#score studios

The small team at Score Studios has been developing its Piczle series of puzzlers for over a decade now. It’s covered a few different forms of logic puzzles, but this ambitious instalment combines traditional Picross-style nonograms with a lovely presentation and a world to explore in between puzzles!

In this way it’s evoking Jupiter’s Japan-exclusive Picross 2 on GB, where Mario walks through an overworld between puzzles. This game takes that further with non-linear exploration and RPG elements like experience levels (puzzles have a level threshold requiring you to clear earlier ones) and an inventory of keys and hidden items. I took pleasure in unlocking everything, the final reward being a Game Boy-style set of 20 bonus puzzles, on top of the 319 in the regular game.

The puzzles are integrated into the world in a fun way. In the story, the studio’s mascot Score-chan has to solve the puzzles in order to restore objects that have been zapped into the void. So by exploring you find holes, then bring life and colour back into the lush pixel world with its varied environs; it’s quite satisfying. And speaking of pixels, the game includes scanline and CRT warp filters; they weren’t to my taste but thankfully could be turned off.

Piczle Puzzle & Watch Collection presents three logic puzzles as digital versions of long-lost LCD handheld games. All three would not have been possible given the limitations of the actual format, but they are intended to *look* like the games of the period. Each of the three is digitally presented as a loving recreation of the physical units, and the developers have really gone out of their way to recreate the feeling of recieving one of these games for the first time. 

The first time you open any of the three games, you are treated to an unboxing scene, where the box is opened, the handheld is removed, and the manual is skimmed over. At any time, you can manipulate the 3D models of the box, system, and manual as well. While it isn’t quite as fun and tactile as playing with the real thing, it made me really want somebody to turn these into real-life mock-retro systems. 

The first game, Piczle Cross, is the exact sort of Picross-style nonogram puzzle game that has become the signature of Score Studios. If you have never played one of these games before, these are puzzles where you start with an empty grid. Each row and column of the grid has a series of numbers on it. Your goal is, simply, to fill the correct cells in the grid to create an image. You can think of it as a form of “paint-by-numbers”, where you need to identify the right spaces to mark to form a pixel-art painting.The numbers on a row or a column tell you how many spots need to be filled in. If you see a “5″, you know that a five-block sequence will need to be filled, while blocks before and after those five will remain unfilled. To figure out which five need filled, you need to look at the corresponding columns (if you are working on a row) and see if you can match the conditions placed by the numbers on each of those. You will often see multiple numbers, like “2 3″, indicating that there are multiple sequences that will be filled in. In this case, the row would have a sequence of two filled-in blocks, then later, a second sequence of three filled-in blocks. At least one unfilled cell must exist between the two sequences. Again, you need to use the other clues to identify where the two sequences lie in the row.

That’s about all there is to it. Identify the spaces to fill, mark off those you know will not be filled, and try to complete the picture as fast as you can without making any mistakes. In the spirit of simplicity, the puzzles are limited to a 10x10 grid. There are 200 puzzles to work through. In the Game A mode, you are limited to three mistakes. In Game B, you are allowed to work until the image is complete. In both cases, your fastest puzzle time is recorded.

As a nonogram fanatic, this was my favorite of the three games. However, the simplicity also worked against it. The puzzles are a little too easy, and the main difficulty came from the controls. There are two buttons - one to mark a space, and one to note that a space should be empty. However, the buttons were reversed from my expectations, so I kept making mistakes when I got them backwards. This isn’t a huge deal (and is really just my problem), but did trip me up a surprising amount. Basically, this is a solid set of nonogram puzzles, but won’t keep you engaged as long as some of Score Studios’ other releases. 

The second game, Piczle Pattern, gives you a cross-shaped cursor and tasks you with turning all squares in a grid black. If a square within your cursor is already black, it will turn white again. In the core mode, your challenge is to turn the empty grid black in the fewest moves, and your best score is recorded. In the second mode, you are given a randomly generated grid to start with. 

This was the game I spent the least time with. It’s a simple novelty, but gets old after one or two trials. Amusingly, it’s probably the game most possible within the limitations of the actual Game & Watch systems.

The final game, Piczle Loops, presents 72 logic puzzles where you are trying to draw an uninterrupted looping line on a clue based on clues presented on the screen. These clues take the form of numbers indicating the number of sides of that square that have a line in the loop. For example, if you see a “2″, then two of the four sides of that square will form part of the loop. If you see a “0″, then no sides can be part of the loop. Game A presents 36 easy-to-moderate difficulty puzzles, and Game B presents 36 moderate-to-hard puzzles. 

I enjoyed this mode quite a bit, even though I am more biased towards the nonogram puzzles in Piczle Cross. These loop puzzles are surprisingly hard, and even some of the easy puzzles kept me busy for quite a while. The core concept is simple, but it can hook you pretty quickly. I still haven’t finished all of the puzzles in this mode, and can imagine coming back to poke at them some more.

Piczle Puzzle & Watch Collection is a simple, but fun, collection of games created in the spirit of the old Game & Watch handhelds. If you have any affection for that era, the collection is worth picking up for the loving 3D recreations alone, as well as a couple of solid puzzle games. If you’re a nonogram obsessive like I am, this will also give you a quick fix - however, you may want to check out Score Studios’ other releases like Piczle Cross Adventure first. 

This review was based on a copy provided by Score Studios.