Playing A Game SquareCells PC

Did I mention that I fucking love picross? Because I do. And that's what makes SquareCells so confusing: It's sort of like picross. But it's different in ways I'm not really sure about yet.

SquareCells mixes up the traditional nonogram ruleset in some pretty fundamental ways. It shows the total number of marked and unmarked squares for each puzzle, so you know how many there should be in the end; it tosses in numbered blocks, which indicate how many marked squares are contiguously connected; it throws in bracketed row/column numbers, which indicate how many squares are marked, but not in what arrangements; and as a result of these new rules, sometimes row/column markers are blank, leaving you to figure the context out from other surrounding clues.

On paper, these sound like challenging and fun twists to traditional nonogram rules. But in practice, I've had to rely on guesswork once or twice already. And while trial and error isn't exactly anti-picross, it's a disappointing crutch to lean on in smaller and simpler puzzles. Of course -- maybe I just haven't gotten the hang of the new rules yet, and how they interact with each other. Maybe my guesses were actually unnecessary.

What makes this more frustrating than it might otherwise be is that - unlike Paint it Back - SquareCells penalizes you for unmarking/removing squares that are supposed to be part of the puzzle. So in addition to reducing the number of stars you earn from completing the puzzle, it goes ahead and reveals what you should have done instead. Which seems like a futile exercise, since if you miss a square you're obviously just going to come back later and re-do the puzzle for full stars. It discourages careful analysis of the puzzle board in favor of, well, trial and error.

I don't know. I'm still settling into it.

Also -- this is an unabashedly short game. Only 36 puzzles! It's hard to get excited about that, in the face of Paint it Back's deluge of huge fucking puzzles.

Progress: 19 of 36 puzzles complete, 57 stars