If this review was for a printed magazine, it would probably end up in the round-up section along with half a dozen others spread over a couple of pages. Not because Colour Cross is a bad game, but because there isn’t much to say about it. It isn’t the first Picross game to arrive on DS either – Nintendo released their own effort, known simply as Picross, back in May 2007, while the apparently pretty addictive Pic Pic came out early this year via 505 Games.
But I digress. Picross puzzles (also known as nonograms) were very big in Japan in the ’90s, and involve marking cells in a grid to form a picture.
Here, the puzzles are multi-layered with different colours, so effectively you have to fill in three grids to make a complete picture. The grids start off small and gradually get bigger, but symmetry always features heavily.
The presentation is passable, and as you’d probably expect the graphics are functional at best. The scrolling backdrops are a bit annoying though, seeing as some of them are the same colour as the grid you’re meant to be painting. At the start only a few picture categories are available, including candy, magic and baby, with more like medieval and horror being unlocked. It’s a mildly addictive package that’s more involving than Sudoku, but it’s still not as addictive as Tetris. Or eating Haribo sweets.