Pixlcross from indie team Pixlbit is a nonogram-style game. From looking at the screens you’ll instantly be reminded of Picross, and that’s exactly how this one plays. You’ll be filling up squares on a grid to work your way towards revealing an object on the screen, and it is way more addictive than it sounds.

 

If you’ve never heard of or played a nonogram game (see Picross), the general gist of it is that you play on a grid of squares, and each row and column has one or more numbers on it that work as hints towards the image you’re unveiling. It sounds simple, but there’s more to it than just placing black blocks on the grid.

For example, if a row or column has two numbers, that means that there must be at least one empty block between the solid blocks you’ll place on said row or column, and to uncover which ones are to remain empty you must look at the other rows and columns for hints as which blocks need to be filled and which must also remain blank. You can mark squares you think should remain blank so that you can then focus on the rest of the puzzle, and this does make things a bit easier on larger puzzles so that you don’t accidentally try to fill a square that is not required.

The first set of puzzles serve as a tutorial for Pixlcross and will show to the basics. They’re small puzzles that won’t take you more than a minute or two to solve, but they’re great at helping you take your first step into the world of Pixlcross. You’ll learn about how each level has three challenges to complete on top of actually completing the puzzle. There’s one challenge for not making any mistakes in the puzzle, another one for not using any hints as you solve it, and the final one is for finishing the puzzle in a specific time frame. If you’re someone who likes to 100% games you’ll be spending some extra time replaying puzzles but, again, they’re only a few minutes long so you’ll still be having fun!

 

Something very interesting about Pixlcross is that it you can create your own puzzles and share them with the community, which also means you can download puzzles created by other players, which basically means there’s a ton of content waiting for you to play once you have finished all the puzzles already included in the game.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with Pixlcross, and I’ll continue to play it for the rest of the year as I complete the final set of included puzzles to then download as many community-created puzzles as I can. The price for Pixlcross is perfect for the number of puzzles already included “in the box” but the fact that you can download hundreds of extra puzzles makes it a very interesting option for your puzzle collection.

[review pros=”Very fun puzzle game.
Infinite replay value.” cons=”Loading times could be shorter.” score=86]

Disclaimer
This review is based on a copy of Pixlcross for Wii U provided by Pixlbit