Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons

I find myself drawn to nonogram puzzles. These are picture logic puzzles; there are square cells on a grid, they can range from 5x5 to just about any combination. You shade in cells or leave them blank according to the numbers shown on the outside edge of the grid. Each line is unique; figuring out one line can make solving the next one easier. Once finished, the nonogram should resemble a picture. Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons has over 270 puzzles, and a few collage-style puzzles that push that number closer to 350 when it is all said and done. Plenty of puzzles, and a Story of Seasons flavor that makes this a half step above some of the more basic nonogram games I’ve played.

How are the pictures on Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons? Like most nonogram games there is good and bad. Typically the larger the puzzle, the better the picture will look when finished. This is true with Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons. Early on, you solve puzzles that come out as simple items, a bell or a horseshoe. These don’t take much effort to solve, but the image still looks like the item. There were a few that revealed results that were a little surprising. I’m not sure the developers know what an actual egg looks like, it certainly was nothing like the weird blob the puzzle tried to convince me was an egg. Another time, I was positive the image would be a mushroom, but turned out to be a mailbox. It’s amusing, to say the least. I showed the pictures to my wife, asking her what she thought the picture was before telling her, she was also a bit taken aback by a few of the final results. The smaller puzzles tend to be a bit of a guess, which holds true from most nonogram puzzles I’ve played, and holds true here with Story of Seasons.

What sets this title apart from other nonogram puzzles is the Story of Seasons filter everything is put under. All of the pictures somehow relate to Story of Seasons. The solutions could range from a tool, crop, animal, anything that you would see in a proper Story of Seasons title is one of the 270 puzzle solutions. Besides that, you also have five different themes you can have while solving. There is one for each season, and then a generic, season-agnostic skin. You can even choose to have the current ‘real world’ season as the default. There is also a music player that plays Story of Seasons music, which is mellow and fits the puzzle game just as well as traditional Story of Seasons does. There is also an almanac filled with information about Story of Seasons. As a fan of the series I did not find that to be much use, I don’t know if gamers who are not fans will get any more enjoyment out of the almanac, but it is a nice add-on for fans.

Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons also comes with a journal feature. This will track your progress as you solve puzzles. You can see how many character puzzles you’ve finished, or any of the other puzzles. There are achievements, ways to track the top three fastest times to solve each puzzle, and it will even show you any clues or hints you may have used to solve that particular puzzle. I once again found myself checking the journal at the end of each game session, just to see how far I had come. It’s useful, but I don’t think this makes or breaks picking up this Piczle title up over another nonogram puzzle title.

There are a handful of other little features that I like about Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons. Being able to check your mistakes when in the middle of a puzzle is great. I find a lot of nonogram puzzles will let you do this once per puzzle, this one allows it as many times as you would like. I always use it as a last resource until I can no longer finish the puzzle. Having a hint roulette is another feature I see in a lot of these games, including Story of Seasons. At the start you can choose to have a random vertical and horizontal line answered before beginning. This makes solving easier, something on the bigger ones I might do if I am not able to solve them the first time. There is also a timer, but you can hide it if timing yourself isn’t something you care to track. All of these are nice, and should be expected in modern nonogram games.

The last big feature that makes this a hybrid Piczle and Story of Seasons game is the background farm. In the background of the game, as you are solving puzzles, a farm is being tended to. You can’t interact with the farm, but as you finish more and more puzzles the farm goes from a wasteland to flourishing farm. They even add the day and season; typically Story of Seasons titles take place over the course of four in-game years, the same looks to be true here. I found myself enjoying checking out the farm before I would start and after I was done with the current game session. I think Piczle titles are meant to be played over the course of time, not back to back to back. I tried to solve as many as I could before getting this review out, but I was able to finish just over 100 of the normal puzzles and two big collage puzzles before I started my review.

Collage puzzles were a additional feature that I have not seen in many nonogram titles, but it was a welcomed surprise. These are puzzles where ten, or more singular puzzles equal one giant picture when fully complete. These were the more challenging puzzles, the ones I like to sink my teeth into after doing four or five of the normal puzzles to warm myself up. Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons has five collage puzzles to solve. They were more time consuming, required more effort and thought, and were overall very enjoyable.

Only two complaints kept coming up as I was playing. The first is with the controls. As you play you can mark squares that should be activated, and you can mark squares that should not be activated. I need a third option for when I am counting out my squares to see if they belong to the mark or unmarked type. A lot of nonogram games have a third color to help with this. Unfortunately you have to choose one or the other, and changing back to the other requires an extra button push. It’s more of a hassle than it sounds, especially when you play other games with the third color. It slows down my game by having to recolor with extra buttons. I can get over it, but when I see this element in most other nonogram games, I don’t understand why they would choose not to have it. Secondly, while I love that I can watch a farm progress as I finish each puzzle, I wish I could do more than watch NPCs grow crops and take care of livestock. I would have loved some type of farming element to make its way into Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons, that would have really set it above and beyond other nonogram games.

Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons takes nonogram puzzles and adds the flavor of the farm sim series Story of Seasons. Puzzles harken back to life on the farm, or one of the many people you encounter while playing Story of Seasons. The puzzles are good, perhaps a little easier than I would have liked. But that’s ok, the collage puzzles have that extra challenge that I like to get into. Everything you expect in a nonogram puzzles is here, with one exception that I can not get over. The Story of Seasons theme is good as well, but comes in a little short of what would make it great. There’s no farming here, just a celebration of Story of Seasons through puzzle pictures.