PIXEL PUZZLE COLLECTION 4+

Downloading this game is a no-brainer. It’s basically Nintendo’s Picross, but from Konami with Konami owned characters. Part of me wonders if the point of this is to keep up the copyright on some of these characters or something. Regardless, this is a real, fun, full game with hours of gameplay to enjoy. Initially I assumed when you ran out of “hints” that it would try to sell you more, but it doesn’t. If you run out, it recharges one after 10 minutes, infinite times. If you like logical puzzles, or picross specifically, it’s absolutely worth grabbing this. It’s worth money, and is a real, full game...they’re just giving it away for free, so get it!

Update: I just finished the game after playing it off and on for three years! I don’t regret my time spent with it. The only real catch I know of is I’m not sure how well this works on an iPhone just because you might have to zoom around, I played it entirely on an iPad where you can easily see the entire board at once.

Well, that, and as far as I know there’s no way to transfer your save game from one device to another, which is a shame. But other than that, it’s a fun type of gameplay, and well-made, and totally free.

I’ve been having a great time playing this game for hours and hours and have never really gotten bored with it. If I have about 5 minutes, I’ve usually been sitting down and completing a puzzle. However, my one problem, and it’s one that’s particularly popped up now that I’m 96% complete with the game, is the recharge time for boss puzzles. It’s now at the point where the only puzzles left to complete are boss puzzles and having to wait 3 hours each time is pretty annoying. Maybe instead either the timer could be dropped to 2 hours or a normal square could become a boss puzzle square after you complete all of the available normal puzzles for it. Either way, the game has still been a blast and it’s more of a minor gripe than a major design issue, but still probably worth considering updating.

As a Picross fan, I love flying through these puzzles. I enjoy the random selection of the puzzle as well, wondering what category I will get next. The old songs are awesome, especially when I hear Contra’s stage 1 or Bloody Tears.

It would be a five star game if it was capable of notifying me that a new boss puzzle attempt was ready. I don’t want to have to set a timer, especially if I can’t get to solving it right away. Controls could be improved as well. I like the controls from some of the other Picross games out there on mobile devices that allow me to drag the cursor around from touching anywhere on the screen and tapping to swap between blank, X, or filled in. Tap and drag can be used to fill in multiple blocks or Xs as well. Cursor controls don’t make sense on a mobile device and direct taps on the puzzles get difficult on large puzzles. Zooming is inconvenient because it is important to be able to see the entire puzzle.

With a couple of tweaks, this will be a five star game. The fact that the entire game is free is amazing as I definitely would have paid to get my Picross puzzle fix. Thank you for this wonderful puzzle collection, Konami!