Is Picross a game? Or is it a coloring book for The Count?
I've picked at Picross games a few times over the years, and each time follows a similar pattern. I get lost in time. It feels like fun. But the more I play and the better / faster I get, the less it feels like a game. The more victory feels assured instead of earned. That completion becomes an inevitable mark of patience instead of a reward for cleverness.
Picross strips all pretenses that other games hinge upon. Player action is the only action that can happen. There are no surprises. Everything is presented up front and fair. The greatest penalty is lost time.
There's an awareness that develops in the rhythm of how these puzzles can and must progress. That complexity doesn't increase difficulty, only the tediousness of careful counting and eye-spying changes from my previous choices. That mistakes and failures come from basic arithmetic errors or misreading a 6 for an 8. That the greatest obstacle possible is the functioning of my own brain.
Once I reach this state, the fun stops. I feel like I'm using myself to mine bitcoin for the dopamine hit of finishing a puzzle, dressed up in gamification to feel like a video game level. I stop feeling like a human doing a human thing. I feel like a machine pantomiming a rudimentary concept of how to have fun.
I dunno man. There's something sinister and existential there. Picross feels like the one line of code in the Matrix of video games I've been able to read. Because Picross reveals exactly what’s happening and why you’re doing what you’re doing exponentially faster than most games. Because the steps you must take are preset and the greatest reward the game can give is more of itself. More time spent engaging your brain in a way that doesn't require language or emotion. More time spent honing a non-transferable way of thinking that only enables More Of This.
I can't help but think of the people who turn Pokémon games into mindless casino machines for literal hundreds of hours. Picross is the condensed version of that, without asking for the emotional investment in Pikachu as a down payment. An invitation to roleplay in losing your humanity without the veneer of an external reason for doing so. This is not a club, this is a crack house.
More recent Picross games have been friendlier in presentation, more cheerful in tone. They are liars and cowards. Mario's Super Picross's opening screens have the sound and ambiance of a horror game. As far as game cover art goes, this one might be perfect. Mario, the mascot of fun in games itself, staring into your soul as he pixelates into cold, blank numerology, while wildly discordant colorful foreign text fails to package this nightmare as a Good Time.
I can't score this.
I've picked at Picross games a few times over the years, and each time follows a similar pattern. I get lost in time. It feels like fun. But the more I play and the better / faster I get, the less it feels like a game. The more victory feels assured instead of earned. That completion becomes an inevitable mark of patience instead of a reward for cleverness.
Picross strips all pretenses that other games hinge upon. Player action is the only action that can happen. There are no surprises. Everything is presented up front and fair. The greatest penalty is lost time.
There's an awareness that develops in the rhythm of how these puzzles can and must progress. That complexity doesn't increase difficulty, only the tediousness of careful counting and eye-spying changes from my previous choices. That mistakes and failures come from basic arithmetic errors or misreading a 6 for an 8. That the greatest obstacle possible is the functioning of my own brain.
Once I reach this state, the fun stops. I feel like I'm using myself to mine bitcoin for the dopamine hit of finishing a puzzle, dressed up in gamification to feel like a video game level. I stop feeling like a human doing a human thing. I feel like a machine pantomiming a rudimentary concept of how to have fun.
I dunno man. There's something sinister and existential there. Picross feels like the one line of code in the Matrix of video games I've been able to read. Because Picross reveals exactly what’s happening and why you’re doing what you’re doing exponentially faster than most games. Because the steps you must take are preset and the greatest reward the game can give is more of itself. More time spent engaging your brain in a way that doesn't require language or emotion. More time spent honing a non-transferable way of thinking that only enables More Of This.
I can't help but think of the people who turn Pokémon games into mindless casino machines for literal hundreds of hours. Picross is the condensed version of that, without asking for the emotional investment in Pikachu as a down payment. An invitation to roleplay in losing your humanity without the veneer of an external reason for doing so. This is not a club, this is a crack house.
More recent Picross games have been friendlier in presentation, more cheerful in tone. They are liars and cowards. Mario's Super Picross's opening screens have the sound and ambiance of a horror game. As far as game cover art goes, this one might be perfect. Mario, the mascot of fun in games itself, staring into your soul as he pixelates into cold, blank numerology, while wildly discordant colorful foreign text fails to package this nightmare as a Good Time.
I can't score this.