And I only cheated for one of them! For all the others I used the hint roulette at the start then solved them fair and square. No guessing, no looking up solutions online. It really is possible to finish every puzzle through pure logical deduction. Even when the puzzles are all 1 1 1 2 1 1 and stuff, if you just take your time and work from the bigger numbers to the smaller and from the edges inwards, everything falls in place beautifully. If all else fails, just sleep on it for a while and your eye will spot new connections the following day. I had a blast!

The only complaints I have about Picross S are:

1) 150 puzzles is too few!!!!
2) I don’t get Mega Picross. Even worse, it seems feature the exact same puzzles as regular Picross but in a more complicated format. At least tempt me with the promise of all-new puzzles.
3) A lot of the puzzles don’t look like anything until they’re animated, then you kind of see what they’re supposed to be but not really. The puzzle makers must be running out of ideas.

Apart from that I loved this game and will buy and download any expansion packs Nintendo releases immediately. Please, please, please Nintendo? *puppy dog eyes*

Now that I’ve realized how doable Picross puzzles are, I feel silly for giving up on Picross DS and Color Cross so easily. Silly enough that I actually restarted Picross DS this afternoon. Unfortunately the right side of the touchscreen isn’t responding to stylus presses, so I can’t play it. The screen calibrates just fine (and does respond to right-side presses during calibration) so I suspect it’s either a problem with the software or an issue with my screen protector. Or maybe the DS Lite is just old. This particular one is about 8 years old now IIRC. I’ll try to get someone to look at it sometime.

Here’s what else I’ve been working on since I finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2 on Tuesday. Yeah. I finally considered it “finished” after 110 hours. It’s very hard for me to stay interested in a game once the ending credits roll. The killing blow was when I was running around Temperentia and it suddenly hit me that I’d been doing nothing but running since the game started. Half the reason why XC2 is so long is because the developers placed everything really far apart. You have to run hours from the nearest landmark to get anywhere. Presto! Instant 100+ hour game! Padding out game time by padding out the running time, how fiendishly clever. I’ve played along long enough, it’s time to move on.

Steamworld Dig – I tried it. I didn’t make it out of the first dungeon, didn’t even get to the mines. I’m not much of a platform gamer anyway, and Steamworld is all about… digging. I don’t really dig… digging. Also the Y + B run and jump was really hard for my delicate hands to accomplish while holding the heavy Switch. And even if I do get it right, the only thing I have to look forward to is more… digging. Yah.

Voez demo – Very pretty graphics at the start, but the gameplay is horrendously boring. Tap, slide, swipe, tap, slide, swipe. The one song I played stretched on forever and ever and wasn’t even nice. And if that’s the demo song then it’s the best they have to offer. There are better mobile games out there.

Disgaea 5 demo – Something in me just does not like Disgaea. Anything Disgaea. First off I don’t think their sense of humor jives well with mine, so all this nonsense about some spoiled princess trying to boss a guy around just turns me off. By the second time she laughed “Oh ho ho ho ho” I was ready to punch the screen.

Then all the stuff you have to do like Item World and Innocents and Strategy Assemblies… just thinking about all of that makes me run a mile. I like my SRPGs simple and uncomplicated. On a pettier note, I HATE PRINNIES! They’re creepy and annoying! Long story short, I don’t even know why I tried this. I made it halfway through the tutorial battle and couldn’t turn it off fast enough.

Overcooked – Seems like a lot of fun if you play it with the right person. I played it with my toddler niece and she couldn’t get the hang of the controls at all. She has a long way to go if she wants to inherit Auntie Kina’s legacy. It’s a bit of a pity though, because Overcooked‘s cartoony designs look like they’d be a hit with kids. Hopefully I’ll find someone “proper” to give the game a real go with and blog about it some day.

After these I was going to try Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and the Dragon Quest Builders demo just to say that I did. It’s good to try new genres once in a while, develop new synapses in the brain and all that. But I was fooling around with my laptop just now and before I knew it I had started two new games. How do these things keep happening to me? So I’m gonna focus on Moonlight Basket and Tokyo Xanadu eX+ for now and get back to the Switch much, much later. So many games, so little time.

Related posts:

Picross 3D – Can’t…stop…playing… Picross 3D – Want… more… Picross DS Demo report: 7th Dragon III, Yo-kai Watch, Stella Glow, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon