped in an ancient Greek theme.

Well… sort of. While the trappings of the game mimic the art and characters of ancient Greece and its mythology, the puzzles themselves seem to have nothing to do with it, with those puzzles depicting modern tools, popular culture, and just random objects. Beyond that, the presentation here is simple but decent, and the background acoustic guitar that plays during levels is quite nice… which makes unfortunately makes the annoying level completion theme even more grating by contrast. Aside from these missteps though, the presentation is good.

The gameplay, though… hoo boy. Okay, let’s get the good out of the way first – this game makes good use of the Nintendo Switch’s touchscreen, something that many other entries on the genre on the Nintendo Switch inexplicably do not. The presentation is also mostly clean and easy to read.

And that’s where I have to start talking about the bad stuff, because that “mostly” doesn’t include the color picross puzzles, which often use colors that are hard to distinguish from each other and make it very difficult to solve otherwise simple puzzles. However, that’s just the start of this game’s problems.

Firstly, game progression is locked, meaning that players need to solve a hefty number of the earlier puzzles before unlocking later ones, as well as the additional game modes. Want to jump straight into the color or clip picross levels? Too bad, you have to work on the earlier stuff for a while whether you want to or not.

However, it gets worse. There’s no way to “test-mark” cels to help with more difficult puzzles. There’s no way to check puzzles to see if you’ve made a mistake. And this game also commits what is possibly the cardinal sin of Picross games – there are some puzzles that can actually be solved multiple ways, but the game only accepts one of those ways as correct, even if you fulfill all of the conditions to complete the puzzle.

There are a lot of Picross games on the Nintendo Switch, and with Nonograms Prophecy’s $4 price tag, it may seem like a bargain, but this is quite simply a broken Picross game. It’s lacking basic features, its color puzzles are sometimes so difficult to see properly that it makes them unnecessarily difficult, the locked progression is extremely limiting, and some puzzles straight-up won’t let you complete them unless you figure out what way the game wants them completed, even if you fulfill all necessary conditions to complete them. In short, if you want a Picross game on the Nintendo Switch, spend a little bit more and get one that doesn’t suck.

tl;dr – Nonograms Prophecy is a Picross Puzzle game with an Ancient Greek mythology theme. Unfortunately, this game is broken in numerous ways – the color picross puzzles are too difficult to see, the game is missing basic features that are standard for the genre, and some puzzles straight-up won’t let you finish them unless you can figure out the way the game wants them completed. Even with its low price tag, this game is not worth it, especially with so many better games in the genre on the Nintendo Switch.

Grade: D+

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