CROSSNIQ+

What is this game? Well it's a puzzle game with a y2k aesthetic. That's the review! Naw there's more to it than that. Lemme break down just why this game is really simple yet great. For starters the UI. You never see any kind of user interface like this these days. It's very sleek and active. It's refined enough that just going through menus feels engaging and fun. The music? Oh man, a fantastic soundtrack here. Very reminiscent of 90's d'n'b music. I'll put it this way, if there's ever a soundtrack to this I'd buy it. So onto the game itself. In essence it's a fairly simple concept. You have varying size grids that you must slide columns and rows of in order to create a full cross of a single color. There's various special blocks that will spawn in the grid too that will either impede you or help you score extra points. Very basic but very very engaging especially in endless as you do everything you can to keep that timer up There's also various modes such as time attack, a relaxation mode, and even a versus mode! Plus the character designs are really cute! So to surmise, if you like puzzle games such as tetris, puyo puyo, or really any puzzle game that needs quick reflexes and quick thinking you'll probably find a lot to love about this game

to be honest i'm awful at this game but like whatever it's fun!!!!!!! also i really like the aesthetic and soundtrack UPDATE: after 2 hours of gameplay i am considerably less awful at CROSSNIQ+. i'm still in love with the OST and aesthetic. Please play this it's so good

tl;dr A fun, stylish puzzle game with a nice twist on the usual "match-N" formula. CROSSNIQ+ is a Y2K-styled puzzle game that looks like someone took a Dreamcast game and flung it 20 years into the future, with an interface and soundtrack that feels reminiscent of games like Wipeout or ChuChu Rocket. Like many puzzle game the goal is to match certain colors into certain patterns, but rather than matching 3 or so of the same color you instead slide rows and columns to form crosses that stretch across the playing field. It's a bit hard to explain in text, but it feels very intuitive once you get used to it. It has all the modes you'd expect from a puzzle game like endless mode, a time-attack mode, versus play as well as a "chillout" mode where you can just play without any timer or obstacles. You can choose how big the grid is, what each of the colors in the game are, as well as music and other customizables. That said, if you're expecting some sort of big progression-based game you will be disappointed. There's no story mode, no extra modes to unlock, you can buy additional music and backgrounds (with in-game currency of course, no MTX) but that's about it. What you see is what you get. On the technical side of things it's a bit underwhelming as well, the only graphical settings are a small amount of resolutions and some accessibility options for the backgrounds; this ain't no Serious Sam game. It also didn't want to recognize my controller (one of the new USB Sega Saturn controllers) regardless of using DInput or XInput. The game also suffers from long load times; even on an SSD, this game looks like a Dreamcast game and loads like one. Overall though, if you're looking for a fun, score-attack puzzle game with stylish aesthetics, and at $7.99 to boot, it's hard to go wrong here.

The Y2K aesthetic will come back in vogue eventually, but until some corporation figures out that translucent plastic is still cool we have CROSSNIQ+ to tide us over. CROSSNIQ+'s concept is brilliantly simple: line up tiles of the same color in a row and column to score. Where the game really stands out is how that concept is played with—from multiple crosses to a "chillout" mode that puts almost nothing between you and the game board. If you love puzzle games and/or early-2000s aesthetics then definitely pick this game up.

[i]A note before the review: My experience with the game is primarily based on the Nintendo Switch version, which, while the core gameplay is the same between it and the PC version, it does contain a small amount of differences - e.g. touch controls. Right now as I'm writing this, I have 25 hours in the Switch version, compared to Steam where I only recently got the game, and as such only have about half an hour clocked.[/i] CROSSNIQ+ is the definition of a hidden gem. It's an addictive, unique, and incredibly fun puzzle game. It's a game with an incredible amount of love, effort, and polish poured into every last bit of it. It's a tribute to the y2k era in every way, from its design, to its writing, and not to mention the soundtrack. It's my favourite game released in 2019. CROSSNIQ+ is an arcade-y puzzle game taking strong inspiration from the y2k era, and things of that time, such as the Dreamcast. The main gameplay loop consists of you shuffling a puzzle board to make crosses - intersections of a horizontal and vertical line of the same colour. The game features four equally fun, equally fantastic gamemodes; Endless, an endless survival mode where you make crosses for as long as you can, while avoiding running out the timer. Time Attack, a timed mode where you get the highest score you can in either one, three, or five minutes. Chillout, a relaxed mode with no threats, stress, or timers. Make crosses for as long as you want. Versus, a puzzle-fighter mode that pits you and another player in a tug-of-war-ish battle as you make crosses and utilize powerups to try and run your opponent's timer out. [i](A note: Versus is local multiplayer only, as online multiplayer was a Kickstarter stretch goal that didn't gain the budget required for it. However, you can still play it online using Steam Remote Play.)[/i] One thing I want to note in particular is the game's soundtrack, as it's one of my all-time favourite game soundtracks for sure. Composed by artists ViRiX Dreamcore and DV-i, the game's soundtrack consists of 12 tracks, with a handful returning from the original browser-based CROSSNIQ. Every track in it is fantastic, energetic, and just a blast to listen to. The OST hasn't left my listening rotation ever since I bought it! I'm not great with words, so I'll sum up my review here. I highly, highly recommend picking up CROSSNIQ+. If you're a fan of arcade-y puzzle games (e.g. Tetris or Puyo Puyo), you'll find something to love in this. If you're a fan of the y2k aesthetic, you'll adore every bit of the design in this game. If you're a fan of good music, the soundtrack is full of bangers. Did I mention the lovable, well-written characters? Get this game if you're craving a solid, fun, addictive new puzzle game. I cannot recommend it enough. And if you're not, get it anyway. It's cheap, and is well worth the price.

Y2K is a good aesthetic.

Full review: https://thegamehoard.com/2025/05/08/picking-up-steam-crossniq-pc/ The look and sound of CROSSNIQ+ is committed to fully and is so stylish you can find yourself easily swept up in the aesthetic. It suits the color matching play well enough, but it also feels like the coat of paint is doing more for the game than the substance of the cross making action. The timer doesn’t add the kind of pressure that leads to exciting battles for high scores, things more dependent on the negative pieces eventually becoming a bit too much to handle at a point that often sneaks up on you. It works well enough up until that sometimes surprise ending, and while Versus can add some intensity despite the barriers to play it, the modes don’t offer too much else of depth to make this the kind of puzzle game you can get stuck into for hours.

This review won't be so much about the game itself as much as dumb rambling about its aesthetic, because the game itself is simple and effective enough to understand from reading "About This Game" and is more than effectively engaging like the best puzzle games are. I still hope what I'm going to pass along will be interesting enough, because while this game only portrays a sampling of what the "Y2K" aesthetic was really like, it would be nice to see far more of it, especially after the tiresome more than decade-long glut of narrow rose-tinted 80s aesthetics (and I can get nitpicky about how accurate and common those 80s aesthetics actually were overall, but that would be more appropriate when discussing another game with them). While I say the "Y2K" aesthetic sampling here was a small part of numerous trends from around the time, which was actually burgeoning mostly before the new millennium in early 90s in underground electronic music and rave scenes, this game does accurately portray the specific tone it's going for. It seems mostly inspired by Dreamcast era gaming from around 1999 and 2000 and in particular what has long been dubbed "retrofuturism" which showcases futuristic vibes and ideas from an earlier era, "The future as seen from the past." Even then, this particular artistic movement at the time was still more appropriately dubbed "neo-futurism" because the 90s in general, but especially around Y2K, was seeped in an increasing sense of hope for the future, hence the interest in it. Despite any remaining problems in the world (and don't kids yourselves, there were still plenty of problems even then), people were optimistic about the times coming after the start of the new millennium, almost as if it felt like a new beginning, a dawning of a golden age for humanity. And then 9/11 happened and virtually killed all of that overnight. Well, in-process stragglers were still coming here and there a year or so afterward, but the trend was essentially as good as dead even if it was still around at all (and thus isn't really a 2000s aesthetic, really don't like that it's at all mistaken as such since it barely survived into it). Since that time, a general sense of despair has hit much of the world, with not much having arrived to stem that tide despite some progress. Also, much of the fashion and media at the time was so ridiculously colorless it made the already dreary times seem even more dreary than they needed to be. This has partially led to a more widespread sense of nostalgia in younger people not so optimistic about the future - not that the 80s and 90s didn't have any nostalgia, it mostly stemmed from the 50s and 60s respectively - with particularly the 80s nostalgia, with it's ball rolling since the mid-2000s, somehow far outlasting its actual time period in some part due to this. It's almost as if the 90s is trying to butt in and have its time like some kid waiting for a ride whining, "Hey, it's my turn," with the fat, greedy 80s kid stubbornly hogging all of the room available (fitting considering greed was a trope of the 80s, after all). It's also telling that much of what widespread nostalgia of the 90s there is currently generally features the earliest years which tended to blend in with late 80s aesthetics, as if the fat, greedy 80s kid was like, "Well, okay, maybe you can get on the backside, but I'm still king here, okay?" But the thing is, anyone who has actually looked into the 80s as a whole tends to realize the time period wasn't as great as people tend to remember. If anything, in hindsight, the time period kinda sucked, but it was also kinda colorful (though not quite as much as people remember) and kids growing up then had a blast, as kids tend to. Same with the 90s as well, but here's the thing: like with the 80s, much of what people remember about the 90s wasn't really the 90s. I'd argue if you want to know more of what the 90s was really like, it's actually more stuff like this game, Crossniq+, that represents it better, what with it pulling from an artistic movement that actually represented attitudes at the time even if that was unintentional. But at least that would be fitting, being nostalgic about a time period when people were actually optimistic about the future, in a future where optimism is dying if not dead. There are plenty of other tropes of the 90s that can be emulated, such as the anti-authority "counterculture" and hardcore grunginess, but either way this is definitely a breath of fresh air peeking out from underneath the fat, greedy 80s kid on the ride. Hopefully we can get more of this so that kid can finally be toppled from the ride and the 90s can actually have a proper turn on the damn thing. also yeah this game is good and stuff, go buy

my favorite indie puzzle game ever!! i love the art direction and the banger soundtrack. <3

a truly fantastic little arcade puzzler from a dev that has a lot of promise. this game is packed with personality and nostalgia for the dreamcast era of video games. a bite size nugget of fun that you will definitely want in your library.