A bountiful harvest.
Fans of Nintendo’s long-running Picross series are well aware that there’s no shortage of nonogram puzzlers on the Switch, with developer Jupiter and the Big N’s franchise alone accounting for over a dozen games and counting so far. Even so, there’s an addictive simplicity to the core concept that ensures that further entries will always be welcome, especially when they mix with popular IP like the Sega Genesis and, uh… Kemono Friends. Nintendo certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on the concept of a nonogram puzzle, either, leaving the door open for other publishers like Rainy Frog and developer Score Studio to introduce their own franchises that use the concept, such as Piczle Cross. The latest entry in the Piczle Cross series merges the timeless puzzling action with the chill vibes of the Story of Seasons franchise and though Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons isn’t exactly a revolutionary new entry in the genre, it still ticks all the boxes to provide a satisfying puzzle experience.
Gameplay in Piczle Cross could be most closely likened to a mixture of Minesweeper and sudoku puzzles, tasking the player with methodically deducing a solution by process of elimination. You’re presented with a grid that’s anywhere from 5×5 to 20×20 squares in size, with the edges of each row and column containing hint numbers that indicate how many squares you have to fill in. Which squares you need to fill in is always a mystery, however, so you need to use the hint numbers to carefully rule out which ones you can safely mark off and which need to be filled in. Puzzles can last anywhere from a few seconds to about 20 minutes apiece, with the final product always revealing some cute pixel art rendition of a random farm-related item or person.
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