The first time I encountered picross, was when I took a copy of Picross DS away with me on holiday three years ago. I found myself huddled away from the sun playing it for nearly the entire trip, much to my parents anger. I continued to play Picross DS until the day I finished every puzzle, which was three years later. When I heard that Picross was being made into a 3D puzzler, I was immediately intrigued as to how they would pull it off. I was also quite worried that it wouldn't live up to my amazing expectations that three years of wonderful Picross DS had built up.
I booted up the tutorials to find an interesting layout and gameplay structure. One could compare the gameplay to the destructive form of sculpture; starting out with a block, and trimming it down into a shape. The tutorials start out with simple X x X x 1 puzzles, but slowly enough, the puzzles get harder and more layers are added on.
I found the game easy to get into, with a very slight learning curve, but getting good at Picross 3D entails teaching yourself different methods of block identification, via trial and error. You will need these various untaught methods in the later levels of the game.
One thing which I do not like about Picross 3D, is the visual aspect. When a puzzle is revealed, it is added to a set group, in your overall gallery of solved puzzles. These galleries feature god-awful clip-art styled graphics, which are almost definitely gotten from creative commons of some sort. If the background images in this game are from after 1995, I am amazed.
Despite the stale graphics, the game's music is a nice mix of simple electronica, though, I did spend most of my time with the game listening to different music (but on toilet trips, it made do!).
I would definitely recommend this game to puzzle fans, as it offers around 22-25 hours of challenging fun. Just don't blame me when you're addicted and going back to get a perfect score on each puzzle.
