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 while getting a strike for breaking the wrong cube + not having to paint everything as long as you’ve broken all the right cubes 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!

Picross 3D: Round 2!

I did a short review of this a while ago, but I'm redoing it since I can word my thoughts better, and cause I did a long-er review on the first game. Let's go!

So, just like the first game, it's a 3D take on Picross. Instead of a square filled with squares, you get a cube made of cubes! You have to chip away at the cubes to reveal the shape. Unlike the first game, you have to paint each block as well. Instead of just very-square models, your shapes in this game are stylized as wooden figures! Here's the game cover, for an example. You get two colors: orange and blue. Orange numbers are used for curved blocks and non-straight lines of blocks, and blue is for straight lines of blocks. This game also introduces a bomb button, which will clear all the 0 blocks. It's very useful to shave off time and also so you don't accidentally tap the wrong thing and get a strike. While you do get strikes, you can only get a game over in time trials/one-chance challenges. Outside of those, strikes only affect your score.

Instead of being sorted by difficulty like the first game, this game has puzzles themed by category from the start, referred to as books. The actual puzzle difficulty is adjustable from easy, normal, and hard. You can only get the highest gem ranking if you play on hard, but you only need the white gems to unlock more books.

The presentation is really where this game shines. The game is themed after a cafe/book shop. Your file is referred to as a membership card, and you get stamps for every 3000 points, and can get up to 10 stamps. This is also why the categories are referred to as books! Each book has it's own unique cover. As mentioned earlier, the actual puzzles are themed as wooden figures! In exchange for the styliaztion of the figures, the puzzles aren't animated here. The music is all various flavors of jazz, and I think is probably one of the best soundtracks ever made for a game. There's also some nice detail in the sound design, such as the noises for painting cubes orange and blue being different from one another.

There's no puzzle maker or sharing like the first game, unfortunately. There's some amiibo puzzles, but that's about it for fun extras. The Kirby ones are specifically themed to also be related to the game.

I think the only real downside to this game is that it's SUPER easy to make a misinput, but the first game has that problem too. Such is the nature of a touch screen based game.

I think this is the best game ever made. Its first ever (and probably only!) five star rating. (And my first rating ever, actually!)

If you like puzzle games or touch-screen based games, I absolutely recommend it!

Thanks for reading!