2008 Woodie Awards
Games: Picross DS
Adam Larck/Game Reviewer
Issue date: 11/2/07 Section: in Review(s)
- Page 1 of 1
Final Score: 7.5 of 10
A picture as a crossword. That's the premise of picross, and really fits well on the Nintendo DS. Picross DS is a puzzle game released for just $20. While it may seem like a low quality budget title, it's one of the best puzzle games out there for the DS and one of the few over the picross puzzles.
Picross uses numbers in each row horizontally and vertically to make a picture. You shade in the number of cells from left to right and up to down to match all the numbers up and leave no conflicting rows. After you do this, a picture reveals itself. The picture can be anything from a simple letter "C" to famous buildings.
This simple concept works well with the touch screen of the DS, allowing players to quickly use the stylus to shade in the cells and mark X's through cells that should not be marked in.
Picross DS gives three difficulty levels to work on: easy, medium, and free modes. The easy modes work on mainly a 5X5 grid, while medium starts on that and works up to a 25X20. Both of these modes tell you when you choose a wrong space though, and penalize time. If you finish the puzzle within an hour though, counting penalties, the picture gets color to it and comes to life, sometimes moving around or just adding detail to the image.
The third mode, free mode, does not tell you if a space is right or wrong. It's all up to trial and error to get the right cells filled in for the picture within an hour.
The easy mode has 15 puzzles, while normal and free each have 10 levels of 15 puzzles each. After completing all puzzles on normal or free, the game unlocks an extra mode with Nintendo characters and system images to complete.
Another add-on for the game is a daily puzzle challenge. Every day you can test your speed on certain types of picross puzzles to see if you are speeding up in solving them. After playing this mode long enough, you can get up to five different areas to test in. This gives the game quite a bit of playability to keep testing yourself.
The final part of Picross DS, Internet connectivity, I haven't been able to test myself due to no puzzles being available to download from Nintendo and no custom content being put on it.
Picross DS, overall, is a good cheap game that can entertain for a few weeks, if not months, and can actually get gamers to think outside the box on solving puzzles. For just $20, if you are a type of gamer that likes puzzle games or just likes to relax with a game that does not take a lot of time, Picross is worth a pick up.
A picture as a crossword. That's the premise of picross, and really fits well on the Nintendo DS. Picross DS is a puzzle game released for just $20. While it may seem like a low quality budget title, it's one of the best puzzle games out there for the DS and one of the few over the picross puzzles.
Picross uses numbers in each row horizontally and vertically to make a picture. You shade in the number of cells from left to right and up to down to match all the numbers up and leave no conflicting rows. After you do this, a picture reveals itself. The picture can be anything from a simple letter "C" to famous buildings.
This simple concept works well with the touch screen of the DS, allowing players to quickly use the stylus to shade in the cells and mark X's through cells that should not be marked in.
Picross DS gives three difficulty levels to work on: easy, medium, and free modes. The easy modes work on mainly a 5X5 grid, while medium starts on that and works up to a 25X20. Both of these modes tell you when you choose a wrong space though, and penalize time. If you finish the puzzle within an hour though, counting penalties, the picture gets color to it and comes to life, sometimes moving around or just adding detail to the image.
The third mode, free mode, does not tell you if a space is right or wrong. It's all up to trial and error to get the right cells filled in for the picture within an hour.
The easy mode has 15 puzzles, while normal and free each have 10 levels of 15 puzzles each. After completing all puzzles on normal or free, the game unlocks an extra mode with Nintendo characters and system images to complete.
Another add-on for the game is a daily puzzle challenge. Every day you can test your speed on certain types of picross puzzles to see if you are speeding up in solving them. After playing this mode long enough, you can get up to five different areas to test in. This gives the game quite a bit of playability to keep testing yourself.
The final part of Picross DS, Internet connectivity, I haven't been able to test myself due to no puzzles being available to download from Nintendo and no custom content being put on it.
Picross DS, overall, is a good cheap game that can entertain for a few weeks, if not months, and can actually get gamers to think outside the box on solving puzzles. For just $20, if you are a type of gamer that likes puzzle games or just likes to relax with a game that does not take a lot of time, Picross is worth a pick up.
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