#1 Crosswords

Genre: Crossword Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in #1 Crosswords Bundle, along with #1 Anagrams. It is also included in #1 Crosswords Sudokus Bundle, along with #1 Sudokus. In addition to that, all three above games are included in #1 Pastime Bundle)

#1 Crosswords is a Crossword Puzzle game released on Nintendo Switch in 2021. Crossword Puzzle games are surprisingly not very common on Nintendo Switch, with this being one of only two I could find on the platform. So all this game needed to do was be a moderately decent entry in the genre to be the clear choice for Crossword Puzzle fans on the Nintendo Switch. So… is it up to the task?

The presentation doesn’t start things out on a great note. The game gives you a choice of different visualizations, but then sticks you with a flat background regardless of which one you pick. It’s nothing outright terrible, but it’s definitely not great. In addition, this game uses music that I can only assume is fair use – I’ve heard the same music in the Travel Mosaics series.

What about the gameplay? This game features 100 puzzles in its “Story Mode” (which has absolutely no story), with players selecting puzzles based on a theme. There’s also “random” and “daily” puzzles, but it’s unclear if this is just selecting from one of those 100 I previously mentioned. Through all of this, the menus here are terribly awkward and unnecessarily difficult to navigate.

The gamepad controls are awkward and clunky, but the game also supports touchscreen, which is clearly the better way to play here. Unfortunately, the game does a poor job conveying information – you have to select a word to see its hint, rather than just being able to highlight it. Also, the difficulty of puzzle answers seems wildly inconsistent within a puzzle – in the very first puzzle, one question asks for a five-letter word for a sea mammal with a blowhole, while another asks for a four-letter word for one-thousandth of a second (until this game, I knew of an eleven-letter word, but this is the first I’ve ever heard of a four-letter word for this).

However, probably the biggest problem here is that when you’re entering an answer, the game only gives you a handful of letters to choose from, meaning unless the question is absurdly obscure, the game is almost giving you the answer. There’s no way to choose to turn off this feature, either – this is the main way you interact with the game.

Honestly, I never realized there was so much a Crossword Puzzle game could get wrong, but #1 Crosswords has expanded my horizons, in the worst possible way. The presentation is bad, the controls are bad, the menus are bad, the puzzle design is bad, and the way you enter the puzzles in is bad. I strain to think of anything this game gets right. Of the two Crossword Puzzle games on Nintendo Switch, I haven’t even played the other one, but if someone told me they were going to buy one or the other, I’d suggest the other one. It has to be better than this.

tl;dr – #1 Crosswords is a Crossword Puzzle game that does just about everything wrong. Bad presentation, bad controls, bad menus, bad puzzle design, bad game design. You don’t have many good choices for Crossword Puzzles on Nintendo Switch, but even so, fans of these sorts of puzzles should avoid this game.

Grade: D

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