Picross 3D
Year: 2010
Rating: E
Time Played: 4,199 minutes / 69.98 hours
By now, I’m entirely on board with the whole concept of nonogram puzzles. Often referred to as “picross,” I have had better experiences with these games using a touchscreen and stylus, which was why I picked up Picross 3D for the Nintendo DS. The few other picross games I played on the DS were definitely enhanced by the fact that I could use the stylus to select the blocks I wanted to mark. The third dimension is what sets this game apart from regular picross games.
While Picross 3D still suffers from the puzzles common to picross (mainly everyday objects and things), by making the puzzles three-dimensional, there was just enough novelty to make the game interesting to play. Instead of selecting boxes to fill in to create a black-and-white image, Picross 3D has the player chisel away at a box, eventually revealing a 3D model if everything is chosen correctly. Granted, these models are still relatively “low resolution” like most picross puzzles are. Even some of the larger puzzles can’t escape their blocky appearance, which is fine given what this game is.
This game is good for a mindless puzzler, even if sometimes the touchscreen controls can be frustrating when you accidentally select the wrong box and have to start a puzzle over. After all, it was easier to just restart a level to get the perfect score instead of just finishing it after taking the penalty for the error. Even so, the controls are simple to pick up and learn and the way of thinking three-dimensionally eventually becomes second nature by the later puzzles of the game. I 100% completed this game, and it surprised me to learn I had spent 70 hours on it, playing regularly every night for a few weeks.
An innovation to the standard picross formula, I give Picross 3D 4.0 stars out of 5.
