Reviews
Reviews of the games I play, aiming to quickly encapsulate the game’s essence and quirks. Most games have an audience; my goal is for the review to make it clear to you whether you are part of a game’s audience (whether or not I am).
A puzzle platformer based around the “switch” mechanic. Each level features blocks that can move between the foreground and the background. By hitting the switch button, the player can toggle the position of all such blocks in the level simultaneously. The player must use this ability - along with standard running, jumping, and shooting - to navigate the level, avoid hazards, and defeat enemies.
A puzzle platformer based around the “switch” mechanic. Each level features blocks that can move between the foreground and the background. By hitting the switch button, the player can toggle the position of all such blocks in the level simultaneously. The player must use this ability - along with standard running, jumping, and shooting - to navigate the level, avoid hazards, and defeat enemies.
The third of three games using a puzzle system somewhere between Minesweeper and Picross. Puzzles are presented on a hex grid with numeric clues that allow the player to deduce which cells must be colored in and which must be blanked out. The clues are a mix of Picross-like ones giving information about the cells in a row or column and Minesweeper-like ones giving information about the cells near another cell, but in both cases there’s some extra variation and complexity mixed in.
The second of three games using a puzzle system somewhere between Minesweeper and Picross. Puzzles are presented on a hex grid with numeric clues that allow the player to deduce which cells must be colored in and which must be blanked out. The clues are a mix of Picross-like ones giving information about the cells in a row or column and Minesweeper-like ones giving information about the cells near another cell, but in both cases there’s some extra variation and complexity mixed in.
The first of three games using a puzzle system somewhere between Minesweeper and Picross. Puzzles are presented on a hex grid with numeric clues that allow the player to deduce which cells must be colored in and which must be blanked out. The clues are a mix of Picross-like ones giving information about the cells in a row or column and Minesweeper-like ones giving information about the cells near another cell, but in both cases there’s some extra variation and complexity mixed in.
A game featuring a modified three-dimensional variant of Picross. Instead of a grid made of squares to selectively fill in to reveal an image, the player is presented with a rectangular prism made of cubes to selectively chip away to reveal an object. The clues work differently as well - not every row or column has clues, and the ones that do have a single number indicating how many cubes should be left in that row or column.
A Color Picross game. The pictures are more interesting than in standard Picross, but at least in this case some puzzles feature colors that are very similar and difficult to tell apart, which is needlessly frustrating. It’s also not always easy to paint the right blocks with your finger on a phone’s touchscreen, which is probably why the puzzles are kept so small.
A downloadable Picross game for the 3DS themed on and structured as a Pokémon RPG. Catch Pokémon by solving puzzles to reveal their images and then use their various abilities when fighting more Pokémon solving more puzzles. The standard assist features are available here as Pokémon abilities instead, generally themed by type - for example, water Pokémon tend to have “Blue Force”, which is the ?
A downloadable Picross game for the 3DS themed on The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. There are 45 puzzles that can be played as standard Picross or Mega Picross puzzles (with the order changed so you don’t know which is coming next when you redo the puzzles in the other mode) plus one Micross puzzle.
The third in a series of budget-priced downloadable Picross games for the 3DS.
There are 130 standard Picross puzzles up to 15x15 in size. Unfortunately, you can’t choose between Normal and Free rule sets; the puzzles are divided into ones that must be played Normal and ones that must be played Free.