Piczle Cross: Rune Factory (Switch, PC)
Last year around this time I reviewed a game called Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons. It was a nonogram puzzle game and those types of puzzles in video game form are often called Picross or a variation of that name. But this one had a theme. The pictures you could make were based off of things and characters from the Story of Seasons games. These were farming sims that were around way before Stardew Valley got popular. You might know these games better as Harvest Moon, as that’s what those games were called before the rights changed. Anyway, the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons games had a spinoff series called Rune Factory. These were more fantasy based, and they streamlined the farming parts so you’d have more time to go fight monsters in dungeons! I actually like the Rune Factory games more than Story of Seasons, and now there is a Piczle Cross game based on the Rune Factory series as well! It’s available on Switch and PC but reviewed on Switch here.
When you start, the game has a video tutorial on how to play the game. It’s pretty good but I have played other ‘picross’ games that explain the rules better via interactive tutorials. To solve these puzzles, you must fill in spaces on a grid to make a picture, and you use number clues on the rows and columns to do so. I won’t explain the rules any more than that, but you’ll get the idea if you play this one. One thing this game adds are color puzzles, where you must switch colors to make pictures. Every picture has a regular and color version to solve. They have tutorials you can watch for the color puzzles as well. Play control is easy and you can use either the controllers or touch screen in handheld mode.
There are two main ways to play this game. Adventure Mode lets you solve puzzles on a map, and you unlock new puzzles by solving ones next to them. Sometimes you must solve ‘boss puzzles’ where you get a limited amount of time and no hints are allowed. If this gets too challenging for you (it certainly did for me) you can always switch to Puzzle Mode. Here you can solve any puzzle you want in any order, and you can get hints and have unlimited time. But if you change to this mode, you can’t go back to the other. I don’t like that design choice, but otherwise I’m glad they give you lots of options on how you want to play.
Just like in the Story of Seasons Piczle Cross game, when you make a picture of a crop, weapon, or character, they’ll appear in the background of your farm. But this time you can edit what you can have. You can choose what vegetables are in your garden, which spouse you have, and what weapon you hold when fighting bosses. It’s just in the background and you don’t see it much, but still a cool feature. You can also view the tutorials, play music, and view an artbook with characters you’ve unlocked, as well as a bestiary of monsters you’ve fought.
Aside from the design choice when switching from Adventure to Puzzle Mode, my only other problem with this game is that when the puzzles get bigger and more complicated, the numbers get too hard to see. Granted, they try to rectify that by letting you highlight rows and columns, but it wasn’t enough for me. But maybe I just have old eyes. I still like the Story of Seasons version of this game more, as it’s more relaxed and chill, but this one is still pretty good. Start with Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons first, and if you feel like you’re up to the challenge, give this Rune Factory a try after that.
Kid Factor:
Piczle Cross: Rune Factory is rated E-10 with an ESRB descriptor of Fantasy Violence. When you solve boss puzzles, the background shows your character swinging a weapon at a cloudy mystery monster, but that’s it. Strong reading and math skills are needed (which does make the game educational), and younger gamers may need help with the tougher puzzles.
Check out my other Rune Factory game reviews that are featured in this title:
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