Pixel Puzzle Makeout League

Headache inducing visuals is an understatement. Warning: If you're sensitive to motion-heavy content or flashing lights, avoid this game. While the game seems epileptic safe (from the little I played) it's not suitable for people with visual sensitivities, visual impairment, or neurological conditions triggered by the above mentioned features. It makes heavy use of these features and the settings to deactivate them don't even apply to the entire game or main menu sequence. Pretty disappointed by the inaccessibility due to such an unimportant aesthetic feature. Gameplay: In terms of the little game play I got to experience; I skipped most the text as the MC seemed annoying, but I get impatient and irritable when I'm getting sensory overload from things like excessive screen shaking and word wiggling. So I was trying to get past the text to the game to give myself a break. The text went on for way too long with that in mind. Puzzles: They start off frustratingly easy then jump up really high with a timer which cuts off time if you make a mistake. No option to mark off negative spaces which can help you process. Numbers from finished rows/columns are supposed to be greyed out or something, but they're not at all. Everything is eyesore bright. So I wasted time counting the numbers every now and then to double check things while a timer was staring at me. Took the fun out of the puzzle as I like relaxing with these and seeing a picture come about, which is easier when you select two numbers, one for positive squares and one for negative squares. Please bare in mind, my neurological conditions make me more irritable, so it might be colouring my review a little bit. but seeing the game triggered that, I think it's still related to the experience so... I'm just gonna be honest. Motion-Heavy inaccessibility: I didn't realise this game would have excessive screen shaking, word wiggling, flashing going on. I found out 13 minutes in I could change this but not that all these settings were spread out, so took until 15 mintues to turn them all off (hopefully). By then my eyes are hurting so I try to close that game it goes fully black for like 15 seconds then plays suddenly loud music, with bright flashing moving squares. An impressive display to introduce the main menu page right after I tried to turn all that annoying inaccessible crap off. Verdict: I seems that the last 15 minutes of trying this game has triggered my neurological condition, so i'm having visual and balance issues just because they tried to be all quirky and energetic. I get the mood they were going for with high movement for action heroes, but.. maybe make the settings easier to apply, and known earlier. Based on the visual attack of a menu title, it's clear the settings aren't fully applied to the game regardless, making them not particularly useful. Suggestions: *Make sure accessibility trigger warnings are clear prior to buying or playing. *Make sure accessibility settings are easy to find, and well known from the outset. *Make sure accessibility settings are applied globally to the game. *Always consider the balance of accessibility vs aesthetics with the diversity of the gaming community in mind. These inaccessibilities might not just be annoying, for some of us this can make us pretty ill. For me, this is triggering vertigo, visual difficulty, and might trigger a migraine. My migraines also have symptoms such as stroke symptoms (aphasia, partial paralysis) and blindness. Now, if this complication happened I wouldn't come after you devs with medical bills or anything, but it's just worth considering if you know something can be a health trigger, carefully consider your priorities when applying these aesthetic changes. You could have automatically had those features off and allowed people to opt into 'dynamic visuals' or something, for example, and saved me a literal headache. [Please note, these reviews are for education for the benefit of dev improvement, and disabled gamers information. I explain the way games interact with my condition with this in mind, in hopes awareness will lead to better design, not to blame.]

I just wanted to solve some pictograms, what is this? Ending was cringy with that unskippable video, and what an insane story. Makes zero sense, seems devs just wanted to boost playtime with no gameplay. No higher difficulty puzzles as well, cursor was so annoying, misclicking all the time. Some of the story was fun but just too long, I skipped so much.

Of the 3 narrative pixel puzzle games in the bundle, this was my least favorite. It wasn't the worst thing in the world, but getting through the story was super slow, and there aren't stopping points during the story beats so you have to either skip the whole thing or sit through it all to be able to save and quit. The ending took absolutely forever to get through, and it didn't even have a satisfying conclusion. I liked where the story was going, but then it turned out to be a cop-out ending that didn't tie up the loose ends. What is this, LOST? Also, not really much of a dating sim, just some vague romances that you don't have much control over. And on top of it all the puzzles were really easy. It's a fine time waster game, but it's kind of a slog to get through.

One more puzzle, then a puzzle to unlock the puzzle. It lets you get to the puzzle that will unlock the real puzzle that will lead you through the true puzzle.

[h1]A surprisingly fun blend[/h1] PPML is a visual novel + picross puzzle game on pretty much equal parts. How does it fair as either? [b]The Puzzles[/b] ■ Puzzles are decent and the interface has a lot of the quality-of-life options one has come to expect in this type of games, including one I hadn't seen before where it auto-completes the negative squares once you've gotten all the correct blocks in a line. [b]X[/b] The pictures aren't extremely creative, but they're not bad. They're also never bigger than 15x15 and the game immediately lets you know when you've marked a wrong square. This might be a good thing for some, but a veteran nonogram player likely will find them a tad easy. [b]The VN[/b] ■ This is the part I thought I'd have the most trouble with as it's not a genre that usually appeals to me, and I ended up enjoying it a lot. There's some surprising complexity and heart underneath its goofy first impressions, with some nice twists along the way. It's also pretty funny and never gets boring. [b]X[/b] Some parts especially near the end are egregiously drawn out. Some scenes I had to quit halfway and finish the following day because they went on for entirely too long. The art is cute and serviceable, but not much more than that. [spoiler]The "real" villain was way cuter than his portrait.[/spoiler] [b]The Result[/b] An interesting mix of two seemingly unrelated genres that works surprisingly well, where both benefit from each other. I'm not a fan of VN games and I thought that would be an aspect I'd have to put up with to get to the puzzles, but I found it very pleasant and it gave the puzzling some meaning, even if it was all pretty goofy. The puzzles are not terribly challenging but there's a lot of them and there's never much wait between them. PPML far exceeded my expectations.

honestly not sure what expectations were held originally going into this, but they were absolutely surpassed omg what *[i]is[/i]* this game. go play it ya little freak. get in there, you'll love it!

This game was much, much more than I anticipated from the pitch. If you like nonograms, visual novels, and weird/meta plotlines, it's a must. It is SO weird, and I say that with deepest affection. I'm honestly sad this won't appeal to a wider audience because I enjoyed it so much that I could barely put it down. All of the characters are fun, even the ones that I wasn't initially drawn to. The puzzles are good(also eclectic -- there are some BAFFLING pictures in there) and the writing is solid. There are lots of options to customize your experience, though it can be a little tricky to figure out which submenu the thing you're looking for is in. I suggest turning down/off screen shake -- it's pretty intense at default levels.

The first time I've ever cried playing picr-erm, pixel puzzles. Nonograms? Whatever the name, I cried a little on stream. After stream, I bawled. It was great. The puzzles are fun without becoming annoyingly difficult, the story's wonderful, and the music's great. Anyone into picropixelpuzzanonagrams should absolutely play this.

For the first half to two-thirds of the game, my review would have been something like this: Pixel Puzzle Makeout League is a neat idea, mashing up a puzzle game with a dating visual novel. The picross puzzling is really solid, and I definitely recommend that aspect of it for fans of puzzle games. For folks who are big on dating VNs, you also might enjoy that aspect of it, however I'm not too big on the genre and this take on it didn't do much to sway me: the writing really wasn't to my taste, I found it just a little annoying in the ways it was trope-y and shallow. Then I got to the back end of the game, and started to pick up on a bit more that the writing was doing. If you, like me, find the writing at the start a little cloying, I recommend sticking it out anyway.

Very cute game. I really liked the ending, especially the video. Well worth playing.