Picross DS

[toythatkills]

Arrived today, so here's some impressions (I nearly made a ****e gag, like "oooo Betty!" Or something. On with the show.)

There's bloody loads of Japanese. I figured a simple puzzle game wouldn't be too hard to navigate: wrong! Luckily, I think it'll be easy enough to get used to, but a menu translation is handy because there's loads of menu fun.

Turn it on, and you're first asked whether you want to play with the stylus or buttons. I chose stylus, can't comment on button play but you can switch between the two in-game as much as you want. On to the menu screen.

[ Picross ] [Daily Picross]
[My Picross] [ Wireless ]
[ Wi-Fi ] [ Settings ]

Something like that. Picross takes you to your puzzles. There's then ANOTHER menu! A tutorial, then some puzzles split into easy, medium, and hard. There seems to be about 140 or so from the start, not sure if more are unlocked as time goes on.

Playing, then. Easy puzzles are 5x5 so you don't need to scroll around. Anything larger than that shows you the full grid on the top screen, and a section of it on the touch screen that you can drag around. This is really really cumbersome. It'll take some getting used to. Tbh though, I can't think how else they could do stylus control, as the squares will be too hard to hit accurately and it'll be time penalties galore! So, yeah, you drag the screen around to get to the part you want, and then hold up and tap the screen to mark a box, or hold down and tap to put a big ol' X in it.

Daily Picross seems to be a brain training type affair. There's a bunch of options, but only the top is open right now. That one gave me 5 puzzles (10x10) and timed me on completion of all 5. Then I was shown a graph. I imagine I can do this every day to see some improvement, etc.

My Picross is where you can design puzzles, but it comes up with options I am unsure of, so I didn't play. It's also where you can play puzzles you download...

... Which you get from the Wi-Fi option. So far, there's a pack of 10 puzzles from Mario's Picross (I'm told, they have the same BGM too, again, I'm told... I haven't played a Picross game before!) It's not easy to get those puzzles downloaded for a non-Japanese speaker, but you can fumble yr way through with a guide to the menus!

Umm... That's it for now. Picross to solve, and that.

[r3z]

I've been playing DS Puzzler which is a kind of sudoku and picross package for the last few weeks or so and it is great (for picross anyway - don't really bother with the sudoku). I was going to write up a few notes on it earlier but never got around to it, and as picross is of limited interest I might as well add it on here..

For DS Puzzler you hold the DS like a book (same as Brain Training) with the board on the touchscreen and info/thumbnail on the other. There seems plenty of space even to fit in the largest (15*15) puzzles without any need for scrolling, although on the largest puzzles you can occasionally hit the wrong block (and it turned out my touch-screens calibration wasn't as spot on as it could have been).. however there are no time penalties so you don't have to worry about it so much (but it means if you make a mistake it'll mean that you'll never finish the puzzle until you realize). You also don't need to use any buttons at all - if you want to mark an X you double tap the white colour twice. Likewise if you want to mark a block as possibly being a certain colour you double tap that colour twice and you can just mark the block rather than fill it (although I don't think it's really necessary to make of use of it). I think it's probably better than the Picross DS method from what toythatkills has written.

Picross and Sudoku have 500 puzzles each in 'free-play mode' where you can have a go at whatever level difficulty you like, or you can go for a training mode where it gives you a harder puzzle each time and you build up your leftover/'stock time' for some reason, and move through the ranking grades.. there's a couple of graphs available to show your progress/assessment too but to be honest they don't really mean anything at all, apart from you can compare how well you've built up your stock time as you've gone through the training puzzles against up to 2 other players who can play on the same cart.

It's a great game, but my only complaint is that really even the hardest puzzles I've tried have been relatively simple (highest difficulty is 15*15/3 colours). Might give Picross DS a go when I'm done with it as the design/wireless/download options definitely sound good..

[merf]

i had a little go on the picross game last night as have loved picross since the Mario version back on the original gameboy.

i haven't got to the bigger puzzles that need moving around yet but agree there are a few levels of menus to navigate that are a little off putting, the game itself though is very easy to play and perfect for the touch screen.

what is this other DS puzzle game mentioned that has a picross element to it, is it just called DS Puzzler ?

[r3z]

The full name is DS Puzzler Nanpure Fan & Oekaki Logic (number play fan and picture drawing logic) - essentially it is just a set of picross and sudoku puzzles packaged together with an tagged on `training mode` to track some of your progress and make it fit in with the hundreds of other DS learning/brain training software..　but if you`re into picross it plays very well and it`ll be right up your street.

[merf]

thanks for the tip, may try to pick it up cheaply.

back on topic got to the 15x15 puzzles on Picross DS last night and the game is now totally ruined and virtually unplayable for me, you have to drag the puzzle round on the lower screen and when you zoom out to see the whole puzzle can't fill in squares any more.

i just can't believe anybody playtested this and approved it as a control method. its totally horrible.

anybody who wants to see a great picross game btw should check out the freeware Ghostpix on the GP2X, perfect little game.

[r3z]

Yep, I tried out Picross DS the other day and jumped straight to the 15*15 puzzles and I totally agree that the touch control method doesn't work.. however, if you switch to button play you can play normally without having to zoom in/out which just about saves it.

[Nu-Eclipse]

Picross DS to be released over here on May 11th (in case you didn't already know).

[JamesS]

I'm currently playing the D3 Essential Sudoku DS game (the UK release of Simple DS Series Vol. 7: The Illustration Puzzle & Number Puzzle), which is really good especially for the price. However, I'm finding I prefer the single colour puzzles, and Essential Sudoku is mostly multicolour ones.

Is Picross DS the best game for these kinds of puzzle, or are Hudson's Illust Logic or the TDK DS Puzzler release better? Anybody played a few of these and got a favourite?

[gossi the dog]

How does this compare to Super Picross (can't quite remember the correct name. It was the one with Mario and Wario in it) on the SNES? That was ace with loads of puzzles and a gradual difficulty curve.

[Madbury]

Yep, I tried out Picross DS the other day and jumped straight to the 15*15 puzzles and I totally agree that the touch control method doesn't work.. however, if you switch to button play you can play normally without having to zoom in/out which just about saves it.

Odd. I've not found it to be a problem at all. All the information is there all of the time. I play with my left thumb on the dpad to switch modes and then use the stylus with my right hand. The way the game highlights the numbers in the current row and column and greys out completed blocks makes it totally playable on the touch screen when zoomed in. Infact it's probably the best way of implementing puzzles of 25 x 20 (yep they get big) on the DS screen. It simply wouldn't be practical to rely on precision poking at that scale especially on time penalty mode. Also you have a zoomed out view on the top screen for reference and it shows you the portion that's zoomed in on the bottom screen it took me about 2 puzzles before it all became second nature and now I'm whizzing around in the zoomed view like a pro.

[gossi the dog]

Much to my surprise this is out in Europe. Bought it yesterday on impulse from GAME. It's basically Picross. Not the most exciting of games but very addictive. I'm enjoying it so far but the stylus control is unfortunately not very good on the larger puzzles. However, button control as you'd expect works very well. Very good stuff.

[FreelancePolice]

the multiplayer offerings on this are absolutely superb. Right down to the pictionary style gamemode. Plenty of stuff to get your teeth into, I've also had a few problems with the dodgy stylus control

[JamesS]

The stylus contols are pretty terrible, especially on the larger puzzles where you have to zoom in to use them. The dpad works well, though.

I'm not keen on the way the game tells you when you've made a mistake. I'd rather be left to work it out for myself. There are some puzzles that work this way, but some of them are apparently not solvable without trial and error, which is a bit of a strange decision.

It's very nicely presented, and the online stuff adds a lot, but my initial impression is that the core game isn't as good as Hudson's Illust Logic version of the game.

[Kaladron]

It's very nicely presented, and the online stuff adds a lot, but my initial impression is that the core game isn't as good as Hudson's Illust Logic version of the game.

Couldn't agree more. It's not even as good as Mario Picross.

The main problem for me is that there's no real penalty for making mistakes. I would have liked a "3 strikes and you're out" system or maybe a time limit. Without either it just feels like you can beat every puzzle just by guessing.

I blame the "touch generation".

[harrykingston]

The wi-fi in this game is kind of addictive, but also frustrating as some people seem to be able to complete 2 levels in a matter of seconds...