

You control Pixel Girl, a new superhero who joins the Puzzle League. The puzzles are good, but what about the dating sim wrapper? It’s incredibly tongue-in-cheek, laden with silly gags and references. These can be changed easily and do a fantastic job of making the game more approachable or less forgiving, depending on your preference. You can have rows auto-fill in when you fill in squares. If time pressures worry you, you can take the timer away. On top of the control options, the difficulty can also be customized.

Those controls are well implemented here, though I ultimately prefer button controls, which are as good as ever. Pixel Puzzle Makeout League features touchscreen controls - something that hasn’t been present in a Jupiter-made Switch release. The developers at Rude Ghost are rivaling the throne, at least by besting them in control options. Many have come at the throne most have missed.

The gold standard for Picross is Jupiter’s Picross S series. The flexibility and layout of the puzzles is top notch, however. Most are found along the way in the story with a maze introduced early that is the only way to mainline Picross. With more than 250 puzzles, the amount of Picross to play here is significant, though it’s worth pointing out that if you’re just here for the puzzles, it takes a while to get access to just puzzles.
