Picross.io Reviews

Bad version of Picross. No controller support, no way to turn off auto correct, no background music. Avoid.

TL;DR - a decent picross game, brought down by UI display problems. Row and column information on large puzzles will be covered up by UI elements, puzzle groups in level select will be positioned offscreen and thus, unplayable, and the combo counter interferes with making marks. The game is somewhat barebones in terms of features. It will highlight incorrect squares, with no option otherwise. There's no option to automatically fill trivially-solved columns and rows, but it will automatically fill in Xs when you mark off the borders of every group in a row or column. If you want to play a harder mode where you can't place Xs, it'll have to be self-imposed. The timer counts up, so you can't fail from taking too long, and as a result, mistakes adding a minute to your time doesn't really mean anything. There is no music, which is fine, since you can always put on your own or watch something while you play. The game does not offer resolution options outside of your monitor's aspect ratio, even in windowed mode. The main problems I have with the game have to do with the UI. It might have to do with playing the game on a monitor with a 4:3 aspect ratio, but the timer in the upper left will block off the leftmost column and the topmost row information, so you need to work with what you can in the rest of the puzzle, which is not always enough. The game has a combo counter which increases as you consecutively draw in squares correctly, but the display for it interferes as you try to mark in multiple squares in a column, since you can't click under a combo notification. What's especially irritating is that I was only able to play 165 out of the store page's claim of 224 large (15X15) puzzles, because the rest went offscreen in puzzle select. The game's okay if you just want to play picross, and if it's on sale.

would like it if when you marked an X you would not be able to mark that spot as blue until you removed it, would also like an option to force click and drag to a straight line but other than that I enjoy it

Oof this one is bad. - The color scheme is driving me nuts (the inverted colors part). - The auto-completion system constantly crosses out random cells for you when you least expect it. - Drawing a line turns empty AND previously crossed-out cells into filled ones so the latter immediately counts as mistakes (which is super dumb). - Making a mistake (including a false mistake, see above) adds 1 minute to the timer. If you exceed 5, 10, or 15 minutes for 5x5, 10x10, and 15x15 respectively YOU STILL CONTINUE TO PLAY WITHOUT WARNINGS but the level won't count as completed. Jesus christ. - Literally no options menu, no way to disable sounds (and there's no music). - UI [url=https://i.imgur.com/ZMUWAUO.png]breaks[/url] constantly. - Isolating a block in the middle displays exactly which block you've completed (you must not have this information in picross)

Overall: 👎 I would not recommend it. Positive +I like that the best time is displayed in the selection menu. +First time I saw x be applied to a whole row or column when all hints have been solved. It's a cool feature. +Pressing hint will solve a random column. It can be nice to use it on the bigger puzzle! Neutral ~Just like Picross DS, the tiles are validated on click. When you make an error, 1 minute is added to the timer. If you exceed 10 minutes, the puzzle the time will not be saved and the puzzle is considered unsolved. Negative -There is a bug when changing the language in the menu, the buttons of the main menus are duplicated and multiple languages are display simultaneously on screen. -Screen resolution only go up to 1680 x 1050 -The way the tutorial text is over the menu text made it almost not readable. It would have been better to see the instruction on it's own scene. -The tutorial text is off screen. I can't read all the words. -No customization for the bright white background, the font or the colors. The color theme is not bad, bud the white background really hurt my eyes. -The solved puzzles have no title and no color. I don't know what some of them are supposed to be. -No option to disable sound effects. There is also no music. -Puzzle size only range from 5x5 to 15x15. It would have been nice to see some bigger puzzles. -Depending on the screen resolution, the upper left corner timer can hide rows and columns (specially the 15x15 one who are bigger)! -There is no option to lock slide. It's easy to make a mistake if you move your mouse not in a straight line. -There is sometimes a visual bug with the hints where you can see a black hint and a grey hint on top of each other.

Rather flawed, but with plenty to do Picross.io is yet another of those puzzle games people have seen before where you use number clues along the edge of a grid to complete the images, which are also known as nonograms or griddlers. These games don't need to do much to work, just have plenty of puzzles, and I can promise it does okay there. Presentation As a puzzle game, you don’t need much here, and the game doesn't put much effort into this. Basic graphics does the job, and there is a total lack of music and almost no other sounds, with only placing a mark (either correct or incorrect) and completing a puzzle making any sound. If you would like to listen to some music during gameplay, you better play some of your own soundtracks. Gameplay It is picross. Do you not know how picross works? Did someone in the back just go No? Fine then, I guess I better explain this in detail. Each puzzle consists of a grid, in 5X5, 10X10 and 15X15 sizes in this game, where you have to use number clues along the edges to solve a puzzle. Now, some are easy, like a 5 clue on a 5X5 puzzle, you can fill the entire row. Say it is a 3 though, you don’t know where exactly that will go, right? But no matter where it fits, the middle spot will still be filled when the puzzle is solved, so that is a spot out of the way. Picross consists of figuring out where you can mark, and as you get further in a puzzle, those filled spots make it easier to guess other spots with the rest of the clues. And once all the spots are filled, you get to see a small image that you figured out from those clues. Lifespan So if you are willing to put some effort into this, you only need to know how long you will be playing it now. And truthfully, it isn’t too bad here. It only has preset levels, no Steam Workshop support, which is a mark against it, but it is rather cheap as well, so I can’t complain too much there. Even with just the default puzzles, I still spent just over 20 hours working on each of the puzzles. Each puzzle size has a number of tabs for level sets. The 5X5 puzzles have only a single tab for 15 puzzles, 10X10 has 5 tabs / 75 puzzles and the 15X15stuff should last ages with a total of 15 tabs for 225 puzzles. All totalled up, this game has 315 puzzles to solve, not a bad amount. Issues So the game seems fine, but as you progress, you will start to notice flaws. This game was made to display at a certain screen ratio, and if your ratio doesn’t match, you are going to notice problems. User interface items may overlay the puzzle clues causing issues solving things, and later on, you will find yourself unable to click tabs for harder level sets. Even with my 1920X1080 screen, the final level set was out of view, and only clicking at the very edge of the screen allowed me to pick it so I could complete the game. I found this to be a rather serious flaw. With a 4:3 or 5:4 screen ratio, you can’t access the later puzzles at all. An ultrawide monitor would be able to display all the levels, but I’m unsure this game even supports those resolutions. This is a serious flaw in my opinion and can easily impact just how much fun users might get out of the game. So before buying, you need to decide if that is a deal breaker for you. Closing So, if you aren’t too picky and your monitor will display at the right resolution, this game is worth a try for those already interested in picross puzzles who want more to solve. Anyone else would be better off trying out one of the many other options available for play. 4 / 10