Longtime Nintendo fans Picross series are well aware that there’s no shortage of non-grammatical puzzles on the Switch, with developer Jupiter alone and the Big Na franchise making up more than a dozen games and counting far. Even so, there’s an infectious simplicity to the core concept that ensures further entries will always be welcome, especially when mixed with popular IP like the Sega Genesis and, uh… Kemono Friends. Nintendo certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on the nonogram puzzle concept either, leaving the door open for other publishers like Rainy Frog and developer Score Studio to introduce their own fr anchises that use the concept, such as Piczle Cross. The latest entry in the Piczle Cross series blends timeless puzzle action with the relaxing vibes of the Story of Seasons franchise, and while Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons isn’t quite a groundbreaking new entry in the genre, it still ticks all the boxes to deliver a satisfying puzzle experience.
Gameplay in Piczle Cross could best be compared to a mix of Minesweeper and Sudoku puzzles, tasking the player to methodically work out a solution through a process of elimination. You’re shown a grid of 5×5 to 20×20 squares, with the edges of each row and column containing hint numbers that show how many squares you have to fill. Who the boxes you need to fill in are always a mystery, so you have to use the hint numbers to carefully rule out which ones you can safely tick and which need to be filled. Puzzles can last anywhere from a few seconds to roughly 20 minutes apiece, with the final product always revealing some sweet pixel art version of a random farm-related object or person.
To ensure things remain accessible to everyone, those of you who need a little more help can activate help features such as auto-correcting errors or automatically highlighting hint numbers in rows and columns where you can progress. Those who want more of a challenge can disable any or all of these features, leaving a nice difficulty spectrum that pretty much meets the needs of all players.
There are more than 350 puzzles to complete in Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons, of which 270 are standard puzzles and the rest are contained in five collage puzzles. These latter examples take a lot longer to complete, but are simply the most satisfying because they consist of a small series of interconnected puzzles that you do individually to build a much larger whole. While we’d appreciate some other mods from Nintendo’s Picross franchise here (like Mega Picross or Color Picross), Score Studios still offers a meaty enough experience that’s sure to keep you busy for a few hours—especially if you want to complete everything without the help features activated.
Even if the content offering is similar to a standard Picross game, the gameplay experience is simple little
There are also small performance issues to address, such as how we noticed a recurring issue where the pre-marks on all rows and columns of ‘0’ would spontaneously disappear if the randomizer was on at the start of a level. Make no mistake, Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons is still a perfectly competent nonogram experience, but it feels a little less snappy and clean than Picross S.
Of course, one area where this release comfortably surpasses most other nonogram games is its presentation, which makes full use of the Story of Seasons IP in some cute ways. Each puzzle is naturally based around various farm tools and crops, but we appreciated how each completed represents another ‘day’ going by, as your farmer slowly builds a more impressive farm in the background as you progress through the seasons. Couple this with features like an almanac that shares more information about characters from across the series, and a soundtrack that borrows music from recent releases like Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town and classics like Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns, and you have a puzzle that seems appropriate for fans of nonograms and Story of Seasons
Conclusion
Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons may not be the best nonogram puzzler available on Switch, but it’s certainly another worthwhile and enjoyable entry in the genre—especially for fans who also love a good farm simulator. This is ultimately little more than a nonogram puzzle pack themed after Story of Seasons, but it’s really not need to be anything but, even if it would be interesting to see how farm simulator gameplay elements can be more directly integrated into the gameplay. As long as you don’t mind a game experience that feels a little less polished than the Picross series, Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons is an easy recommendation for all puzzle enthusiasts.
