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Friday 8 February, 2008
Game Log # 3 (Picross DS) - Part Two
Game Play:
The second time around I played multiplayer and tried out some of the other play modes Picross had to offer. Right off the bat I liked the multiplayer because you only need one game card to play most of the games. There were tree games that you could play with one card. All the games were a picross twist on old games. One was like pictionary, one was like hang man and one I don’t remember so it probably was not as fun. In the pictionary game one person would draw a picture and it would be translated into a picross puzzle – the other person had had to solve the picross puzzle up until they could guess what the picture was. You would think this game would be more of a turn based thing and that the person who drew the picture would have nothing to do while the other person solved it, but this was not the case. In some ways it was more fun to be the drawer because first you got to draw a picture and then you got to see how the other person was doing on the puzzle and you had the option of drawing on their screen. You had a lot of freedom to draw whatever you wanted and you could choose different colors. You could be nice and give the person hints and write them notes or you could be a jerk and draw stuff on the screen so that they couldn’t see the puzzles. One of my favorite things to do was to shade in the grid boxes or fill them with Xs, sometimes I used this to tell the people were to fill, but mostly I used it just to confuse them.
The Hangman game had much of the same mechanic except for that each letter of the word had its own little puzzle and once you got enough letters done you could solve it. Solving the puzzles could also be fun because in order to solve it you had to write down what you though the answer was and the other person could accept or reject the answer. It was fun to reject all but the most specific answer, unless you were on the receiving end of the rejection.
I also played the create a Picross mode which could be played in two ways. One way was just to make a picross puzzle that looked like something and the other way was to draw a picture which the game would then translate into a picross puzzle. The classic way was kind of hard because if you didn’t make a puzzle that was solvable, then the game would make it solvable and that would screw up the picture. The other way was easier and you could use color in drawing your picture but the puzzle translation usually didn’t look like the picture. It was kind of different from the regular game because the picture you drew is not really inherent in the puzzle, but you still get to see the original picture as a reward for solving the puzzle. Ultimately it was more fun just to use the second method because even thought the puzzle didn’t look right you had more freedom to draw whatever you wanted and didn’t have to worry about weather or not the picture made a solvable puzzle.
Design:
Picross has a very nice design which has both emergent and progressive aspects. When doing the game guide test you would immediately think this game was emergent because the key to solving the puzzles is having a strategy in which solve them. In addition there are a small amount of rules and many possible puzzles to create. However this game also has strong progressive aspects because the puzzles are specifically designed to have only one final solution. Potentially you could have a game guide for this game that just showed you the final answers to the puzzles and that would be similar to a walk through. Of course that would put all the fun out of the game, but it shows that this game is much more progressive than it first appears. This game does a good job of blending emergent and progressive aspects because you have to rely on strategy and you could make an almost unlimited amount of puzzles, but the designers of the puzzle still have a lot of control over how difficult a puzzle is or what the puzzle ends up looking like.
One of the games strongest assets is its amount of replay value. For one the game has a lot of built in puzzles but beyond that you can download a seemingly endless amount from the internet (for free). In addition you can make your own picross puzzles and if you want you can share them with others. The one draw back is that you can’t save many puzzles, but since they don’t take very long to create, most people wont be too attached to the puzzles or have qualms about deleting them. There are even a few action based mini games to keep you busy. They aren’t so amazing and it seems like the designers just wanted to add some light action and additional rewards for solving puzzles, but they still add more value to the game. And of course the multiplayer modes open up the tremendously amount of gameplay.
Picross does not impress much on an aesthetic level but that could be a good thing. Sure the graphics won’t blow anyone away but the important thing is that the screens are simple and clear rather than cluttered with distractions and hard to read. If you wish you can change the background patterns for the puzzles, but in my opinion that just makes the screens harder to read and it’s often preferable to stick with the default patterns. The music takes the same simple approach as the graphics. There are only 3 songs to listen to (4 if you count turning the music off), but just like graphics, complicated music would not necessarily add to the game. The music in the game is very mellow and simple which is good because when trying to solve a puzzle you don’t want to get swept away by the music: In a way you almost want to be able to zone out the music or take it in without recognition so that you are not distracted. However, it is also important that the designers included more than one music track because even if you are not really paying attention to it, a single song playing over and over can slowly suck your soul away (are just annoy the crap out of you). The game also has satisfying sounds and animations for filling in the grid. Overall the games aesthetics are simple but effective.
The game also makes good us of the DS’s features and ends up with a satisfying control scheme. For example, it is nice just to be able to fill out the puzzle using the touch screen. It is nice to be able to tap the square you want to fill and to drag the stylus if you want to fill in more than one in a row. The only draw backs were that it wasn’t very hard to accidentally click in the wrong box and if you wanted to switch to a different tool like the magnifying glass you had to tap it’s icon on the side of the screen. It would have been nice if you could cycle through them with the shoulder buttons (I actually just found out that you can use the d pad to change the tool, but you have to hold it down during the tools entire use). Even with a few slight fall backs the touch controls were very effective, especially compared to some of the online versions of this game. In addition the designers made good use of the upper screen by using it to show you the whole puzzle. This is very effective in the bigger puzzle in which the touch screen is usually focused on only one section of the overall puzzle.
In addition to features unique to the DS this game also had some general features that were very beneficial to the gameplay. For one, the Xs were very effective for marking empty spaces or just for trying things without the risk of getting a penalty. Also the fact that numbers gray out when they are filled in is very useful because it reminds you of which sequences you have filled in and which ones you haven’t. Another aspect I like is that even though you are supposed to use the numbers and logic to solve the puzzles, you could potentially solve some of the puzzle just by looking at symmetry and figuring out what the rest of the picture should look like (this is sort of an artistic logic).
Finally, the game does a good job of accommodating players of different difficulties. For one the game explains the rules very clearly and gives you some simple puzzles to ease you into the game and teach you some basic strategies. However if you are experience you can skip the instructions and go straight to the harder puzzles without any delay. In general the game just does a good job in upping the difficulty every few puzzles, which creates a nice challenge and learning experience. On top of this if the puzzle are getting too hard you can choose to get hints and if you fill in the wrong box the game will tell you, which is like an additional hint. Eventually you can get too many wrong but the game gives you a generous safety net. In this way you don’t really have to worry about losing, just about competing against the clock.
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