Picross 3D

[miffy495]

Ok, confession time. I am ridiculously addicted to Picross. At any given time, there's a GBASP sitting on my coffee table, fully charged, with my imported copy of Mario's Picross sitting in it. I played the shit out of the original Picross DS when it came out as well (also imported, I didn't want to wait for it to be localized). Now Picross 3D is coming out, and I'm crazy excited. I don't know what it is about this game, but I love it. I'm hoping I'm not the only one around here who does.

Trouble is, I ordered it from Amazon as part of an order which also included the blu-ray of the BBC's "Life" series, which isn't out until early next month. Since I chose free shipping, they won't sent the game until they can send the whole order together. This means I'm waiting a month from now to play this game, and damn am I excited for it. It's a bit infuriating, but I guess the game will be that much sweeter when I do get to play it. In the meantime, any thumbs have it? What are the mechanics like in 3D? How do they pull it off? Is it harder, or will I blast through it given how many of these damn puzzles I've done? Please thumbs, help me get my Picross fix by proxy!

Ah, screw it. I'm gonna go grab my SP and do another puzzle.

[dibs]

I feel your pain. I used to be addiceted to it on my vanilly GB. I spent so many hours hunched over it.

Recently however, Picross has taken a sinister turn. We got my mum a DS for christmas 2 years ago and she got totally addicted to it. Symptoms included playing untill her hands cramped up, frantic phonecalls to me at 11.30 at night because she had accidentally erased her wireless settings, and triumphant phonecalls to the whole family when she got to a new challanger level:)

i'm well excited for the 3D version!

[syntheticgerbil]

Often Amazon will give it a week or so and ship your order separately either way if it's taking too long, but they may not because this is more of a preorder situation and not an out of stock one.

[Psych]

I got it earlier this week and it has been wrecking my productivity, just like the original did when I discovered a rom of it years ago.

In 3D the mechanics are kind of reversed, instead of being told the number of blocks you knock out in a line you're told the number of blocks to keep. Also when the blocks you keep are not contiguous just given one number with a symbol telling you that they're split into two or more groups, instead of the multiple numbers you'd get in the 2D version. These are actually the most difficult aspect of the game since they make the blocks on that line much harder to decipher.

This game is quite a bit harder than its predecessor. I just opened up normal today, and it's taking me a few tries to get some of these puzzles done in under the time limit without hitting a strike.

[Jayel]

Wow, this could've been an awesome 3DS launch title.

[toblix]

So I'm on level 7 or something, and this stuff is addictive. I don't get the trance-like addiction I got with the 2D Picross game, and I think that has to do with the increased awkwardness of the UI. Even though it's very well thought-out, it's still 3D, requiring rotation, which makes it a bit more of a hassle. The rendering is also pretty bad, and sometimes you have to rotate the puzzle a bit just so a number isn't a garbled mess of pixels. It's strange, too, because once you finish a puzzle it turns into a sweet anti-aliased model, which bounces around and does all kinds of wonderful shit. I don't see why they couldn't anti-alias the puzzle while you're playing; I guess it must be the text rendering. It's weird that the DS isn't powerful enough to do that.

[Kolzig]

I tried the demo of this from the Wii's Nintendo Channel.

Instantly got the feeling that this is highly addictive, but I have no previous experiences about the 2d Picross game.

Should think about purchasing it as trip is getting closer and this seems to be fun enough to tinker around in the airplane.

[toblix]

I would definitely recommend getting the original Picross before Picross 3d if you haven't played any of them.

[miffy495]

I've played Picross 2D to death and would highly recommend it. Been playing a lot of 3D in my down time, and it certainly is addictive. I'm on level 7 of Normal now, (198 puzzles in or so?) which has actually proven itself to be trickier than I expected. Wondering what hard is going to be like when I get there. This is a great game, especially as it is cheaper than most new DS games. Go for it.

[Xeneth]

I bought the original Mario's Picross on the Game Boy when it was released in the states... I remember getting addicted to the combination of maths and intuition when Nintendo Power ran an article that included sample puzzles you could solve with a pen right in the magazine. I immediately whipped out graph paper and started making my own puzzles in anticipation of the release. As I recall trying to explain to others the logic required to work them out was pretty painful, heh.

Ironically that Game Boy Cart. was THE ONE that would come to dictate my future policy about being never loaning anybody something unless I am prepared, right there and then, to lose it forever or get a replacement. It was stolen out of a friend's backpack at school by an unknown party, and I never was able to replace it.

So when Picross DS came out and had custom user-creatable puzzle editing built in... Let's just say I don't want to think about how much of my life has been spent counting little squares. I'm holding off on Picross 3D because I know nothing will get done. Save for puzzles.

I'll reward myself for doing something difficult at some point I imagine. Glad to hear I'm in good company in terms of understanding the appeal! I've always sort of thought of myself as the only one swayed by it, and it wouldn't occur to me to mention Picross as a game I play... like it's some sort of secret obsession. Weird.

[dpp]

Hello, my name is dpp and I'm addicted to Picross 3D.

I finally finished all the normal puzzles, now into the hard ones... I think I've done about 260 puzzles, at 10 minutes on average each, that translates to 40+ hours.

[miffy495]

God, don't make me actually do the math.

~200 puzzles x 10 minutes = 2000 minutes.

2000/60 = 33 hours, 20 minutes

God fucking damn it.

[Kolzig]

My wife bought used Japanese version of Picross during our summer vacation and she has been playing it now EVERY evening since we came back. Serious addiction there.

I need to buy her the 3D version too I guess.

I have tried the original out as well and it's really addictive, I totally understand why she can't keep her hands away from Picross.

[dpp]

I'm now very very close to finishing all the puzzles... I'm at Hard lvl 10 now!

[dibs]

its not been released over here yet. i asked in Game and the guy said "is that for the new nintendo DS 3D"

I guess i'll just get it online then!

[dpp]

All 369 puzzles solved, 60h of gameplay.

I'm a little bit depressed now

[Psych]

That last one took me like six tries and a bit of route memorization. How about you?

[dpp]

The dragon?

The 1st time I couldn't finish in the time limit... I finished the construction challenges and then a couple weeks later I took another stab at the dragon, I did it in 45 minutes.

[Psych]

The dragon?

The 1st time I couldn't finish in the time limit... I finished the construction challenges and then a couple weeks later I took another stab at the dragon, I did it in 45 minutes.

2 tries? You are a god.

[Noyb]

I really wish it didn't take me until Hard Level 10 before I realized (spoilered since it is a useful feature that can nevertheless be easily exploited)

the quicksave doesn't actually disappear once you load it. If you quicksave, load the save, then make a mistake, you can revert back to the quicksave by quitting and choosing to keep the save.

Would have saved a lot of time and hassle for all the times when I swore I deleted the right block, but the game thought I wanted to delete a block in the background with just a few pixels showing.

Still enjoying it, but a number of these later puzzles have really insane time limits.

Edit: This game also made me realize there were dead spots on my original DS screen. Probably from one too many rounds of Elite Beat Agents back in the day.

Edited May 21, 2011 by Noyb

[miffy495]

As someone who cleared every single puzzle in that game, it may seem odd for me to say this, but here goes:

THERE WAS A FUCKING QUICKSAVE????? :(

[dibs]

There was, but I can never ever remember what the hell I was doing a few hours ago and always just abandon it:(

That said, i only play the easy levels since i can only play it on my mums DS when i go to visit:P she is powering throuhg.

[dibs]

Just bumping this for some advice. My mum has been addicted to this game since i got it for her. She even has profiles set up in the cat's names if she wants to play easier ones.

Unfortunatly, she is nearly completly finished all the content i can download. Is there any similar games i could get her to replace once she is done with Picross 3D. She tried a professor layton before, but didn't like it (though my sis in law has a few of them so i might try them out with mum again).

If it gets bad i'm considering getting her an ipad so she can play soduku and picross on it!