Picross DS

I find it very sad that I don't know anyone that plays Picross DS. I am not surprised either. I only have about, say, 4 friends that own a DS, plus maybe a handful of online acquaintances. The other reason I am not surprised is the cover art for the game. Look at it. Gosh it looks boring! I had read a lot about the game and it got excellent reviews from pretty much every source I know, still when I stepped into the store and held the box in my hands, I hesitated!

I guess what I’m trying to say, if you own a DS, run and buy Picross DS! NOW! You can finish reading this when you’re back. It should be under $20 nowadays, brand new! (The game doesn't have a feature to reset the memory so do NOT buy it used, also, it only saves data for 1 user, so buy an extra one for your significant other.)

OK now that you have the game, let me tell you a little more about it. The game is incredibly addicting. It has an obscenely good learning curve, and the difficulty increases oh so slightly as you play. You’re given a grid with numeric clues leading to some random pixilated work of art. The music is quite groovy, there are a couple to choose from, and when puzzles get too long you can just turn it off when you get tired of the looping.

There’s also “daily picross”; where you get to test your picrossing skillz once a day. The system gives you a grade and keeps track of your progress. There is a puzzle creation mode where you make your own crazy drawings/grids to share with your friends. Speaking of which…

There are tons of neat wireless features (for playing with a friend nearby) without the need of having your friends buy the game. You can play about four party games, like a hangman-esque guess the word game, a Pictionary-esque one and you can also race to finish a random puzzle.

Using the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection you can challenge anyone for a duel, race to solve two puzzles. There are probably more game modes for when you’ve got friends online. Finally you can upload your home-made puzzles for friends to download and likewise you may download puzzles from friends or from Nintendo.

Now turn on your DS, hook it up to a Wi-Fi and add me to your friends list. My friend code is: 197688 952441. I’ve spent hours creating some neat puzzles you might enjoy. Post your friend code as a comment in this post and I’ll look you up. Oh, and thanks for getting Picross DS. You’ll love it.

EDIT: I just found out the came CAN be reset, it's on the instruction booklet. I'm a moron.