Piczle Lines 2: Into the Puzzleverse

Genre: Numberlink Puzzle

Players: 1

.

Review:

(Note: This game is included in Piczle Lines Super Puzzle Turbo Bundle, along with Piczle Lines DX, Piczle Lines DX: 500 More Puzzles!, and four DLC Expansions for Piczle Lines 2: Into the Puzzleverse.)

Piczle Lines 2 is a Numberlink Puzzle game released in 2023 on Nintendo Switch, and a sequel to 2017’s Piczle Lines DX and 2018’s Piczle Lines DX: 500 More Puzzles!. As with those games and other Numberlink games, Piczle Lines 2 has players gradually piecing together a picture by connecting dots in a grid, ensuring that each pair matches in color and number, and each line moves across the number of spaces that corresponds to the dots’ number.

It’s difficult for me to say exactly how many puzzles this game contains. Some are hidden within the game’s story mode, gradually unlocking only after you complete earlier puzzles. Some are housed within the game’s puzzle mode, sorted by theme. And some puzzles are apparently unlocked based on the time of year. Plus there’s paid DLC for players who want to add more puzzles. The best I can gather based on what I see online is that this game contains somewhere close to 400 puzzles, though that’s just an estimate.

As with the first Piczle Lines game, the story mode here is largely disposable, giving the included puzzles a framing device about a professor and his careless young assistant magically transported into various books as they try to track down their cat. This mode uses a mix of 3D art and static screengrabs of 3D art depicting the characters and environments within the story. I can’t imagine anyone seeing this as a major draw for the game, but it’s there if you care about it.

No, the part of the presentation that I really enjoy is the soundtrack, which has some wonderfully-relaxing lo-fi beats that work perfectly with the thoughtful, methodical gameplay here. Sadly, I don’t have any examples I can point to, I can only say that this is a highlight of the game.

As for the gameplay… yeah, this is a Numberlink Puzzle game, all right. You have decent gamepad controls, a limited ability to zoom in and out, a decent tutorial, good optional touchscreen controls in handheld mode, and a hint feature for players who get stumped.

Finally, without knowing how many puzzles are actually in this game, it’s hard to be certain about value, but again I can guess. And if my guess of roughly 400 puzzles is correct, that puts this game between Piczle Lines DX’s 300 puzzles and Piczle Lines DX: 500 More Puzzles!’s 500 puzzles, though at $15 it’s the same price as the former and more expensive than the latter. Still, i think the nicer music helps to make up the difference there, making roughly it about on par with 500 More Puzzles in my opinion.

In the end, Piczle Lines 2 is a solid Numberlink Puzzle game, with strong gameplay and a superb soundtrack. I wish it was more open and forthcoming about just how much content is here, but overall I think Puzzle game fans will find this worth picking up.

tl;dr – Piczle Lines 2 is a Numberlink Puzzle game with its puzzles split into various areas, making it difficult to determine just how much content is here. But overall, the gameplay is good, the music is excellent, and I think fans of Puzzle games will find this well worth picking up.

Grade: B

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Jamie and His Cats, Ben, Ilya Zverev, Andy Miller, Johannes, Jaka, Jared Wark, Gabriel Coronad-Medina, Francis Obst, Kristoffer Wulff, Seth Christenfeld, and Vince Verrinoldi. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}