Thanks to Rainy Frog for the review code

Title: Piczle Lines DX
System: Nintendo Switch (eShop)
Price: $14.99
Release Date: 08/24/2017

Story

An old scientist makes a camera that can transform real life items into pictures, and chaos ensures when it’s accidentally used when it shouldn’t have been. This puzzle game may have a story mode, but the story is really barebones to the point you’d forget it would exist if it wasn’t for the fact that after clearing a story level, bits of the animated picture are restored based on the item you discovered.

Presentation

Being a port of a mobile game, Piczle Lines DX fits surprisingly well on the Switch, with easy to navigate menus that makes starting a puzzle a very quick process. The actual maps aren’t that bad either, as navigating them is very easy with both the touch screen and button controls, meaning that even the gigantic colossus-sized puzzles available in some of the puzzle packs can be quickly navigated so you can get from one corner to the other in no time.

The music on the other hand, is just atrocious. A boring, short, and poorly looped musical medley plays on the title screen, and the medley changes if you enter the story mode, being replaced by yet another repetitive tune that’ll drive you mentally insane. Turning off the music should be your first priority, since the sound effects still get the job done and won’t be nearly as distracting or irritating as the musical score.

Gameplay

At first glance, Piczle Lines DX looks like yet another take on Picross, but in actuality, it feels more like the Connect-The-Dots compilation I’ve been dreaming to play ever since I was a child. The main objective of each puzzle is to connect every single numbered dot with another of the same color and number, with said dot only being able to move the amount of spaces that its number suggests. For example, a dot with the number 2 on it will only be able to connect to a neighboring dot, while a dot with the number 12 on it will require a lot more thinking since you also need to make sure there’s not a single empty space on the map. This can be a dreadful nightmare on the biggest puzzles, since there’s no room for error and there are multiple ways to connect the dots together when sometimes there’s only one true solution.

Luckily, that’s what the story mode is for, offering rather basic levels that slowly get harder and harder with the more chapters you clear, making it feel like a well paced, relaxing puzzle adventure compared to the go-at-your-own-pace nature of the Puzzle mode. That being said, the puzzle mode does offer a lot of moderately sized puzzles along with the gigantic ones, with more promised by the developer in future game updates.

With all that said, however there was one aspect of Piczle Lines DX that disappointed me a bit, and that came from the achievement aspect. While most of the achievements in the trophy room are all fairly basic, wanting you to clear a certain amount of puzzles or do specific challenges like clear one of those gigantic puzzles and then reset it at the very end, as of this review they just simply do not work properly. With the exception of anything with a counter like the level clear trophies, achievements for things like clearing a level without erasing a single line or viewing the tutorial will not pop no matter how hard you try, which makes the achievements in this game feel rather redundant. Hopefully the developers will fix these with the very first patch, since they are a nice way of tracking your overall progress.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Piczle Lines DX is a picture puzzle game jam-packed with content, but it doesn’t offer much more than what’s advertised. Just hundreds of fun connect-the-dot that grow gradually in size, with no special modes or something fun to keep things interesting like in Pokemon Picross. For the $15 pricetag, you’ll definitely get your money’s worth if you’re a huge fan of these types of games like I am, but for everyone else, you might want to wait for a sale before trying this out. It’s not something that’ll offer fun variety at every turn, but it’s still a great game for winding down nevertheless. I give Piczle Lines DX a 7 out of 10.