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Okay. So I may have cleared every puzzle in Mario’s Picross one night in a buffalo-wing-induced
frenzy. Capsaicin, man. Does weird things to you. So now I’m left without block-filling
puzzle fun, and I’m kinda jonesing. So when I saw that there was a Picross game on the
XBLA indie channel... I kinda wondered if that was a really good idea, since part of
the appeal of Picross is that it’s generally an awesome travelling game. Optimal for killing
a space of time in line at the DMV or on the can as you lament that fourth dozen. This...
is on a big, non-luggable console. Normally I’d be wary, but it’s one dollar and I
NEED MY PICROSS DAD BURN IT. GIVE TO TJ. GIVE.
Hey, it’s Avatar-me! Hi, Avatar-me! Anyway, it’s a standard picross game: You’ve got
numbers on the top and left of a grid of varying size, you use said numbers as data to determine
which cells to fill and which to delete, and then you make a picture. However, this one’s
a little bit backward: Instead of giving you the data for the filled-in cells, you’re
given the data for the remaining cells: the white space. These you can mark as yellow
by using the “highlight” command on the X button, preventing you from accidentally
destroying them and suffering a time penalty. Also provided for your puzzle-solving enjoyment
is a counter function, a virtual tape measure so you’re not smudging up your screen trying
to count 14 out of 20 identical white boxes. This, coupled with the fact that the game
locks you into drawing straight lines, drastically reduces errors by drifting off-course or going
one block too far. And even if you do, the command isn’t recognized until you let go
of the button, so if you’re about to make an egregious mistake you can hit the right
bumper for an emergency cancellation. What, you want more? Like a narrated guide to picross
by the creator of the game itself? Okay, here you go.
Apparently the British do Picross backward. But I’m fine with that, especially since
they’re willing to ramp up the size of the grid to 20x20 for minutes of puzzling action.
My primary gripe with the game is that the pictures you’re creating seem a lot less...
refined, I guess... than what we’ve grown used to with Mario’s Picross and other such
games. Granted, it’d be silly to expect this one Brit pounding out an indie game to
have the sprite-editing background of freakin’ NINTENDO, but still. That’s a pretty weak
guitar. And the notes up at the top there just kinda felt like busywork. Not to mention
this puzzle, which really doesn’t have any good place to start. Just a whole lot of blank
space down near the bottom there. Did I mention there’s a colorblind mode? ‘Cuz there’s
a colorblind mode, which greens down the yellow highlights... and actually provides a better
contrast to the white. Maybe it’s not so much a “Colorblind mode” as a “my eyes
hurt” mode. Speaking of hurting, I’m about to pay my penance for that fifth dozen wings.
‘Scuse me.