EARLY REVIEW: I've only completed the first chapter of this game so far, but I'm immediately hooked. I'm not a huge fan of visual novels, but I AM a huge fan of Picross games, and I've been looking for something to scratch the itch of a Picross game with some sort of progression besides "harder puzzles".

The writing in this game is pretty good so far. The dialogue is maybe a little tropey, but it's clear the writers were having fun and I'm enjoyin the story. As for the actual mystery in the story, it's unfolding at a nice pace with some early twists and turns, red herrings, the usual mystery fare... but executed very well.

As for the Picross puzzles themselves, it's too early to really comment on them. I have hundreds of hours across multiple nonogram games, so the puzzles at this stage are not really a challenge, I'm mostly in it for the story. I will say that I've encountered one timed puzzle so far, which could shake things up later on.

My one suggestion for the devs would be to maybe allow a skip of the initial puzzle tutorial in a future update. It was short, but a little annoying to be taught the basic rules of the game without a skip option, and no way to interact besides clicking through dialogue boxes. Maybe only add the skip option for players on Normal difficulty, or make the board interactable so that you can just solve the puzzle and skip the tutorial?

Either way, I'm really enjoying this game so far, and I'm excited to get back to it. If you love Picross and want a story-focused game that lets you solve Picross puzzles, this is it. If you're into murder mysteries and/or visual novels, but you haven't ever played Picross before, then this game seems like a great onboarding for the genre of nonogram puzzlers with a promising visual novel to boot.

EARLY REVIEW: I've only completed the first chapter of this game so far, but I'm immediately hooked. I'm not a huge fan of visual novels, but I AM a huge fan of Picross games, and I've been looking for something to scratch the itch of a Picross game with some sort of progression besides "harder puzzles". The writing in this game is pretty good so far. The dialogue is maybe a little tropey, but it's clear the writers were having fun and I'm enjoyin the story. As for the actual mystery in the story, it's unfolding at a nice pace with some early twists and turns, red herrings, the usual mystery fare... but executed very well. As for the Picross puzzles themselves, it's too early to really comment on them. I have hundreds of hours across multiple nonogram games, so the puzzles at this stage are not really a challenge, I'm mostly in it for the story. I will say that I've encountered one timed puzzle so far, which could shake things up later on. My one suggestion for the devs would be to maybe allow a skip of the initial puzzle tutorial in a future update. It was short, but a little annoying to be taught the basic rules of the game without a skip option, and no way to interact besides clicking through dialogue boxes. Maybe only add the skip option for players on Normal difficulty, or make the board interactable so that you can just solve the puzzle and skip the tutorial? Either way, I'm really enjoying this game so far, and I'm excited to get back to it. If you love Picross and want a story-focused game that lets you solve Picross puzzles, this is it. If you're into murder mysteries and/or visual novels, but you haven't ever played Picross before, then this game seems like a great onboarding for the genre of nonogram puzzlers with a promising visual novel to boot.