PIXEL PUZZLE COLLECTION

As a Picross fan, I love flying through these puzzles. I enjoy the random selection of the puzzle as well, wondering what category I will get next. The old songs are awesome, especially when I hear Contra’s stage 1 or Bloody Tears. It would be a five star game if it was capable of notifying me that a new boss puzzle attempt was ready. I don’t want to have to set a timer, especially if I can’t get to solving it right away. Controls could be improved as well. I like the controls from some of the other Picross games out there on mobile devices that allow me to drag the cursor around from touching anywhere on the screen and tapping to swap between blank, X, or filled in. Tap and drag can be used to fill in multiple blocks or Xs as well. Cursor controls don’t make sense on a mobile device and direct taps on the puzzles get difficult on large puzzles. Zooming is inconvenient because it is important to be able to see the entire puzzle. With a couple of tweaks, this will be a five star game. The fact that the entire game is free is amazing as I definitely would have paid to get my Picross puzzle fix. Thank you for this wonderful puzzle collection, Konami!

As you work on a row or column, entries in the list of digits to the side/top get crossed out as the game detects that you've finished a particular block of numbers. Unfortunately, there seems to be an error in the algorithm so that incorrect information is given rarely on incomplete lines. For instance, the game may cross out a "2" indicating that the block of two on the line you're working on is finished and is supposed to be part of a block of 2. It can happen that it is actually supposed to be part of a larger block, or a different block than is indicated. I have concrete evidence of this happening precisely twice in two puzzles (with 40% of puzzles completed), but I suspect that it happens with a higher frequency (since restarts due to mistake are much higher in this game compared to other Picross games I've played). In short, be careful - you cannot trust the clues given by the game about your progress.

To preface, I am greatly enjoying this game so far and would happily recommend it to anyone with a tolerance for control frustration. Unfortunately, the controls for larger puzzles are simultaneously too sensitive and not sensitive enough. I have a difficult time making the game recognize when I am selecting a specific square at times, particularly when I'm dragging to fill a line. Aggravating this is that, as far as I can tell, there's no blank option for undoing mistakes; if you mark a square, you can only give it the opposing mark, not make it blank again. I've had to restart puzzles due to this combination of issues, and it drags down genuinely good picross. I have not used the hint system myself, so I can't comment on the error with the ads I've seen mentioned.

I’ve loved picross for years, and this is simply a wonderful presentation of my favorite puzzle game. The music is SO GOOD, and the controls work well for me. I like that you can toggle auto-completing X boxes, though I like the autocomplete off for smaller puzzles and on for larger ones. Maybe a toggle for each size would be good? I’ve only done up to the 10x10 puzzles, which is kind of my sweet spot for these. My biggest criticism so far is that the 10x10 puzzles don’t take up enough of the screen, and it would be nice for them to be bigger by default. Using an iPhone 6 over here, and the puzzle/its numbers don’t stretch t the edges of the screen. Hopefully this can be tweaked in the future. Thanks for making such a stellar picross game! Highly recommended.

The music, themes, and end results are all handled very well with a ton of content from games of the pixel area. Unfortunately two major problems exist: 1. Every 15x15 board is shrunk and off-center to account for 6 or 7 number hints when most boards don’t have that many making it borderline too small even on an iPhone X. Every board should be sized according to an axis’ highest number of hints. There is a zoom function but without the ability to scroll it’s very unintuitive ensuring I never used it. Update: I was mistaken there is now a scroll feature. 2. Once you finish regular and mid-boss puzzles you’re stuck waiting every 3 hours for a boss puzzle. With ~75% completion I can’t play anymore until the timer is done. They really should’ve just started letting boss puzzles be available when you complete everything else. High chance this’ll be uninstalled before I can even complete it because of the pointless waiting mechanic.