Arizona Rose and the Pirates' Riddles Reviews

Great

Lots of nonograms, a few hidden object scenes. Can drag the cursor instead of having to click individually on every cell (left for solid-fill, right for removing the cell) . Fun, casual game.

Simple game if you're into this kind of puzzle, but it does get more challenging as the game progresses. Also, there is an annoying habit of the cursor accidentally clicking on two spots instead of one, which might lead to a penalty. Otherwise, not much else to say about it. Good for a few hours of puzzling, that's pretty much it.

While I would like to review this game, it just does not seem to want to launch for me. Worse, it locks my computer up. Not recommended at this time.

It's my first Picross, so I can't really compare it to the competition. I thought the gameplay was good overall, except maybe for the fact that some of the uncovered tiles are black and they're hard to distinguish, leading to mistakes later in the process. The particle effects can get in the way, too. Other than that, the attention to detail is at a low. The graphics are mediocre, the resolution is fixed (the "Widescreen" option doesn't do anything) and extremely pixelized, even windowed on a 1080p screen. There are a couple of nice tracks, but the last series of 20 levels seemed to be stuck on the worst of them all. There's also a Tetris-like minigame that's easy to lose to, because of the lack of tutorial for that specific game (such as, "you can destroy blocks you don't want" or "you can rotate them by right-clicking", doesn't seem to be too much to ask for..?) If you collect pirate-themed games because of a childhood obsession for Monkey Island, I guess you can try this. But it doesn't have any pirates in it, it's set in a modern setting. By the way, the protagonist finds treasures only in order to impress a colleague, and she hides them in a luggage. What can I say... Don't do this at home?

Excellent picross maps, a few impossible fill the space with pieces (much harder than Tetris), some story and some hidden object puzzles. Learn from me - use the mouse drag feature starting on level 1 that I learned about on level 8. Don't use it when going for the 12 multiplier achievement on levels 10 and up. I wasted a few hours not using these tips.

This game has a mixture of hidden object puzzles, tetris-like mini games arranging gemstones, but is 90% picross puzzles. You take on the role of Arizona Rose, an intrepid archaeologist and puzzle expert. The picross puzzles are great - they started at a 5x5 grid and eventually got to a 25x25 grid. This is the first picross game I have played with colour grids. The larger grids can be very challenging to solve, especially when sparsely populated. Fortunately Arizona Rose gradually uncovers artifacts that have the ability to reveal portions of a grid. You can use these artifacts for help if you get stuck. Each puzzle will allow several mistakes before you are forced to start over. This game really grew on me - the more I played the more I liked it. I would sit down to play a few grids and the next thing I realised it was three hours later. I thought the music was very good - it kind of wrapped me up in the whole experience. I found a comment on another review that explained that one can click and drag to see a count of cells that will be revealed or cleared - that tip was very helpful. This game is good for 15 to 20 hours of playing time. I bought it in the Steam year end sale for just over three dollars and definitely got my moneys worth. I give this game 8.5 out 10 and recommend it to people who like casual puzzle games.

Excellent picross with occasional minipuzzles of various types. Helpful touches like highlighting of the cursor's row and column, faded clue numbers for solved groups, disappearing clue numbers for solved rows and columns, and powerups. Hint: Move the cursor while holding a mouse button to select multiple cells (shows selection count too!).