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Yes. It is another of Jupiter’s almost identical picross games. And yes, it is even longer than the previous ones I played. And yes, I will be buying Picross S5 when I see it on sale. What are you implying?
There’s nothing new in this one, apart from all the puzzles being new of course. What I mean is there’s no new modes or mechanics or anything. It does have some huuuuuuge bonus puzzles if you have save data from earlier games in the series, and a couple of those took me over an hour each!
What is this? A Playdate game? That I purchased? With actual money? Is that even legal? It seems so!
Sketch, Share, Solve is a Picross game, and a $3 Picross game at that. It also has mostly the same (correct) controls as the Jupiter-written 3DS and Switch Picross games, which is good as that’s the only way to play them as far as I’m concerned.
As it’s on the Playdate, it’s all in black and white and the size of each puzzle is a bit restrictive because of the resolution. That said, every puzzle is 15×10, so although it doesn’t reach the 30×20 (or bigger) of the Jupiter ones, there aren’t any 5×5 or 10×10 which often only take 10 seconds to solve. There’s 250 of them too, so definitely $3 worth.
Also unlike Jupiter’s titles, the images you create are 1-bit pixel art representing exactly what you see. By that, I mean it isn’t a representation of a more complex image which is “filled in” with colour and detail when complete like the Jupiter puzzles are. That doesn’t make them any better or worse to solve, it’s just an observation.
What does make them worse to solve, however, is the fact that a handful of the puzzles require either leaps of faith because the logic suggests more than one possible location for filled squares, or they rely on the puzzle’s symmetry to solve. Neither of these are good practice in Picross titles, and although not many suffer from this it is a shame. Mind you, again, $3.
The only other negative I have isn’t the game itself but the Playdate. It’s quite obvious that the screen is Not Great when not in the right light. Natural light, at an angle, seems to give an incredible picture, but artificial light is nowhere near as good and since it’s November, the only real option. It’s the main reason mine has been a bit unloved of late.
As you might expect, I’m a massive fan of Kemono Friends. Sorry, no, the other thing. Picross. Kemono Friends is something I’d never heard of, but the themed Picross game is by Jupiter who do all the Picross games. so of course I was going to buy it at some point.
Apparently, it’s a manga or anime or both, where there’s a zoo but all the animals are anthropomorphic and resemble human girls. Could the premise be any more anime? That doesn’t matter at all though, because I’m here for the puzzles (most of which are of the faces of these girl-animals) and it’s not relevant what they’re actually puzzles of.
30 hours later, and all done. No colour picross this time around, but Mega and Clip varieties of the puzzle are present. Now to wait for the next sale on Picross games!
Yes, it’s another of Jupiter’s excellent but nearly identical Picross games! Only this one is slightly different as each puzzle is a pixel graphic straight from a Sega Mega Drive or Master System game! But you guessed that from the title.
Not that it really matters because I literally don’t care what the pictures actually are, but it was a bit disappointing that so many of them were just faces of characters from games. Nowhere near as many items, logos, weapons, scenery parts, etc. as I’d hoped for. Also, the music is so, so irritating. The Alex Kidd music, on a loop, for over half an hour? No thanks. And why Passing Breeze from Out Run when Magical Sound Shower exists? Madness.
Thankfully, you can put “soothing arcade sounds” on instead. So I did that.
Oh, and completion time? About 30 hours.
More Picross, innit.
I mean, I’m not really sure what else there is to say. I think it’s the longest of the Jupiter-made games, as it took me over 35 hours to do all the puzzles, and it also introduces colour picross to the series. I didn’t like the slight change in logic at first, but it soon clicked and then I wished there were more of them.
Much as I love picross, I think I might give them a little break now before I pick up Picross S4!
