Fantasy Mosaics 14: Fourth Color

I've played Paint it Back, many of the World Mosaics, and other games along those lines. Yes, I'm sad that Fantasy Mosaics lacks achievements and cards but I've been in a counting mood and the game was on sale so.... thought I'd try it out. Boy am I glad I did. This game goes above and beyond the normal counting mosaics. Each picture uses 4 different colors and you can switch between them, which is lovely if you get stuck. So it's almost like playing 4 mosaics in 1. Though of course, if you've fleshed out a couple colors, the last 2 are much easier to complete. The game has the normal "left click fills in a space" and "right click places an X where you know a color won't go". However, unlike many games in this genre, when you've completed all the correct colors in a row, the rest of the squares are automatically filled with Xs. A great feature! Like other counting mosaics, there's really no story. But the music is nice, the graphics are beautiful, and the pictures themselves are creative. It's a shame I won't be adding to my achievements but the game is so enjoyable, I'm going to complete every single picture regardless. I definitely give this a thumbs-up.

Fantasy Mosacis 14 would be a fun picross game if the whole "make two mistakes" dynamic didn't exist. If you happen to make a mistake or two, the game resets your puzzle back to the beginning, before you did anything. This means that even if you got everything right up until near the end, you'd still have to restart from scratch. That's simply not acceptable. I could maybe understand restarting that particular color over, but the entire puzzle? No. It's really too bad, since the different color idea is a neat one and adds greatly to what is normally a black-and-white game. Unfortunately, having to restart from the beginning of the puzzle just for making a couple of mistakes is unforgivable, especially when a clearly superior picross game exists on Steam (it's called Paint It Back, and it has workshop support so you can create your own puzzles or play puzzles other people have made) that doesn't involve harsh penalties for making an error. At this time, I can't recommend Fantasy Mosaics 14 unless you're so starved for picross titles that you're willing to put up with the "start over" nonsense. Even then, I'd recommend waiting for a sale where you can get it at 75% off or more.

Allez, la seconde approche a été moins douloureuse. (oui j'ai commencé par le volet Fantasy Mosaics 15). L'expérience est la même et le sera probablement pour tous les chapitres de la collection. C'est assez vilain de prime abord, la musique est redondante mais pas foncièrement dérangeante. On se fait à la maniabilité un tantinet sensible. Et surtout, on apprécie toujours les 5 x 20 niveaux qui nous permettent de jouer avec les couleurs pour aller plus avant dans le puzzle. Presque 8h pour celui-ci, pourtant d'une difficulté équivalente je dirais. Mais ingurgiter près de 200 nonogrames en une semaine c'était peut-être un peu trop... (100 pour le Mosaics 15 et 100 pour le 14 si vous suivez ^^) Je maintiens qu'il ne faut pas payer ça plein tarif mais qu'il faut lui laisser sa chance en promo. Adopté en bundle promo, je n'ai pas de regret.

Fantasy Mosaics is a series of nonograms (also known as griddlers) games released for iOS and Android before being ported on PC and Mac. I know that because I've added the whole series on Neoseeker. That's why when I saw it on Greenlight, I voted yes, despite the fact that it's just puzzles after puzzles. It would be my first real time with that type of games and I must say that at first, I was bored and kinda wondering what I was doing. I knew the mechanics: you have a series of numbers indicating how many tiles are used for a drawing in the column or in the line. Sometimes, it's easy as the whole line or column is concerned but at other times, it's really a matter of making your brain work: if for example, three tiles are needed and known, you know that the tiles just next to the beginning and the end can't be used for the column or the rest of the line. I must say that I was surprised to find myself really deep into the game. True, the game is just simple: the plot isn't really developed as it's a penguin family travelling anywhere and the 14th game introducted apparently a fourth color to the game. I can't make a comparison of what's new, what's an evolution or what's a drawback. Heck, even the drawings aren't really interesting at the end. However, it's the challenge that makes Fantasy Mosaics 14 interesting. It also means that only those who loves a brain challenge will be interested. I've only played in casual mode, where numbers are crossed, as I'm not really into having an harder difficulty: some of the puzzles are already hard in themselves as you have to make choices without any indication or logic. Anyway, I'm really recommending the game, though you should wait for a discount (10 euros is a little high for me for that kind of games). I'm just waiting for the rest of the series, though it seems that only those after the number 14 are being released. It would be great to see the earlier work on Steam, just to enjoy the evolution (but they're also released on Big Fish Games).

I will recommend this game, because it is a cool concept and could be fun to make the pictures in a manner that reminds me of minesweeper. I actually only spent about 45 minutes playing this game, but i left it idling, so it shows more time, however, I dont think much more time would change my mind. I purchased the game too quickly. I have a very limited games budget each month, and this took up a big portion. I was so excited because I thought this was going to be like PAINT IT BACK. It has so vague similarities, however, this game is much easier, you "solve" for the 4 colors of the image, and since the image is built up by each individual color, the "puzzle" portion is not as difficult. I think that if you wanted to sit and play a relaxing puzzle type painting game, this may just be perfect.

An excellent Picross title. Not enough games do a multi-color variant and this one does it in a still-challenging fashion.

I'm definitely recomending "Fantasy Mosaics 14: Fourth Color (even at list price). The game suffers from no pretensions. To all intents and purposes, it's purely a set of 100 nonograms (20 sets of 5). The only addition is a picture that adds an element after every set completed. The nonograms are all do-able (which is good because there's no learning curve -- the difficulty is pretty much the same throughout). The addition of color is a nice touch, but it did cause me a bit of grief when the puzzles changed colors but I didn't (my fault, entirely). Also, you're allowed a certain number of mistakes during the puzzle. Make too many and the puzzle resets. This is different from some puzzles which will let you continue even though you've messed the whole thing up at some point. I can make a case of either method, so I'm mentioning it just for informational purposes. Pretty much the only complaint I've got with the game is that a significant subset of the puzzles don't have unique solutions. Quite a few of them will end up with four or six squares circling around each other. During your solving of the puzzle, you can unlock a couple of tools to fill in some squares and let you work through that. But, I'd prefer to use those when I can't solve a puzzle because of my deficiencies, not because of the puzzles' deficiencies. On the other hand, I never got stuck at any point other than with non-unique solutions. It took me 18.8 hours of fun gameplay to finish the game. So, even at the current list price of about $7, it's worth it. Of course, I bought it on sale for $0.99. So, I'm even happier

It's a nonogram with multiple colours, I kind of hate that it blocks out unused tiles rather than letting you figure it out, but it makes up a bit by having at least having 4 colours.

It is a decent nonograms game with a 100 levels to solve. I really really wish you could turn off the fact that if you make too many mistakes the whole puzzle resets.

I highly recommend this game. [b][u]Pros:[/u][/b] [list] [*] Colorful and interesting puzzles. [*] Solid user interface. Found out on about the third puzzle you can click and drag to fill in large sections of colors across multiple rows and columns. [*] Nice, soothing, unobtrusive music. [/list] [b][u]Cons:[/u][/b] [list] [*] Price seemed a bit steep at first for a puzzle game, but after having played this, I feel happy I supported the game. [*] Really, that's it. [/list] 8.5 / 10