Color Cross, Nintendo DS

Developer: Little Worlds Studio
Year: 2008
1 Player


I stumbled onto this game shortly after Picross 3D. It is itself another twist on the Nonogram formula, except instead of adding a dimension, it adds color.

The game design works reasonably well - each puzzle is effectively broken-up into layers, with a different set of row/column clues for each color. Any filled squares remain filled when you switch to another layer, while the marks for empty squares are strictly per-layer. Thus you're essentially solving several inter-related Picross-style puzzles - if you get stuck on one layer, doing some work on the others may solve your quandary.

However, this game has issues, primarily that of the interface. The puzzle grid is rendered rather small, and as-such I often find myself accidentally tapping the wrong square and getting penalized, or incorrectly marking a square as empty, causing other problems down the line.
Furthermore, many of the more complex puzzles have so many clues in a row or column that they don't all fit on the screen at once. How does the game solve this? By shifting the clue-boxes to cover part of the board - often a part of the board you're trying to see and/or mark!
This last bit is helped slightly by the fact that you can move the board around the screen, allowing you to shove the bottom-right edges off screen to make room for the clues, but that in itself can cause further issues since suddenly part of the grid is hidden from you.
Additionally, what the game does when you tap the screen varies on which button you pressed last: Up to paint, down to mark, left to move. It's far too easy to forget what mode you're in and start crossing-out squares you meant to fill, or getting penalized for filling squares you meant to mark.

Personally, I think Picross DS handled these issues much better. In that game, you always play from a zoomed-in perspective, which helps take-care of the wrong-square-tapping. If you aren't currently pressing and buttons, your stylus will scroll the board around, with the appropriate clues being overlaid along the top and left; just the numbers, so you can still still around them. In order to fill or mark, you need to be holding down the appropriate button - this eliminates 'mode'-confusion.

Overall, Color Cross feels like a rather amateurish title - more like someone's homebrew DS game than a commercial release. Still, it's an interesting twist on the Nonogram concept. If you really like this style of puzzle, and you've got a steady hand, it could be worth a look.