It's a free, no-frills Konami-owned-IP Picross game for mobile, with a charmingly "unpolished first-pass"-level localization. If you've played any other Picross game, you should be able to guess whether that sounds fun based on that description alone. I found it pretty fun, although the forced waiting on the boss levels was wholly unnecessary. There's no microtransactions and minimal ads.
I honestly didn't realize how many picross games were on the phone, and even more shocked that Konami actually made one. Even more than that though, the game has very little ad time, and doesn't interrupt the game for it either. It's earnestly a game that just reminds you that Konami made games with it's picross puzzles, and in game advertising for various steam and mobile games. It does have an annoying feature to time puzzles, but really it's only for one type anyway so it's not on the same level that Pokemon Picross (3DS) was when it came to wasting your time.
Still Pixel Puzzle Collection is a solid Picross game that borders on the easy side of Puzzle games. While most of the puzzles are 15x15; a lot of the time the game auto fills completed rows for you, gives heavy easy edge combos, and true combos to make solving puzzles relatively easy. The game even has a small soundtrack accompanying the puzzles from said collection, like Castlevania or Gradius. Then when you solve each puzzle completely, as sometimes you need to do multiple picrosses, you get a full description of what you just made.
Basically this game is super neat and super free. Honestly, it feels like a fever dream when you take into account the bad habits of Konami as of the 2010s mixed together with how common place mobile games use their ads to annoy you to buy "the full game". If you got a phone capable of playing it, love picross and old Konami games, it's sort a huge win.
Still Pixel Puzzle Collection is a solid Picross game that borders on the easy side of Puzzle games. While most of the puzzles are 15x15; a lot of the time the game auto fills completed rows for you, gives heavy easy edge combos, and true combos to make solving puzzles relatively easy. The game even has a small soundtrack accompanying the puzzles from said collection, like Castlevania or Gradius. Then when you solve each puzzle completely, as sometimes you need to do multiple picrosses, you get a full description of what you just made.
Basically this game is super neat and super free. Honestly, it feels like a fever dream when you take into account the bad habits of Konami as of the 2010s mixed together with how common place mobile games use their ads to annoy you to buy "the full game". If you got a phone capable of playing it, love picross and old Konami games, it's sort a huge win.
I think this sort of criticism almost sounds unfair, but this game just has too much content. Optional content, mind you. Stuff normal people (not me) would just ignore. Basically, to truly complete this game, you have to play the whole thing over again without the ability to mark empty spaces with crosses. Considering how many boring subway commutes this game helped me through, I guess I can hardly complain, but I think a few side modes à la the Picross series would have been a much better fit. As it is, the sheer monotony of it all had me relish in the thought of finally being done more than that of just playing the game by the end.
begging this fuckin game to give me some more tokimeki memorial puzzles all i get are bombermans
This is a game that should not exist. Konami all but exited the gaming market in the 2010s so for them to release a 100% free ode to their gaming legacy is baffling. This is a classic nonogram game, and it's a good one. At first I felt myself comparing it to Jupiter's Picross games and scoffing at its differences, but after playing it bit by bit for over a year I came to love this game. Its puzzles are genuinely challenging towards the end and it has some deep cuts from Konami lore. The touchscreen did feel a bit inaccurate at times, not registering my taps at the correct spot, the boss puzzles taking three hours to show up is annoying, and the ads are intrusive, but these are minor complaints in an otherwise excellent nonogram game.
Would rank higher but it's hard to not fat-finger the board sometimes. Also because Konami but mostly the former.
Whoever escaped the Abenomics-era Konami developer prison to make this and keep it mostly ad-free for a couple of years: I salute you. May your cockles be warm and your curry plate tasty.
Jupiter took their precious sweet time doing more Picross collabs with IPs from corps like SEGA, yet the company no one expected put this out for free. And it barely feels like a free-to-play monstrosity, either! I picked up Pixel Puzzle Collection back around release since I wanted a meaty mobile game for the road, but got plenty more than I'd hoped for. There's a decades-spanning rogues' gallery of cool references made into nonograms here, from Frogger to Tokimeki Memorial. Playing these in a randomized sequence, albeit tuned for difficulty, makes it a smooth stop-and-go experience. I didn't realize that I'd gotten far into the total puzzles list until reaching the first batch of big multi-piece pictures, a good sign if ever.
UI and touch precision responsiveness are everything in a mobile nonogram app like this. I'm happy to report that, while a little stiff at times, this still feels better to use than the much bigger, easily discoverable competitors on the iOS marketplace. It rarely feels like I'm fat-fingering myself into a misplaced pip I'll regret later, or that I can't quickly redo grid sections when needed. This matters once you reach the game's second loop (its "Hard Mode"), where the inability to mark X pips means you must fill each line more carefully. After all, how am I gonna make my Shiori Fujisaki solutions come true if I keep messing up thirty minutes back?! (That's still more generous than the games she's from, no doubt.)
Pixel Puzzle Collection feels like an M2 employee's pet project at times, the kind of passionate mega-mini-game you'd make in the shadows and then slap into one of their compilations like it's nothing. This stood out five years ago mainly because it stood against all the stereotypes Konami's earned in recent years, most of which oppose that which this Picross set exalts. It's telling how classic Hudson Soft icons and characters from many games share plenty of space with the core Konami crew, as the corporation had become awfully good at erasing Hudson's history from digital stores by this point. There's nothing quite like hopping from Ganbare Goemon to Star Solider in a moment's notice, let's just put it that way.
For less experienced nonogram heads, there's a smartly designed hint system in play here. You get three daily solutions to use for any puzzle (plus the add for "boss" grids), and then a 10-minute cooldown for each new one after those. I like this more than the overly generous equivalents I see on my other phone Picross apps, and it feels naturally tuned to how much attention I'd give a hard puzzle before moving on. All I want now is more, which I guess is too much for Konami since they've done nothing for Pixel Puzzle Collection these past few years except shove more ads in. They really want you playing any other mobile game that could squeeze more coin, as if a prestige experience like this is somehow hurting their bottom line enough to deserve such harm. I hope whoever coded/designed the game is having an alright time, wherever they are.
All this sounds frustrating and it is when you consider how well Nintendo treats Jupiter's Picross works. Even then, the official Picross games you can get on the eShop now feel creatively stagnant, or just unwilling to toy with riskier concepts like that company used to. I'm not saying this weird misbegotten Konami counterpart is innovative, either, but it had so much sequel potential that's just getting squandered over time. Indie scene developers are taking the genre in all sorts of new directions while those who can access the kinds of resources Nintendo & Konami have are getting screwed. And I find it harder to recommend Pixel Puzzle Collection now because, while the core game's unchanged, all the new ads and annoyances remind you of what could have been. But I think it's still an easy choice for game fans who are either into nonograms or could use a cute diversion playing on nostalgia without feeling like a copout.
Jupiter took their precious sweet time doing more Picross collabs with IPs from corps like SEGA, yet the company no one expected put this out for free. And it barely feels like a free-to-play monstrosity, either! I picked up Pixel Puzzle Collection back around release since I wanted a meaty mobile game for the road, but got plenty more than I'd hoped for. There's a decades-spanning rogues' gallery of cool references made into nonograms here, from Frogger to Tokimeki Memorial. Playing these in a randomized sequence, albeit tuned for difficulty, makes it a smooth stop-and-go experience. I didn't realize that I'd gotten far into the total puzzles list until reaching the first batch of big multi-piece pictures, a good sign if ever.
UI and touch precision responsiveness are everything in a mobile nonogram app like this. I'm happy to report that, while a little stiff at times, this still feels better to use than the much bigger, easily discoverable competitors on the iOS marketplace. It rarely feels like I'm fat-fingering myself into a misplaced pip I'll regret later, or that I can't quickly redo grid sections when needed. This matters once you reach the game's second loop (its "Hard Mode"), where the inability to mark X pips means you must fill each line more carefully. After all, how am I gonna make my Shiori Fujisaki solutions come true if I keep messing up thirty minutes back?! (That's still more generous than the games she's from, no doubt.)
Pixel Puzzle Collection feels like an M2 employee's pet project at times, the kind of passionate mega-mini-game you'd make in the shadows and then slap into one of their compilations like it's nothing. This stood out five years ago mainly because it stood against all the stereotypes Konami's earned in recent years, most of which oppose that which this Picross set exalts. It's telling how classic Hudson Soft icons and characters from many games share plenty of space with the core Konami crew, as the corporation had become awfully good at erasing Hudson's history from digital stores by this point. There's nothing quite like hopping from Ganbare Goemon to Star Solider in a moment's notice, let's just put it that way.
For less experienced nonogram heads, there's a smartly designed hint system in play here. You get three daily solutions to use for any puzzle (plus the add for "boss" grids), and then a 10-minute cooldown for each new one after those. I like this more than the overly generous equivalents I see on my other phone Picross apps, and it feels naturally tuned to how much attention I'd give a hard puzzle before moving on. All I want now is more, which I guess is too much for Konami since they've done nothing for Pixel Puzzle Collection these past few years except shove more ads in. They really want you playing any other mobile game that could squeeze more coin, as if a prestige experience like this is somehow hurting their bottom line enough to deserve such harm. I hope whoever coded/designed the game is having an alright time, wherever they are.
All this sounds frustrating and it is when you consider how well Nintendo treats Jupiter's Picross works. Even then, the official Picross games you can get on the eShop now feel creatively stagnant, or just unwilling to toy with riskier concepts like that company used to. I'm not saying this weird misbegotten Konami counterpart is innovative, either, but it had so much sequel potential that's just getting squandered over time. Indie scene developers are taking the genre in all sorts of new directions while those who can access the kinds of resources Nintendo & Konami have are getting screwed. And I find it harder to recommend Pixel Puzzle Collection now because, while the core game's unchanged, all the new ads and annoyances remind you of what could have been. But I think it's still an easy choice for game fans who are either into nonograms or could use a cute diversion playing on nostalgia without feeling like a copout.
I got 200% on this game.
Don't do that.
Don't do that.
Picross is love, Picross is life. Any fan of 80’s and 90’s Konami will like this one as much as they hate the current Konami.
Fun little Picross like game for mobile for free with just a few ads. Very enjoyable for short sessions and features artwork from known and more obscure retri Konami games.
There's like a thousand picross apps you could chose to play, and this one certainly is one of them. No intrusive ads or predatory microtransactions makes this a solid choice if you're into exclusively retro gaming themed puzzles.
i fear this really did save my life when i was in high school. i'm not convinced a vengeful spirit didn't craft and release this without konami's approval because there's barely any monetisation here either
I love a good picross game. This is almost that.
A touch too easy, and with an obnoxious timer on the boss puzzles that meant I had finished every single other puzzle with a HUGE amount of those left over. A completely needless feature, as the post-game catalogue (including some bonus puzzles) removes the timer entirely. A very Konami move, and I’m shocked you can’t pay your way past it. Not that I’d want to, it’s just… Konami, y’know?
An excellent argument for turning off your wifi once in a while, too, as the many adverts for other Konami games only actually attempt to appear of you’re connected, and their very presence isn’t just obnoxious, but actually impacts performance.
A touch too easy, and with an obnoxious timer on the boss puzzles that meant I had finished every single other puzzle with a HUGE amount of those left over. A completely needless feature, as the post-game catalogue (including some bonus puzzles) removes the timer entirely. A very Konami move, and I’m shocked you can’t pay your way past it. Not that I’d want to, it’s just… Konami, y’know?
An excellent argument for turning off your wifi once in a while, too, as the many adverts for other Konami games only actually attempt to appear of you’re connected, and their very presence isn’t just obnoxious, but actually impacts performance.
This is a Konami-flavored Picross-style game.
When you finish a puzzle you get flavor text you get for hyperspecific Konami characters that most people wouldn’t know about and it’s usually pretty great.
Been playing this on mobile and the blocks can get small for a single finger and the zoom in isn’t great, but it’s otherwise a great free package with easily deterred ads
When you finish a puzzle you get flavor text you get for hyperspecific Konami characters that most people wouldn’t know about and it’s usually pretty great.
Been playing this on mobile and the blocks can get small for a single finger and the zoom in isn’t great, but it’s otherwise a great free package with easily deterred ads
Bloody masterpiece.
Não me entenda mal: Pixel Puzzle Collection é um Picross/Nonogram mobile bem competente, com uma interface ok e puzzles bem legais (o fã de Bomberman interno que eu tenho ficou muito feliz, inclusive).
Mas de quem foi a ideia de jumento de colocar vários puzzles dentro de uma lista que só libera 1 a cada 3 horas??? MESMO DEPOIS DE TERMINAR TODOS OS OUTROS? Eu fiquei DUAS SEMANAS só pra terminar os últimos 30 puzzles porque o jogo simplesmente não queria me deixar jogar. Um jogo muito legal que teve um gosto bem amargo pra mim, infelizmente.
Mas de quem foi a ideia de jumento de colocar vários puzzles dentro de uma lista que só libera 1 a cada 3 horas??? MESMO DEPOIS DE TERMINAR TODOS OS OUTROS? Eu fiquei DUAS SEMANAS só pra terminar os últimos 30 puzzles porque o jogo simplesmente não queria me deixar jogar. Um jogo muito legal que teve um gosto bem amargo pra mim, infelizmente.
Completed both standard and expert modes with no hints used. Well, this was quite the time-sink! With over 500 puzzles to solve, Konami's Pixel Puzzle Collection will last even the most dedicated picross fan a long time. There's a nice range of difficulty, ramping up well as you solve more puzzles - until you've solved each puzzle, you can't choose which come up, with them instead being presented to you in a somewhat 'random' order, other than easier/smaller puzzles generally coming first - and the game neatly avoids the potential for frustration that could arise if coming up against a particularly tricky puzzle by offering three 'slots' for puzzles to be attempted with progress saved, plus an additional one for multi-part 'boss' puzzles.
The touch interface is well-designed for the mobile format; beyond that, if you enjoy picross, or logic puzzles generally, you can be sure that you'll have a good time here. Once you've solved each of the puzzles once, an 'expert' mode opens up - this features exactly the same puzzles (plus a handful of additions), but the key difference is that you lose the functionality allowing cells to be marked as blank. The added challenge here is more one of memorisation/visualisation and far from essential, though it's a decent enough way of extending the playtime if you're dedicated and don't find it too frustrating.
Overall, this is one of the best mobile picross games that I've come across of late, very much recommended.
The touch interface is well-designed for the mobile format; beyond that, if you enjoy picross, or logic puzzles generally, you can be sure that you'll have a good time here. Once you've solved each of the puzzles once, an 'expert' mode opens up - this features exactly the same puzzles (plus a handful of additions), but the key difference is that you lose the functionality allowing cells to be marked as blank. The added challenge here is more one of memorisation/visualisation and far from essential, though it's a decent enough way of extending the playtime if you're dedicated and don't find it too frustrating.
Overall, this is one of the best mobile picross games that I've come across of late, very much recommended.
In a rare case these past few years of Konami being proud of their history, Pixel Puzzle Collection is a solid Picross game. It's free with only minimal advertising and has some neat quality-of-life features like auto-filling in "X" markers when you complete a line.
If you like Picross at all, even without the Konami nostalgia, this is well worth checking out.
If you like Picross at all, even without the Konami nostalgia, this is well worth checking out.
Picross with classic Konami titles instead of random generic pixel images. Awesome concept, but it coming out when it did made it feel sour. Fuck Konami