NINTENDO 3DS GAME RECOMMENDATIONS |

[#] Pokémon Picross (Nintendo, Nintendo 3DS, 2015)

A great puzzler with one minor problem...

Picross! The fiendish cousin of Sudoku, you get numbers that tell you how many tiles are in each row and column and it's up to you to fill in the picture from deductive reasoning. Pokémon Picross was originally intended for life on the Game Boy Color, but was cancelled and the idea brought back for a 3DS...free-to-play title. Yeah, this one is a little hard to recommend in the wake of the closure of the eShop, which is a shame, because it's actually quite the habit-forming on-ramp to new Picross players and a good way to sharpen your brain to nonograms.

The Pokémon theming isn't a skin, it's both what you're after in-game and Pokémon Picross' killer feature. Each type has a different utility in helping you solve a puzzle, from fixing mistakes to revealing tiles to slowing down time, and you can set a team of five per puzzle. Each puzzle is of a Pokémon, which you "catch" by solving it. (Caby says that, once you recognize the Pokémon, you can often just draw it, but I rarely have the eye to make out a specific 'mon from a 10x10 grid.) You also get mural tiles for additional, especially abstract Picross puzzles you can't rely on your Pokémon for, and a training mode, both of which genuinely helped me go from being shit at Picross to alright at Picross. Woohoo!

You also get Picrites. Picrites are the free-to-play downfall of Pokémon Picross. They're your currency for unlocking new worlds and resetting your and your team's cooldown timers, intended to be bought with eShop points with the 3DS eShop now long-defunct. The game does have a mechanic where, after buying a certain amount of Picrites, you can turn off basically all of the microtransaction mechanics, but you'll need a save editor and hacked 3DS to activate that these days. This single lockout makes it hard to recommend this underrated, brain-itching puzzler to anyone who doesn't have the technical know-how to make that work.

Recommended for... especially knowledgeable 3DS geeks, or those who know one.

Reviewed	My favorite part
October 10, 2026	Solving a mural tile all by myself because I am so smort

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