Solid Void – Topsy Turvy World

Genre: Picross Puzzle / Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: Review code provided by the kind folks at Inari PR & Consulting)

The Solid Void series of games are games that blend Picross-style Puzzles with elements of Jigsaw Puzzles and Tetromino-style Puzzles to create something that carves out its own unique niche within the Puzzle game space while still largely remaining a Picross-style Puzzle. If this is confusing, don’t worry, I’ll explain it a bit farther down.

Topsy Turvy World is the third game in this series to release on Nintendo Switch, coming to the platform in 2026, with this game also releasing in 2026 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. This game’s title is derived from the artwork that players will gradually be uncovering, the 1559 painting The Topsy Turvy World by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, sometimes known by the title Netherlandish Proverbs.

The Solid Void gameplay starts out as a standard Picross Puzzle, with the game giving players a decent, but brief, tutorial on how to solve these puzzles. However, before long the game reveals that this is only half of the process. The other half involves placing puzzle blocks into the shapes your completed Picross puzzle revealed, with each contiguous section of filled spaces and each contiguous section of marked-empty spaces representing its own puzzle block.

On their own, each puzzle type is decent but nothing special, and there are even flaws I can point to – the Picross portion of the game, for example, lacks the ability to test-mark cels try a possible solution, and there’s no way to test to see if you’ve incorrectly marked cels or ask for a hint. And the Jigsaw/Tetromino portion occasionally has pieces with indistinct shapes and colors that are difficult to determine the correct orientation of.

Despite these flaws, what really makes the Solid Void formula rise above its individual components is how well these two halves work together. If you’re stuck on a Picross puzzle, you can always look over to the various shapes of the actual puzzle pieces to get a feel where shapes might fit within the Picross cels you’ve already filled in.

As an example, at one point I was a bit stuck on a Picross puzzle, until I looked at the Tetromino pieces and realized that none of them contained a section longer than three squares, which told me that there couldn’t be more than three contiguous filled or empty cels in the puzzle. This made for a truly delightful “Eureka” moment and I started to cross-reference these puzzle pieces after this. In another puzzle, I realized the only shape that could fit in one section of filled cels was one specific puzzle piece, which let me know what other cels I could fill in to complete that shape.

The puzzles themselves are presented in a 3D space that is designed to look like a fire-lit, weathered desk, with parchment for the Picross puzzle and wood blocks for the Tetromino puzzle pieces. There’s nothing impressive here, but these visuals do a good job of building up the game’s old-fashioned tone quite well.

As you work on the puzzles, you’ll be hearing soft piano music playing, with light gentle thumping and clicking sound effects as you move pieces around. This fits the game well, though I have to complain that the music volume is particularly low, and there don’t appear to be independent volume controls for sound and music in the settings menu, only an on-off switch for each.

There is one other complaint I have to add here, and that is that the game’s cursor is frustratingly slow, with no option or setting to change the cursor speed. And unfortunately, this game doesn’t support the touchscreen in handheld mode, so you’ll be stuck moving that slow cursor around no matter which way you play the game.

Despite these issues, I found Solid Void – Topsy Turvy World to be a delightful Puzzle game, and an inspired take on Picross that does something different with this style of Puzzle. I wish that there were more options, and the lack of these definitely leaves room for improvement, but overall I think Puzzle players and especially Picross fans would do well to give this game a try.

tl;dr – Solid Void – Topsy Turvy World is a Picross Puzzle game with elements of Jigsaw and Tetromino Puzzle games that has players piecing together a classic painting by first doing Picross Puzzles and then filling those in with tetromino pieces containing the painting. There’s a frustrating lack of options here, and each individual element of this game has its issues, but the two halves of this game work together extremely well, making something delightfully engaging and clever. I think there’s still a lot of room for improvement here, but overall this is an excellent Puzzle game well worth trying out, especially for Picross Puzzle fans.

Grade: B

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