Nice presentation only goes so far when the core puzzle mechanic boils down to comparing numbers. (And not the kind of cause-and-effect comparisons in Minesweeper-esque puzzle games like Tametsi.) Maybe the harder puzzles require logic or more intense thought - I only made it to Level 10 of Easy, as there are tons of puzzles and no way to skip ahead in difficulty. Anyone looking for a low-challenge puzzle game that still has a pretense of pressure could do worse than this, especially for things easy to emulate on phones & play with two thumbs.

A fun game. The tutorial is amazing to introduce you to the game mechanics and the game plays very nice. It was different than what I expected and I got used to it quickly.

The puzzles are creative and there was a lot of thought put into them and also a lot of puzzles. In summary, the easy levels and half the normal puzzles are small. In the other half of the normal puzzles through the hard puzzles they get bigger and in the hard difficulty there is less time to complete them.

The only thing I disliked quite a bit are the circle and square numbers. They make the puzzles very hard especially if the number is greater than 3. Not that big of a deal because the symmetry of most puzzles allows you to cheese them, but in some puzzles it gets tiresome, namely the asymmetric ones. Nevertheless I understand that this was necessary to keep the game interesting and not too simple. There is probably better ways to do it, but giving the size of the DS screen it was a clever decision.

The highlight for me is level 9-gold, it was a nice way to finish the game. I liked this game a lot and unfortunately couldn't play it online. I wanted to see community puzzles and try to make some, but it's fine. I don't recommend this game, though. I can see it being frustrating sometimes and I think most people would lose their minds instead of having fun with it.

I was totally addicted to this game for about a month. Wanted to squeeze in a few puzzlez every day. It is really innovative and fun especially for the first time. After playing through all 350 base game puzzles i realised however that the game really does nothing to differentiate or vary the gameplay. The visuals and strategy really stay the same through every puzzle from beginning to end and while the fun animations of the solutions are fun and charming the game could have done a lot more to really giv it more personality and feel less sterile.

I could write an essay, a long one, on the genius of this game's concept and the intricacy of its execution, but it's Friday afternoon, and I like think I have better things to do. (I like to lie to myself, in other words.) For now, suffice it to say that the Hard puzzles are among the best I've played in any game, and that while a few Round 2 QOL enhancements would've been welcome here (especially the bomb and reworked "completed line" indicator), the lack of a hint system improves this one to such a startling degree that I'm tempted to do a full "hintless" replay of the sequel. Oh, and I guess I do wish the really incredible stuff was unlocked from the start, but the easier puzzles have a zen charm of their own. HAL should have made 10 of these.

Picross 3D! I’m not done with this one, but I’ve played through enough to write down my thoughts, I think. I do like this one, but I genuinely think playing the 2nd one first has kinda made this one a little rougher to play. Regardless, I’ll do my best to put my biases aside for most of this review.

It’s Picross…but in 3D! If you haven’t played it: You get a cube made of smaller blocks rather a square like regular Picross. You have to chip away at what blocks aren’t part of the puzzle to make the shape.

This game feels…weirdly punishing. You have a time limit, which goes from green->orange->red. I’ve managed to always stay in the green, but I assume the orange/red detracts from the “Nice time!” star you get. You also get very limited strikes allowed, a total of 5. The one-chance challenges don’t feel much like challenges when I have to get no strikes on every puzzle for three stars anyways. This is moreso from me coming to this after the sequel, but this one also just feels kinda strange to play. Being able to paint incorrect cubes with no indication you’re wrong and not having to paint everything as long as you’ve broken all the right ones throws me off.

Despite all that, this game is certainly charming, that same crunchy charm a lot of DS games have. I really like the little cube bird that shows up throughout the game! They do the tutorial, and also just talk a bit in collections (explained later.) They’ve got little animations on the top screen while you’re solving puzzles, ranging from thinking to nonsensical silly movements to cheering you on to frustration. Not too many of the tracks in this game have stuck with me, but they’re all still pretty enjoyable.

Each puzzle is sorted into various collections, all based on their own themes, and you get a little description for each puzzle. The puzzles are also animated after you solve them. As you progress through the game, you get some misc. animations of the little cube bird.

Interestingly, this game also had a feature where you could make your own shapes and the game would generate a puzzle out of them! It’s defunct as DS services stopped, which is a shame cause that seems like it’d definitely be part of this game’s appeal at the time.

Overall, I think the sequel is better due to its QOL and presentation, but this one isn’t bad at all! Just a bit outshined, although maybe it’s not fair to compare the two when the puzzle sharing feature is defunct. If you wanna play both of these games, it’s probably better to start with this one first.
Maybe I’ll redo my Picross 3D Round 2 interview and go more in-depth on that one too.

Thanks for reading!

Great Picross game on the DS, and even better when considering this was the first of the 3D Picross series on the DS series of handhelds (yes I am considering the 3DS to be in the same series). The puzzles are fun and well balanced, the collection are fun to complete and very satisfying to fill up, and there is A LOT of puzzles to master. My only real complaints just come from the graphical side. I understand that doing good 3D visuals on this system probably was not easy; but I experienced a lot of "glitches" with the puzzles, particularly along the edges of blocks. Besides those however this is a great game in its series and definitely worth a play for more picross! (Being able to make your own puzzles is super cool as well!)

Yeah this is a really solid Picross game. It's a pretty cool spin on the regular style of Picross, and the voxel art style feels really charming and cute! There are a TON of puzzles too, so you get a lot of mileage out of this one.

The last few puzzles started to get more frustrating than anything (the final gold level in the game in particular), and I sometimes had to make guesses in order to beat levels under the goal time, but most of the time this was a really solid game. If you like Picross, this is definitely a great version to play.