I think I'm quite ready for another adventure.

Here's the headline: Piczle Cross Adventure is basically what I "wanted" PictoQuest to be. It's an imperfect, but delightfully satisfying, hybrid of exploration-based adventuring and nonogram puzzle solving.

Piczle Cross Adventure is an open-world RPG, or maybe more accurately a Metroidvania, where progress is gated by items and obstacles; items are acquired, and obstacles overcome, by solving puzzles; and puzzles have level requirements, where you level-up by ... completing more puzzles.

I might argue that the number of puzzles needed to meet those level requirements is pretty steep, limiting the amount of the map open for exploration at a given time. But, hey, I was gonna do all the puzzles anyway.

Nevertheless, framing its puzzles within a creative and colorful world elevates Piczle Cross Adventure beyond most "mere" puzzle games. Exploring the map is way more fulfilling than just following a linear sequence of puzzle prompts.

It also helps that, although its story is silly and stupid, the game has a good sense of humor about itself.

There is definitely room for improvement, both to the "adventure" and to the puzzles -- more flexibility in exploration would be great, as would some clarification of current objectives (like a quest list). And the puzzle interface doesn't do well with click-and-drag over a row or column, and some of the hint-highlighting behavior could be better...

But! Piczle Cross Adventure succeeds where previous puzzle-hybrids have failed: puzzles are well-integrated into its game world, a world that has nuance and charm all its own. It's a puzzle game with a personality, which is no mean feat.

Better than: Murder by Numbers, PictoQuest: The Cursed Grids, Puppy Cross
Not as good as: Pictopix, in "pure puzzle" terms... but this is definitely the best nonogram-hybrid game I've played so far.
That said: I can't wait to see what's next in an iterative follow-up, or for other developers to riff on this formula.

Progress: 100%