Nonogram Minimal

Genre: Picross Puzzle

Players: 1, Online Content Sharing

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Review:

Nonogram Minimal, released on the Nintendo Switch in 2022, is a Picross Puzzle game containing 200 puzzles, sorted into a “Classic” mode containing a mix of 100 standard Picross puzzles and color Picross puzzles, as well as two additional sets of fifty puzzles each for both standard and color Picross puzzles. Plus, in addition to this, this game also contains a puzzle creator, enabling you to create your own Picross puzzles and download puzzles created by others online.

Nonogram Minimal features a fairly simple presentation that uses clean and easily-readable text and visuals for its puzzles, along with a background consisting of moving abstract shapes, which honestly can be a bit annoying at times. These visuals are backed by an placid instrumental soundtrack that’s mostly pretty pleasant, but can occasionally sounds a bit irritating.

Players can opt to play this game with “light” or “dark” themes, but either way I do have a few major complaints. First, when you mark a cell with an X to indicate that the cell is not filled, that X is difficult to see against the grey background. And second, when playing color Picross puzzles, the colors that are selected for these puzzles often are a bit too close to each other, making them difficult to distinguish. What’s more, the indicator of what color you’re currently using is a tad too small and sometimes difficult to see.

The gameplay here is mostly pretty standard for the genre, though there are a few issues. I notice some occasional lag when filling out cells. This game also has no touchscreen support, everything must be done using traditional gamepad controls, which are thankfully largely sufficient. There’s no tutorial or even an instructional guide here, so this probably isn’t a good game for players who are new to this sort of game. And there’s no sort of multiplayer options here either.

Up until this point in the review, what I’m describing would probably be a passable Picross game, but far from a great one. However, Nonogram Minimal does do one thing that sets it apart from virtually every other Picross game I’ve ever played – as mentioned above, it enables players to create and share their own puzzles. There’s a good number of puzzles available for download online, and creating your own is fairly easy and straightforward, and the game will even test your puzzle to make sure it is solvable (though these tests aren’t perfect – one puzzle I created definitely had multiple potential answers and the game passed it anyway).

This ability to create and share puzzles makes up for a lot of Nonogram Minimal’s flaws, giving it some immense potential beyond other Picross games. It’s just a shame this game has so many flaws, because if it were more polished this could have been the greatest Picross game I’ve played. However, for only $7, it’s still a solid choice for fans of the genre, especially if you can overlook the game’s problems.

tl;dr – Nonogram Minimal is a Picross Puzzle game with 200 puzzles as well as the ability to create and share your own puzzles. This game has multiple flaws holding it back, but the puzzle-sharing feature is so delightful that it makes up for a lot of these flaws. If you’re a fan of this type of game, this is definitely one entry in the genre well worth getting, even if it’s far from perfect.

Grade: B-

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