Review
Picross DS (DSN)
Falling blocks or pieces are a common standard for many handheld puzzle games, but Picross DS will rattle your mind in a different way. Instead of worrying about falling tetrominoes or rising tiles you will be challenging your mind to fill out and solve picture crosswords. With Picross DS, Nintendo revives an old puzzle game that has, for the most part, remained within Japan.
Picross is similar to sudoku puzzles since it involves logically filling in spaces of a grid according to the information that you're provided with. Instead of filling in numbers on a grid, however, the only variables in Picross are either "filled" or "unfilled". The puzzles will provide you with the number of consecutive spaces to fill outside the grid on the left and at the top, but you will need to think logically about where to place these filled in spaces. For example, if the numbers 2 3 1 are beside a row, that means there are three sets of filled tiles in spaces that are 2, 3, and 1 spaces wide with at least one blank space in between each set. Coupled with the same information provided for the columns, you can than determine which spaces are filled and which are unfilled throughout the entire grid.
For just about all gamers outside of Japan, Picross DS offers a very fresh and challenging game that has been overshadowed by more popular puzzle games. The game offers a wide range of difficulty and will start you off on simple 5 by 5 sized grids and let you know if you've incorrectly filled in a grid space. The difficulty ramps up to great heights when the grids become as large as 25 by 20 spaces. Players will have even a more difficult time in free puzzle mode which won't let you know if you've made any mistakes.
There are hundreds of puzzles packed with the game and there is also a daily mode which compares your completion time in solving a consecutive number of puzzles every day. In addition to a head-to-head multiplayer mode where you have to complete a puzzle before your opponent, it is also possible to download extra puzzles from Nintendo themselves. In addition, you can always create your own puzzles with the user-friendly puzzle editor and trade them with other players over the Internet.
When it actually comes to filling in the grid, you can do so with either the stylus or the D-pad and buttons. The stylus makes it easy to fill in spaces but on the larger grids you will have to use a zoom in feature that is actually tedious and cumbersome compared to simply using the D-pad and buttons which works perfectly fine.
The game's clean and simple presentation also works quite well as the menus are clear and easy to navigate. Despite looking very simple, the game is decorated in subtle ways that prevents it from looking boring. Blank backgrounds are filled in with gradients and the borders of simple menu buttons are given little details so that the game doesn't look stale. As a treat and reward, if you complete puzzles in a certain amount of time the finished picture will be colored in and animated.
The simple sound effects fits appropriately with the game's presentation and simple gameplay, but there is a severe lack of variety in music that becomes quickly apparent. That's not to say that the music is bad; the three available tracks are actually quite excellent but short and repetitious, like some high quality elevator music. This, however, is a problem that can easily be rectified by listening to your own preferred source of music while playing.
Picross is similar to sudoku puzzles since it involves logically filling in spaces of a grid according to the information that you're provided with. Instead of filling in numbers on a grid, however, the only variables in Picross are either "filled" or "unfilled". The puzzles will provide you with the number of consecutive spaces to fill outside the grid on the left and at the top, but you will need to think logically about where to place these filled in spaces. For example, if the numbers 2 3 1 are beside a row, that means there are three sets of filled tiles in spaces that are 2, 3, and 1 spaces wide with at least one blank space in between each set. Coupled with the same information provided for the columns, you can than determine which spaces are filled and which are unfilled throughout the entire grid.
For just about all gamers outside of Japan, Picross DS offers a very fresh and challenging game that has been overshadowed by more popular puzzle games. The game offers a wide range of difficulty and will start you off on simple 5 by 5 sized grids and let you know if you've incorrectly filled in a grid space. The difficulty ramps up to great heights when the grids become as large as 25 by 20 spaces. Players will have even a more difficult time in free puzzle mode which won't let you know if you've made any mistakes.
There are hundreds of puzzles packed with the game and there is also a daily mode which compares your completion time in solving a consecutive number of puzzles every day. In addition to a head-to-head multiplayer mode where you have to complete a puzzle before your opponent, it is also possible to download extra puzzles from Nintendo themselves. In addition, you can always create your own puzzles with the user-friendly puzzle editor and trade them with other players over the Internet.
When it actually comes to filling in the grid, you can do so with either the stylus or the D-pad and buttons. The stylus makes it easy to fill in spaces but on the larger grids you will have to use a zoom in feature that is actually tedious and cumbersome compared to simply using the D-pad and buttons which works perfectly fine.
The game's clean and simple presentation also works quite well as the menus are clear and easy to navigate. Despite looking very simple, the game is decorated in subtle ways that prevents it from looking boring. Blank backgrounds are filled in with gradients and the borders of simple menu buttons are given little details so that the game doesn't look stale. As a treat and reward, if you complete puzzles in a certain amount of time the finished picture will be colored in and animated.
The simple sound effects fits appropriately with the game's presentation and simple gameplay, but there is a severe lack of variety in music that becomes quickly apparent. That's not to say that the music is bad; the three available tracks are actually quite excellent but short and repetitious, like some high quality elevator music. This, however, is a problem that can easily be rectified by listening to your own preferred source of music while playing.
Closing Comments
Filling in grids has never been so satisfying.
Picross DS introduces a different and unique puzzle experience to gamers that is simply addictive. Unlike many other puzzle games there isn't a large emphasis on time and nor do you have to worry about your screen filling up with blocks. There is no game over screen to worry about and this results in a game that is relaxing and challenging all at the same time. Coupled with its tidy presentation and the large amount of gameplay hours included, every DS owner should at least give this game a try.
