Nintendo's systems have played host to various unlikely game genres, and Picross can certainly be considered one example. The history of the puzzle genre goes right back to the Game Boy, and on the 3DS eShop we've also had numerous Picross e releases. Let's not forget, either, that My Nintendo Picross - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is one of the standout rewards to be chased on My Nintendo, too.
It's not a style of game that's graced home consoles quite as prolifically, however, and PixlCross - out now in North America and coming soon to Europe - is looking to fill that gap on the Wii U eShop. With the GamePad, of course, the scope is there for a similar experience to those titles found on 3DS, and developer PixlBit Studios has also worked to include Miiverse, level creation and sharing tools to add to the game's value.
It's an ambitious effort on paper, so with the game hitting the eShop we caught up with Nick DiMola - a member of the puzzle loving development team - to learn more.
First off, can you introduce yourself and PixlBit Studios to our readers?
Hi everyone! I'm Nick DiMola – I did all of the programming for PixlCross. PixlBit Studios is the collaborative effort of me and my wife, Chessa DiMola. We're lifetime gamers who have been writing about and playing games together for years. We've always had a dream of making our own games and in late 2014 we decided to just start going for it!
Can you talk about the origins of the idea to develop PixlCross?
The idea to develop PixlCross was basically Chessa's. She's what you'd call a Picross addict… you'd be hard pressed to find a Picross/nonogram experience on consoles or the web that she hasn't made her way through.
As we started talking about making a game, we tossed around a bunch of ideas, but most of them seemed unachievable. Certain ideas were in genres that were totally saturated or would require a huge team to get done right. Since we really knew nothing about making games and it was just the two of us, a title like Picross seemed the most achievable. I threw together a quick proof-of-concept, which went very well, and the rest is history.
There have been plenty of Picross titles on 3DS, but it's a genre that's largely missed out on Wii U; why do you think that is?
I'm not totally sure why the Wii U has been an untapped market for Nintendo, to be honest. When you consider games like Pushmo that made a very successful leap to the Wii U, it seems like Picross would also do very well on the platform. That being said, Picross has always had a home on portable consoles and being a very personal experience it kind of works having that type of game in your pocket.
We think the touch controls are integral to the experience. When you think about it, this style of puzzle was really invented on the pen-and-paper medium.
At least on our end, we liked the large screen the GamePad provides and we think it works well for the larger puzzles we've incorporated into PixlCross. The Picross games usually don't have such large puzzles, so the extra real estate afforded by the Wii U GamePad likely isn't a big deal for that type of experience. We tried to create a more "console-like" experience by building in the extra creation and sharing features to really flesh things out.
How important is it to have a touch device like the GamePad for a project like this?
We think the touch controls are integral to the experience. When you think about it, this style of puzzle was really invented on the pen-and-paper medium. As such, it seems natural to work in stylus controls rather than using button inputs. To that end, we've put a lot of work into making that feel really natural.
For instance, when you're trying to fill in a row of blocks, your input is locked to that row. When we first started, the input wasn't locked, and as we play-tested we found that it was easy to accidentally slide off the row you were trying to fill, and the unfortunate side effect was filling in the wrong blocks.
Other nifty features include things like the pop-out hints to avoid moving the grid around a bunch to see the whole puzzle. Doing that kind of stuff with button controls would've presented a bit of a challenge, or at the very least, wouldn't have afforded the nuance we were able to achieve using touch input.
If you're sceptical of the touch controls due to past experiences, we think PixlCross will do a reasonable job of convincing you that they are the way to play this style of game.
Before we move onto the various online and creativity features, can you talk a little about the pre-set puzzles on offer in the game?
In total we have 150 puzzles on offer between the Easy, Medium, and Hard modes. The puzzles incrementally ramp up from the first to the last, so the denominations between modes will be fairly transparent to players. Each puzzle offers up to three possible achievements: no errors, no hints used, and quick time. These all count towards overall completion of the game - once you hit 50%, you'll unlock a set of Bonus puzzles that are pretty brutally hard. There's no doubt that the hard puzzles are hard, but the Bonus puzzles are really something else. We've been jokingly calling them the "Dark Souls" of Picross puzzles.
Generally speaking, Chessa has put a ton of effort into ensuring the puzzles actually look like the thing they purport to be. One of our general gripes about some other games in this puzzle subgenre is that they rarely look like anything. It's not until some other effects are applied that you can actually tell when the puzzle is. Our other complaint with games we've played in the past is that at some point in solving the puzzle, you need to guess. With PixlCross, we've ensured that every puzzle can be solved without guessing.
Moving on to the puzzle editor, can you walk us through the development of this feature and some of the challenges you faced?
The puzzle editor developed very organically as we developed the game. The first implementation was extremely basic. You could drop blocks on the grid and that was about it. After Chessa built an absolute ton of puzzles, we ran into the next issue – solvability. That drove me to sit down and figure out the algorithm that can solve all nonogram puzzles.
Believe it or not, translating techniques you use to solve puzzles as a human into something a computer understands is extremely complex. I came to find out that solving nonograms is a problem computer scientists have spent considerable effort on. I eventually stumbled across a web site from a college professor that shared some of his research on solving techniques and implemented the appropriate one. Getting that working perfectly was one of the most brutal months of development.
Once I solved that problem, it was a matter of giving Chessa the tools she needed to get all of the puzzles into a shippable state. That spawned stuff like the invert, trim, and movement functions. We later fixed up the UI and made it as user friendly as possible. Ultimately, the puzzle editor you use will be the one we built the game with, just spiffier.
How important has it been to optimise the UI so it's easy to use the tool; was simplicity of use a priority?
Well, I guess I kind of touched on this in the last question, but simplicity was a pretty important thing for us in the final few months of development. We iterated on all the UIs in the game countless times. We think the big selling point for PixlCross is the ability to interface with the community.
Believe it or not, translating techniques you use to solve puzzles as a human into something a computer understands is extremely complex.
As I mentioned earlier, Chessa kind of has an addiction and she always dreamed of having some sort of unlimited supply of puzzles to play. We're hoping that the online portion of PixlCross becomes the place for that. The only way to drive that engagement is to have an intuitive UI and a toolset that makes it easy to produce cool puzzles.
You've set up various means to share creations, can you talk about those?
After you finish creating a puzzle, the first step is uploading it to Nintendo's servers. Once that's done, you've effectively shared it to the PixlCross community. If someone goes into the search tool, your puzzle will start showing up in the results. Once the puzzle is uploaded you'll land on the puzzle detail UI, which allows you to post the ID of the puzzle to Miiverse. In that regard it's kind of like Super Mario Maker. Since you have an ID, you can go ahead and share that anywhere, whether that's Twitter or Facebook or whatever. If you are looking to consume a puzzle via ID, there's an option on the search tool to just plug that in and download the puzzle.
If you've downloaded and played another player's puzzle, you should consider giving them a thumbs up if you liked it. This will help make the download portal a bit more interesting as it will sort results with the best puzzles at the top.
It's possible to browse and download other gamer's puzzles, was that a particularly challenging feature to implement?
When we first started looking at implementing those features, I'll be honest, it seemed very simple. But once we got down into the details there was a ton of hidden "gotchas." Nintendo is very strict about the way interactions must occur with their provided services. Under each and every circumstance the game must behave according to their guidelines or your game won't pass certification.
Some of you might remember our initial announcement for PixlCross was back in September 2015 – that's when we first went into Lotcheck. It's taken another six months to iron out all of the issues we encountered. It was a great learning experience though and we were able to use the in between time to make the game better.
How important are platforms such as Miiverse for a game like PixlCross, and is fostering a sense of community around the game a big priority for you?
One of the things we used the in between time mentioned in the last question for is really bolstering our Miiverse support. Miiverse is where the Nintendo community is. As we sat down and talked about it, we decided that if we want to drive community engagement, our participation in Miiverse needed to increase. In the past it's been a place where I go to celebrate something I achieved in a game or to post about something I created.
As such, we built in the ability to post in Miiverse with the push of a button after you complete a puzzle, share a puzzle, or complete a significant portion of the game. We hope that this helps keep the community active and engaged in the game.
Finally, do you have a particular message you'd like to sign off with?
Thanks so much for having us and giving us the opportunity to talk about PixlCross. Building and releasing our first game has been an incredibly challenging but fulfilling process. We're extremely excited to share it with the world and to see what the community creates!
We'd like to thank Nick DiMola for his time - PixlCross is out now on the Wii U eShop in North America, priced $5.99 in the US.
Comments 47
I might have to get this! Wii U picross for a low price is awesome.
Thanks again for having us on this interview, guys. Just wanted to say that now that the game's live we're getting a bit of feedback on a couple things and will be making some tweaks. Namely, giving some speed options on the auto-scroll, actually stating somewhere in the game that you CAN use the D-Pad/Face Buttons instead of the shoulder buttons (like Picross), and doing what we can to reduce the loading times, which seem to exceed what we were seeing on the devkit.
If anyone has picked up PixlCross, please let us know your thoughts! We want to make the game better and address any concerns you may have. We've put a ton of work into the game already and we want to get it as close to perfect as we can. As stated in the interview, we want the sharing community to be vibrant and long-lasting, so we're willing to put in the effort to keep refining anything we can.
Awesome, such an oversight for Nintendo. As far as I'm concerned all the 3DS picross games should be on Wii U. When I had a Japanese DSi XL I bought two great collections from Hudson in the DSiWare shop. I know there's an SNES game, but touchscreen is really the way to go with this style of game.
Looking forward to the European release - day one purchase for me!
I love Picross, but am extremely accustomed to button controls and am very fast using them. If that's NOT an option I wouldn't be interested, but it sounds like it actually is based on this last comment. Can you verify?
It's great seeing the insight into the game's development, especially in regards to the solvability aspect. I did independent research on Sudoku solvability algorithms for a computer program in college, and I never finished it on time. It was extremely huge and bloated, and it didn't help I was just a novice coder at that. That kind of thing is immense, and definitely makes me excited to play and create my puzzles. Kudos.
@UsualNoise Howdy - what I was specifically mentioning was using the D-Pad in conjunction with the stylus controls. However, there seems to be a lot of demand for D-Pad + Button input, so I think I'm going to sit down and add it as well.
It's going to probably be about a month before that's available due to Nintendo's process, but the aim is to work on it today and through the weekend for a submission to Nintendo by Monday.
@PixlBitStudios - Nice! It's an instant buy for me with button controls, so I'll be monitoring for updates. Thanks for the quick response!
@Sean_Aaron
OMG! Thank you so much for bringing this up. I had no idea there were DSi versions as well!
Booted up my DSiXL and went looking immediately, fearing that with the Hudson buyout, these might not be on there anymore. Didn't find them, only some sudoku games.
Yep, I missed the part that said Japanese DSi. Luckily I've got a Japanese 3DS for games such as Picoss 3D 2 which I've been playing non-stop.
So I checked the Japanese store and they are still on there! So glad I have these now.
Bought Illust Logic DS + Colourful Logic in 2009 and loved it to bits! http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/illust-logic-ds-colorful-logic-review
I'm hoping that PixlCross will come to Europe as well.
Heck, I didn't even know that there was a Wii version of Illust Logic + Colourful Logic out in Japan. Just ordered a copy.
These games are just so addictive. Not many games tend to grab me like a good Picos game. It's really weird. The idea is so basic, but when it's executed well, they are absolutely brilliant.
Still hoping for a western release of Picos 3D 2 as well for everyone else. Heck, I'll even double dip.
I really have to get around and grab some more Miitomo points so I can get Twilight Princess Picoss as well.
I wish they would just let me buy it somehow.
@meppi heck if you do a search for those games on Nintendo Life you'll find I either previewed them or reviewed them. I was actually given the XL for the purpose and eventually sold it on after I stopped writing here. There's a raft of games on the Japanese DSiWare shop that never got released elsewhere so it's worth a look.
I have a Japanese Wii and I'm pretty sure I reviewed Illust Logic + Colourful Logic for Wii for NL too. I think I sold it because I found the pointer controls too imprecise and frustrating compared to using the pen on the DS, but it's been a long time so I don't really remember. In fact I forgot I ever owned that game until you mentioned it!
@PixlBitStudios I'll give the touch controls a go since you seem to have put a lot of effort into them, but buttons are always my preferred method for Picross.
@Miiamoto Please do! We'll be patching the game to include button controls because so many people seem to want to play the game that way, but we still feel very strongly that the game is best played with the stylus.
@Sean_Aaron
Ah, I didn't piece that together.
The search on the site is a bit of a mess so it can be hard to find articles you want.
Not sure if you've ever tried Guru Logi Champ on GBA? If you haven't be sure to give it a go as it's also at the top of my list when it comes to puzzle games.
edit: oh that plays pretty much like Kaiten Illust Puzzle Guruguru Logic which you also did a piece on.
I just ordered another ¥5000 eshop card from nin-nin-game as my credit ran out after buying those two. It made me realise that I never delved into the Japanese DSi shop as there was no need to import a DSi since physical games were region free till that point.
@LegendOfPokemon it's quite a good game. My wife loves it!
@PixlBitStudios please consider an update (DLC? Maybe) that adds a Expert mode? Even bigger board?
My Wife is sure to exhaust the levels currently present. ( she played for 2 hours last night)
@Danrenfroe2016 Glad you're enjoying it, sir! There is something of an expert mode in Bonus. I believe there are 10 puzzles to be found that are absolutely brutal. Not to mention the back end of Hard, where every puzzle takes nearly an hour to solve.
We'll be releasing some levels via Miiverse, so keep an eye out there - plus, she can always check out some of the puzzles the community has made. There's a few we've really enjoyed, "Mr Powgi" comes to mind specifically.
@PixlBitStudios I'll be ordering this today. I've loved Nonograms and Picross for a couple decades now since I was introduce to them as a tween. Got my wife addicted to them too. Been wanting something we can create puzzles for each other with besides graph paper.
@james_mueller Awesome, James! Please share whatever you create online - we'd love to check them out
http://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/pixlcross-wii-u Is the link for the NoA eShop for it.
Purchased and downloading, fire it up when I get home from work.
@PixlBitStudios looking forward to getting my hands on this. On every Picross game I have played, button input has been by far the most accurate so hopefully the patch will be live for EU release.
I'm addicted to Picross lately, so will probably get this one for the good price.
@PixlBitStudios From Athens, Greece here, looking forward for the European release.
@PixlBitStudios
"We're lifetime gamers who have been writing about and playing games together for years. We've always had a dream of making our own games and in late 2014 we decided to just start going for it!"
^^^
I can respect this. You guys seem to have a passion for what you're doing and that makes all the difference imo. Great games are made by people who love making them. With your wife being something of a Picross expert, it only makes sense you made a Picross game.
I actually just got into this kind of game with Pokemon Picross. LOVED the game- hated the microtransactions. But I just got Zelda Picross from MyNintendo yesterday and I gotta say, I really like it.
So I'm going to go on the eShop right now and buy your game (assuming it's not outrageously priced, which I doubt it is) even if just to support you guys. I like that you are interacting with the community and responding to feedback with prompt updates. That's A+ in my book. Even though I play with a stylus I look forward to the button update- options are nice.
One last note- I really enjoyed stylus/buttons in tandem on Zelda Picross. I could use the D-Pad to switch between squares and X's with my left thumb while using stylus in my right hand. If you plan on adding a button control scheme, how hard would it be to allow a 3rd option that allows both- Idk, something intuitive for the left D-pad that you can do without tapping the stylus...?
@JaxonH Howdy! Thanks for the kind comment and the support!
The game actually does do the tandem thingy - like Pokemon Picross and the e Series. You can use R/ZR, L/ZL, Up/Down, or X/B. Probably should've called out the fact that you can do Up/Down and X/B in the tutorial, but it was a late addition and we figured people used to playing these games would just instinctively use those buttons despite what the tutorial said... anyway, in the update we'll properly call that out so people know.
We agree though, options are good. While our vision for the game was specifically touch controls, we totally understand that people have been playing with buttons for a long time and expect such a feature. Hindsight being 20/20, we would've added that ahead of release. We still hope people give the touch controls a whirl (after the update comes), but we'd rather people play the game than not!
@PixlBitStudios
Oh ok, awesome! I'm watching the vid on the eShop now- looks great!
So, I'm no expert of Picross- like I said I only recently got into it (like, yesterday lol) but, I was wondering do the numbers grey out as you fill in the boxes (kind of how the Nintendo Picross games do)? So if I fill in the 2 boxes, the #2 on the column treys out so I know that's done?
Also, are hint options able to be toggled on/off? I liked auto-check in the Zelda one, but the ones for big hint numbers and stuff I preferred not to use. Seemed like cheating a little. If there's no option to toggle, is that something that could easily be slipped in that update or no?
I've already purchased it, so it's not like I'm asking before buying, I just wanted to give some personal feedback.
Looking to get this at some point. Should be good to play while others in the house are using the tv.
@PixlBitStudios
Hello. Congrats on your first game. Question before I buy: does the game tell you right away when you make a mistake or do you have to wait until later that something doesnt click?
Also love that 'solve without guessing' thing. I hate that random element of luck in a puzzle game.
@JaxonH Thanks for the questions! Please, feel free to keep asking away
The numbers will grey out as you complete hints. So if the numbers were like 2, 8, 2, and you got the middle 8 filled in, it will grey that one out. When you get the whole row, all the numbers will grey out.
The hinting is a touch different from the Picross games. Those basically highlight rows/columns where you can make a move. The way we did it is by giving you a set number of hints to use depending on the puzzle difficulty. Once you activate hint mode, you can tap any block on the screen and it'll automatically fill it in with whatever its true value is. If you decide not to use any hints, you'll get one of the achievements on that puzzle, so it's currently optional in that regard.
@sinalefa Hi there! Yes, the game will tell you instantly if you get something wrong. You get a certain number of errors before you "fail" the puzzle. Failing just means you don't get any achievements, but you can keep playing the puzzle till completion. The number of errors you can make goes up the harder the puzzle is. Thanks for the question!
@MrSands Thank you, sounds great!
So... quadruple comment for the win, but I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to the community here. You've all been extremely kind and warm, which is incredibly refreshing. You guys rock!
@PixlBitStudios
Awesome- I'm playing now so I do see what you're talking about.
I look forward to that update (this game is very good- a few little improvements here and there will surely elevate it toward perfection) and whatever you guys put out in the future. A 3DS version would be awesome, or perhaps a handheld Picross game designed around the 2 smaller screens. This game definitely gives Nintendo a run for their Picross money
I like the "Hold L/R and ZL/ZR and tap" to avoid a mistake. But I do think maybe an option to disable it would be nice. Just as an option. If people make mistakes they would do so knowing they chose this option for convenience.
Besides that, and maybe extending button navigation to the menus as well, I honestly can't think of anything else that could make this game better. I think that says a lot for how good this virgin release is out of the gate.
Anyways, I hope you'll consider some of those propositions for the future button patch, and thanks for a great game! I really do like it, and I'm pretty sure @sinalefa will as well. He loves Picross
@PixlBitStudios
Thanks for the quick reply. Consider it purchased and I will give you my feedback when I play it.
Thank @JaxonH for this sale and NintendoLife for the spotlight for indies. Take care!
@PixlBitStudios
Sorry, don't mean to overload your inbox here. Just one last suggestion (I swear lol!). Panning the zoom with the left analog would be awesome. Currently can't pan the some images aside from vertically- the analog would be perfect to do so both horizontally and vertically. And double tapping seems to zoom in, but not zoom out. Only the Zoom button works to zoom out.
Thanks @james_mueller for the direct link. Just purchased it, and the WiiU LED is now showing me it is downloading it (LED turned yellow). It is nice to be able to purchase and install a game without ever turning the system on.
I am very much a fan of nonograms, and surprisingly this is my first purchase for a Nintendo system though I have many such games on Android and PC. I did download Pokemon Picross, but I haven't really played it much, perhaps because I am not a Pokemon fan. I have meant to get one of those 3DS e-series games, but since I haven't I will congratulate @PixlBitStudios (and NintendoLife) on convincing me to pick theirs up first.
@PixlBitStudios
Your game is pretty good.
Button inputs cant come soon enough and with them I would love the option of using the TV screen to play. In the small screen sometimes the hint columns get out of view so I make mistakes because of it.
Also my neck is hurting from looking down at the gamepad.
@Qun_Mang I'm glad they have implemented web buying and autodownloading like I could do on PSN.
As for the e series and Pokemon Picross: Pokemon Picross isn't horrible for a Free-to-Play title, but you'll definitely get bogged down by needing to earn Picrites to open new areas. If you play I recommend you think of it as an occasional play game with a once daily speed training session. Also- ignore what the lady tells you in game, don't expand your energy bar or your Pokemon slots, keep your Picrites for opening new areas. After a few you'll get more Picrites every day for the training and you can always pause the game while your energy recharges. You also expand how many you get by leveling up the training, and between that and unlocking levels you get at most 13 per day plus 2 for beating the time. Also don't unlock alt-world until end game: you don't earn Picrites for the puzzles so treat it as more of a prize for finishing up. Since a single Mega-Pencil to mega evolve a Pokemon costs 500 (!!!!) Picrites, expect to do those all at the end of the game as a longevity thing.
The e series isn't bad, but it has definite shelf life due to a limit in puzzles (I haven't gotten into the last few so that may have changed). That's what really turned me on about Pixlcross is the community puzzle aspect: lots more replay this way!
@sinalefa As for the hints, have you tried tapping the little orange boxes? They will pop out so you can see them without scrolling back and forth.
I talked with Chessa and the plan is to also make the TV screen work for playing the game. It'll add a bit more work, but it's likely for the best. I'll likely be posting updates as I work on Twitter (@PixlBitStudios), so be sure to check there to see progress/screenshots.
Thanks for picking up the game and the feedback!
I'm still getting used to the controls- I can't imagine doing this without a stylus though so I am fine with the controls as they are. I don't like the time element though- I am more of a casual player. I know I can just ignore it and go back to it on a replay however. Plenty of time to get all the achievements. Next up is to try the community puzzle aspect. Hopefully I won't find a lot of, shall we say, juvenile puzzles (rocket ships that aren't rocket ships if you know what I mean). I am hoping you have a good filter to keep these sort of puzzles out.
Just wanted to leave a quick comment to let everyone know that we've got button controls working. Needs a few small tweaks to work on the big puzzles that require scrolling, but that should be relatively easy.
Next step is getting everything showing up on the TV. The good news for you folks in Europe is that all of this stuff will be rolled right into the initial submission, so you'll get the game with all of the tweaks and updates.
Any word on when this will see its EU release?
I know @crimsontadpoles was looking into this. .
I've played a lot of Picross, so this looks interesting. Mainly I've mostly done the old school pen and paper variety, so I might pick this up when it releases in Europe.
Picross is something I've been meaning to get into. If I get one of those club Nintendo emails with 200 platinum coins, then I could get Zelda Picross. Plus Picross E is on my list of games that I want to buy.
I'm assuming that it is one purchase for the full game, right? I tried Pokemon Picross, but I quickly lost interest since it was full of microtransactions (and I won't enjoy a game if I spend time working out whether to pay real money or grind instead).
@crimsontadpoles
That was my problem with Pokemon Picross. It was like $30 to unlock the full game too. The fact I actually thought about doing it speaks to how much demand there is for a good Picross game. That's why Zelda Twilight Princess Picross was such a great release for me- it gave me everything I loved about Pokemon Picross, without all the microtransactions or $30 price of entry.
This game is like $6, which is not much compared to Pokemon's paywall.
@PixlBitStudios Thanks for popping on here and answering community questions, that's awesome.
And thanks to everyone for the positive comments. We love chatting to small developers, and to see the enthusiasm, kindness and support on here has made my day.
@JaxonH Still trying to get translators on the hook for Italian, German, and French. I'm hoping once we do it doesn't take long to get the translation back. I've set the game up so that all the text is external to the code, so bringing in the translated text will be no more effort than doing QA to ensure it didn't break anything and everything still looks good.
@ThomasBW84 Gladly! Thanks for fostering such a great community and giving us a space to talk about our game
Saw this article when it was posted but I didn't have time to read it then and I forgot about it since it wasn't on the top of the news list next time I had time to check the site.
@PixlBitStudios: Congratulations for NA release! I'm from Europe so I'll have to wait a bit longer but as I've said earlier, I'm one of the first ones constantly refreshing the eShop page once the day comes.
I don't know if you paid too much attention but I told before how I programmed a small Picross demo in a week or so. I decided to start programming one from scratch again in January with the purpose of sharing it here in NL but for whatever reason I stopped in February. It had most of the features I wanted to include and my friends liked it but then I lost my motivation to continue. I've had some motivation issues in general lately. I have over 50 puzzles I've designed for the game and a working game on my laptop but my goal was over 100 puzzles and few more features. I don't want to share an unfinished product. I've wanted to talk about my project but I also wanted it to be a surprise. I don't know if I'll ever be able to release my game so I might as well write about it now.
I'm glad that your game is ready and I'll at least be able to share my creations though that, though some of my puzzles are bigger than 35x35 which I think was the limit. Correct me if I'm wrong. You also had same principles as I did: The puzzles have to be recognizable in its raw black and white form and there can't be points where you have to take a guess.
In Mario's Picross they had to find a way to make everything recognizable with just the black and white thanks to GB limitations. Nowadays Picross e series and Pokémon Picross depend too much on the coloring of the puzzle after solving. They are still fun games but something is lost in the process.
The guessing is something that shouldn't even be a thing. The point of Picross is to solve them by thinking, not guessing. I'm not quite sure where to draw the line though. The puzzles are too easy if you don't ever have to think a bit ahead but then again, how many steps ahead can people think before it becomes too hard? Some puzzles can technically have just one solution but they can't really be solved by a human.
EDIT: Wow. Maybe I wrote a bit too much. That's quite a wall of text.
This feature got me really interested in the game, but $8 in Canada puts it outside of impulse-buy territory for me. Maybe I'll get it, maybe not.
@Late You should keep trying to build your game! More Picross is always a good thing. We definitely have the same principles in mind and we think that's what makes for the best kind of Picross game.
At least for us on the drawing the line thing, that's kind of what the time achievement helped for us. Basically it was our gauge for how hard things are. Chessa would make a puzzle, play it, and get her time. Then I'd play it and since I'm not quite as good at solving them as she is, we'd take a time somewhere in the middle and that helped dictate the challenge level of the puzzle. After that, it was just a matter of lining everything up in order to determine what puzzle should go where.
In any event, if you don't decide to finish your game, we'll obviously look forward to your creations in the community mode of the game, but we're excited to try your stuff one way or the other!
I feel I am far too excited for this, but I still am excited. Hope they also work on a Picross 3D Wii U release at some point.
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