Playing A Game Squeakross: Home Squeak Home PC

I'm thrilled that more games like Squeakross: Home Squeak Home are getting made. Not because of its cozy interior-decorating mode - though I'd bet fans of The Sims will enjoy this rat-shaped variant - I mean that I'm stoked on the trend of "nonogram and..." games, games that're loaded with picross puzzles and wrap them with extra features and a substantial theme that forms a unique personality.

Squeakross's personality is pretty adorable.

It's little details like in-game emails from Nini the rodent realtor, and her furniture-building brother Nono - even spam promising free seeds or promoting "logic booster" courses - that show just how much love and care went into crafting this game's squeaky theme.

Of course it's also important for a puzzle game to have a solid user interface; a cute premise can still be made ugly by shoddy messaging or unreliable input-handling. But Squeakross hits it out of the park -- its click-and-drag behavior, its row- and column-based selective zoom, its rich set of hinting options, and they're customizable! Squeakross's UI is really some of the best I've seen.

The only mark against it I'd even consider, is that there are some puzzle grids with dimensions that aren't multiples of 5, and doing coordinate math without those regular guide-lines can be a bit tedious. ... which isn't a big deal at all.

Squeakross is an extremely well-made nonogram game, and the interactive rat dollhouse that's wrapped around it is just delightful. Oh and it has a whopping 650! puzzles, like, damn.

Better than: Logiart Grimoire, Puppy Cross
Not as good as: Piczle Cross Adventure
After all of these cheesy puzzles: I've certainly got my picross fix for- oh, a Voxelgram sequel just came out? ... oh no.

Rating: Awesome