Picross Fairytale: Legend of the Mermaid Reviews

I enjoy these puzzles quite a lot. This one was very challenging. The story was not very interesting.

Even on sale, the interface is bad enough that the puzzles aren't worth it. This is coming from someone who has solved hundreds of these puzzles. A complete row is marked with a little star off to the side. Numbers are not highlighted in any way. At the point of this review, I only put 12 minutes into the game and already ran into a case where it counted a mistake for the only possible placement. No indication of error appears other than the counter at the top left decreasing -- no sound, no animation. It really took some consciously horrible choices on the part of the developer to take what otherwise could have been a standard game and turn it into something that I'd likely only play if every other game in my large library were already completed, or I had forgotten which game was the most horrible and opened the wrong one. Find another game to play. Avoid this.

Too many levels are not solvable without hints. It doesn't register errors so you can't actually fail to get 3 stars on every level. Various quality of life things I've seen in many free picross games are lacking.. I only got, played and finished it because I like mermaids.. but there's a significant lack of those and the actual story - what little there is of it - is rather stupid.

A fun picross game, but if you uninstall the game when you don't play and reinstall it your progress will be deleted...which is unfortunate :(

"Picross Fairytale: Legend of the Mermaid" is a basic Nonogram game... for those who never played one, it's a kind of grid-deduction-puzzle game, not unlike Minecraft or Sudoku. You're given a grid and a number of numerical clues. You must deduce where the safe places to click are. In a Nonogram, the correct clicks will reveal a small, obviously low resolution image or pattern. Yay, what fun. This is why top of the line gaming PCs costs thousands of dollars, right? The developer, Creobit, has copy + pasted this game an insane FOURTY ONE TIMES... why cash in on one asset if you can cash in on multiple copies of the same game? Asset flipping begins at home! Here's a list of the asset flips of this game that the Russian "developer" is polluting Steam with: [list] [*] Asian Riddles 1, 2, 3 + 4 [*] Christmas Griddlers [*] Christmas Griddlers Journey to Santa [*] Detective Riddles - Sherlock's Heritage 1 + 2 [*] Easter Riddles [*] Egypt Picross Pharaohs Riddles [*] Fill And Cross Christmas Riddles [*] Fill and Cross Magic Journey [*] Fill and Cross Pirate Riddles 1, 2 + 3 [*] Fill and Cross Royal Riddles [*] Fill and Cross Trick or Treat 1, 2 + 3 [*] Fill and Cross World Contest [*] Griddlers Beach Season [*] Griddlers Legend Of The Pirates [*] Griddlers TED and PET 1 + 2 (this game) [*] Griddlers Victorian Picnic [*] Halloween Patchwork Trick or Treat [*] Halloween Riddles Mysterious Griddlers [*] Magic Griddlers 1 + 2 [*] Olympus Griddlers [*] Picross Beach Paradise [*] Picross Bonbon - Nonogram [*] Picross Fairytale - nonogram: Red Riding Hood secret [*] Picross Fairytale: Legend of the Mermaid [*] Picross Hansel and Gretel - Nonograms [*] Riddle of the mask [*] Royal Riddles [*] Santa's Toy Factory Nonograms [*] Thanksgiving Day Griddlers [*] Valentine's Day Griddlers 1 + 2 [/list] [i][b]These are all reskins of exactly the same game![/b][/i] From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. There's no options to change the resolution for the game or customise the graphics settings. There's no way for gamers to ensure this is running at the native resolution of their displays... there's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. There's no way for gamers to try improve the low quality graphics. The game features extremely lazy, minimalist "art", of the type you normally expect to see in low effort Flash/browser games and mobile apps. Considering this is being evaluated as a PC game, having the graphics phoned in like this isn't going to result in a high quality, visually impressive game that PC gamers are used to seeing. The game only displays in 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio (with crappy "wings" to pad out the space). It's possible they developed this using an old CRT they found in a dumpster, or this game has been specifically designed for people gaming on PC's from 1995... either way, this isn't really acceptable in the modern era of PC gaming. The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just iPhone screen tapping stuff. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here. This looks and feels like a mobile app, but it doesn't seem to have made it to the app stores. It's unclear why this was put on Steam instead of the app stores it seems to have been designed for. Maybe it was removed, maybe it was rejected by Apple and Google (they do have more rigorous quality standards than Valve does for Steam, after all). Regardless, for all intents and purposes this might as well be a mobile app, it has the same limitations and dumbed down qualities. It's impossible to recommend such a game to PC gamers. We don't spend all this money building gaming rigs so we can pretend they're iPhones and play games that might as well be mobile apps. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. "Picross Fairytale: Legend of the Mermaid" didn't appeal much to the people who own a copy of the game, either. It has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the game didn't really capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is for finishing 3 levels, trivial to get, but less than 16 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the game. Hardly a success story, gamers just weren't all that interested in the game. "Picross Fairytale: Legend of the Mermaid" has the gamer gouging price of around $5 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam.

This game is a story continuation of "Red Riding Hood secret". But that shouldn't matter too much as the story is basically just an embellishment for the puzzles. If you played the predecesspr, you already know what to expect with 200 more puzzles. The biggest flaw is that the game has obviously been made for mobile devices, the mouse is not utilized very well. There is no hilighting of the current row and column when hovering with the mouse. Also solved numbers at the start and end of a row or column are not greyed out, so you are constantly counting on the bigger puzzles. Other than those flaws, the game is quite enjoyable.

I don't mind the mobile game interface, i do mind the mobile game microtransaction tactics. Basic features like line validation are hidden behind a virtual currency you can buy. And i missed that fact when i bought this. Asking for a refund now.

The gameplay itself is okay, but the game has serious flaws. Like no autosaving. My computer froze and I lost everything I had played because you need to stop for it to save. Not to mention the lack of steam save means if something happens to your computer you also have to restart all over. This so not acceptable and makes me recommend against the game unless you feel like replaying the same shit over and over again just to get to a point where you already were hours ago.

This is a puzzle game with 200 puzzles. I enjoyed the graphics and art style, however I did not enjoy the story that much. The music is also really nice and helps you to concentrate. It takes under 60 hours to complete the game (some of it is idle time). I would recommend this game if you like these types of puzzles. It feel that there could have been a lot more achievements, so I would not recommend this to achievement hunters unless they like these types of puzzles. Overall a fun game to play.

NOTE: I am a highly experienced picross player and normally play picross (nonogram) games with ALL hint mechanics turned off. No hints for what lines have solvable numbers, no notification of complete lines, no error detection, etc. Also, I tend to prefer playing these with either keyboard or controller (D-pad) controls -PROS- - The puzzles are fairly enjoyable - puzzles are of better quality than what I have seen in many other nonogram (picross) games. - Contains a decent quantity of puzzles - Puzzles seem properly designed and seem to all be solvable without any guessing - Graphics are adequate for the style of game - It supports click and drag functionality (see CONS) -CONS- - It disappointing that the options are very limited. - The game will notify you when a line has been completed, there is no way to disable this - Controls are mouse only, no option for controller or keyboard - The game contains microtransactions - The game currency (including microtransactions) seems highly influenced by mobile market games - The in-game currency can just be ignored, it has only 2 uses as far as I can tell and neither feels rewarding or needed (The 2 uses are to buy a "hint" (solve a tile) or early unlock of a world which has not yet been reached) - The game does not highlight your cursor position unless your are clicking. - Some of the interface buttons can interfere with level selection on the level select screen (most of them are related to the game's pointless economy) - When you click and drag, it will always override the tiles that were already placed . - The game is EXTREMELY forgiving with regards to "mistakes". It's so forgiving that i think mistake detection might not actually be working. I have ended up in situations where it was impossible for what I had filled in to be true and it never counted a mistake. - Because mistake detection seems broken, it seems the game will always give you 3 stars upon completion of a level, in turn, breaking game progression as the game has points where it requires all previous levels to be completed and have a certain star total to proceed. -NEUTRAL- - Game does include a BASIC storyline, I do not really see a point to this. - Many puzzles are not square, but all puzzles I have seen up to now have lines in multiples of 5. -IN SUMMARY- This is a nice picross (nonogram) game though it has some unnecessary features (in game currency, microtransactions, and story) and is lacking a few options I would have liked to see. I would suggest getting this on sale if you are interrested in it. EDIT: Added a few more points that I had missed. Also, having now realized how bad the mistake detection is and how this affects progression, I have changed my overal review from positive to negative. Still, if you get a good sale on it, it could be good to grab. It just means you're basically guaranteed to get 3 stars on each level since stars are based on how many mistakes the game says you made.