Picross S4

This format is a shorter, more to the point, off-shot of the normal review/op-eds I normally do. A ranking will be given at the end from a scale that starts at (from the lowest to the highest): Bad – meh – fine – good – great. Anything not appropriate for these “scores” will likely warrant a more in-depth discussion, which is what I normally do, so this range does not cover all games, just the ones that I think are suited to this format.

Picross games have long been a consistently great way to relax and challenge your brain with logic puzzles. The S series has been a yearly tradition for the Switch and all of them have added new modes and improvements on previous iterations, and S4 is no different.

Right of the bat, this is still just Picross; no crazy new innovations or game-changing new ideas or modes. For the type of game Picross is (and for the price), that’s not a bad thing. It is still a great Picross experience that has a nice difficulty curve for beginners (I imagine), while clip Picross still serves as a “gateway” mode between regular and Mega-Picross to a great effect. Not to say that it has elements from Mega-Picross, but I always find the difficulty of some puzzles in that mode to be a step above regular Picross, which did help in S3 when I wanted to get into Mega-Picross. The new mode this time round is actually a few puzzles in the 30×30 grid for all players and 3 more for owners of each of the previous games in the series (1 for each, 3 in total) and that’s a little disappointing to me, mainly because it serves to highlight an issue that was seemingly sorted out in regular and Mega-Picross: Readability of the numbers in the larger grids. S4 marks the first time in the series I actually did not confuse breaks in numbers for one number (i.e. 1 5 and 15), however I did find it more difficult to keep track of which row/column I was on in Mega-Picross, but that was most likely my fault and not the game’s. As far as content then, S4 has dozens of hours worth of Picross puzzles for every difficulty level and, once again, I found it extremely addictive and worthwhile to get the “no assist” perfect medal on all available puzzles and modes.

Due to the nature of the game and it essentially being more Picross with a few improvements and an extra mode, I chose this format to say that this is a GREAT game for lovers of this puzzle type, regardless of your “skill” level. This isn’t going to change your mind on Picross and will serve you just fine if this is your first foray in the genre, but if you’re like me and just want more Picross, then S4 is exactly that.