What is a picross game?
And what is the best free picross game?
And why should you watch a five minute video all about a game that is basically filling
in grid squares?
I know the answer to the first two questions!
Every day, someone asks me, "What's the best picross game?"
Nonogram?
Non o' your business more like.
But it is my business and I'm gonna tell you what the best nonogram game is, so buckle
up buckaroo.
Picross or nonograms or griddlers, they're all the same thing, they're a puzzle game
that fills in specific grid squares in order to make a piece of art at the end.
This video is a bit of a challenge because there are dozens of good free picross games
across pretty much every platform, but I've found nine that I think show a pretty good
variety, and I'm gonna talk about each of them and what's good and what's bad about
all of them, and then I'll tell you what the best one is.
Every picross game has the same basic build.
You've got rows, you've got columns, you've got numbers in them, and that tells you how
many of each row or column grid square you're going to fill in, I'm bad at explaining.
Basically every game has their own tutorial function, and Picture Cross has a super good
tutorial function, so we're gonna start there with mobile games.
Picture Cross is a great intro into picross games, and it's also the most in-your-face
mobile game I've ever seen in my life.
It's got bonuses, it's got coins, it's got collectables, you gotta do the things.
But it does have a great tutorial, and it's a great intro if you've never done any sort
of nonogram/picross game in your life.
CrossMe Color is another solid choice.
It brings in the extra fun of having multiple different colors, which adds a layer of complexity
to the picross puzzle.
That said, the controls feel a little bit stilted.
Not my fave.
Picross Luna and Picross Luna II try to add a storyline to a puzzle game which is kind
of interesting to me.
You can either play just normal picross or you can try to fill in a large square that
has, you know, a full grid of ten-by-tens.
And then it tells a story about a knight and a wizard, I don't, I haven't finished it.
Let's move on to browser picross, or what I like to call them: the reason you got a
C on your cognitive science final.
Picma and Pixelo are the two polished in-browser games.
Pixelo has badges and it used to have daily picross games.
That said, you do have to unlock every single new puzzle, so you can't hop straight into
the hard ones, so if you know how to do picross, it might not be the first one to go to.
Picma is also very polished, and it has, like, characters in it.
It's a very fun one, and it's actually the gateway drug that got me into picross games,
and it still holds up all these years later.
Nonograms.org is sort of the modding community of picross games, it has a lot of community
entered cool sprite work.
This one ended up being Madeline from Celeste, which I love, 'cause it's a game that I love.
And then I thought about how I spent, like, dozens of minutes on this one puzzle and how
shitty it would have felt if I didn't actually know what I was drawing.
Because they don't tell you what it is until after, which is, again, a blessing and a curse.
Finally, liouh.com/picross.
It is the purist's picross 'cause it's just a randomly generated picross game.
So that means at the end of it, you don't actually get to see a cool piece of art, unless
you're thinking of it as a Rorschach ink blot test.
This puzzle was so obviously a drawing of my middle school bully pushing me into a locker.
*Moonlight Sonata plays sadly*
Alright
Oh I forgot about the bonus!
There's a bonus one!
This one is called Pivross, and it's on Steam for free.
"Free."
You have to buy it after you do the first 20.
And it's 3D picross.
The rules are not the most straightforward, but it's a cool thing, and if you like it
after the twentieth, I think it's only a couple bucks to pay for, but it's not free so I'm
not gonna talk about it.
So which of these is the best free picross game?
Well, it depends on what you're looking for,
a lot of timesGETOUTTAHERE with that cop-out
answer!
It's Picross Luna II!
That's the best one!
It's a great game, and I really enjoy it, and you should go get it, it's free on your thing.
The auto-color aspect of Picross Luna II is also really nice.
It means you don't have to have the complexity of color picross and still enjoy the fun of
revealing colors.
That's nice.
I like the aesthetics okay, sue me.
There are a lot of ads, but you gotta make money somehow.
Get on that hustle.
I don't know how to end this one.
That's the best picross game.
You're gonna love it if you download it.
And if you don't download it, that's cool, too.
Because I did give you eight other picross games you could potentially get into.
That's it!
Let me say something about how you should subscribe and whatever.
You should subscribe to Polygon and like this video and also, if you think I missed out
on a really good picross game, just go ahead and leave us a comment.
And maybe, if you're feeling fancy, tell me a different free game that I should be focusing
on because there are lots of free games, and I don't have that much time.