Jigsaw Fun: Piece It Together!

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in the Super Puzzle Pack bundle, along with Candy 2048 Challenge, Gems of Magic: Lost Family, Match Three: Pirates! Heir to Davy Jones, and Yum Yum Line.)

Jigsaw Fun: Piece It Together! is a Jigsaw Puzzle game released on Nintendo Switch in 2020, containing over 200 puzzles comprised of mostly photographic images backed by repetitive instrumental music.

Beyond the photographs themselves, players have multiple backgrounds to cycle between, which is nice. Not so nice is the issue that the game’s menu images aren’t explained, and are tiny enough that they’re difficult to see on the Nintendo Switch’s screen in handheld mode, where you’ll need to see them if you want to use most of them, as they can apparently only be accessed via the touchscreen.

That’s not to say that you have to play this game using the touchscreen. In fact, if you’re playing with puzzles using a larger number of pieces, it may well cause you eye strain to try to see the details in all the pieces in handheld mode. Unfortunately, even if you ignore the menu options that you can’t select with the controller, moving the cursor using the controller is just agonizingly slow. This might make you expect this game is better to play in handheld mode and just zoom in while moving pieces using the touchscreen, but sadly the zoom option here is extremely limited and your finger will likely cover up the piece as you’re trying to move it.

Also, because I’m not sure where else to mention it, the game makes a big deal about all the coins you’re earning while playing it, but it’s not super-clear just how you’re meant to use those coins. There’s also a fun option to mix in pieces from other puzzles to add some challenge, which I really appreciate.

However, in the end, Jigsaw Fun: Piece It Together! is a Jigsaw Puzzle game that has a lot of elements with potential, but it’s ultimately ruined by the fact that half of the stuff in this game seems like it can only be done in handheld mode, and half of it seems best to do using standard gamepad controls in docked mode, and no matter which way you play it there’s no good way to move the pieces. You have other option for Jigsaw Puzzle games on Nintendo Switch, go with one of those instead.

tl;dr – Jigsaw Fun: Piece It Together! is a Jigsaw Puzzle game with plenty of nice-looking puzzles to work on, but it is utterly destroyed by terrible menu controls as well as terrible cursor controls that split the difference between playing using traditional gamepad controls and the touchscreen, resulting in neither of those working all that well. Play a different Jigsaw Puzzle game instead.

Grade: D+

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