Pixel Puzzle Makeout League

Pretty peak, definitely my favorite nonogram game. Not gonna spoil any details but the ending is WILD.

Absolutely incredible game. i loved the story, the puzzles and the characters so much. Especially Crossword had me swooning. I know it unlikely but i wish they would make a second game where you get to romance everybody in the new world and see how their lives would be outside of the puzzle league or rather more seperately from it. 10/10 easily one of my favorite games.

The puzzles aren't terribly challenging for a nonogram expert and the story gets a little weird at the end, but this is still a very solid game. Well worth the money!

Did I enjoy this game? Yes, it's well-designed and the nonograms are fun. Do I think it's "good art"? Well, not really. In terms of the positives, like I said, the nonograms are good. They're pretty forgiving, unless you don't like the timer, but there are various customization options to set them up how you like. There are A TON of puzzles, including a bunch of bonus ones, so the game delivers well in that sense. Overall, the game is polished and has high production value, and the 2D art is nice (not the 3D abominations). As for the negatives... well, the story is pretty cringe. The writing is the most millennial thing I've ever seen, and I definitely mean that in a bad way. Nothing really makes much sense, a lot is left unexplained, and the ending never ends. I mean, two separate times it psychs you out with what looks like an ending, except there's actually like 15-30 minutes more story left. The second time, it tacks on a 15-minute live-action video at the end, and while the video is well-made, [i]it shouldn't be there[/i]. Basically, this story is trying to be a million things at once, which doesn't work, and [spoiler]it turns into psychological horror at the end. Doki Doki Literature Club pulled that off by making the "off" vibes apparent early on. PPML doesn't, and that's why it feels cheap and inappropriate[/spoiler]. Regarding the art, I have no idea why people who clearly have a good sense of design threw hideous 3D models into the mix. Congrats on downloading Blender, I guess, but save it for your Intro to 3D Modeling class. The real-life objects also mess up the art coherency, and I suppose there's vaguely a "plot reason" for it, but that aspect is never explained and doesn't really make sense anyway ([spoiler]what's the villain doing, throwing soccer balls at his nonograms?[/spoiler]). And the text effects... whoever designed the effect for crashes/shock has clearly never heard of legibility. I mean, you can read them, but good god is it annoying. So, do I recommend the game? Yeah, the puzzles, which are the heart of the game, are good, and overall the game itself is well-made. It's just not going to win a Nobel Literature prize or anything.

There's a lot of other reviews that reveal waaaaay too much about the story. I need you to go into this game the same way I did: thinking it's just gonna be a cute little dating sim where you get to solve puzzles too! The amount of times I said "what the ♥♥♥♥?" while playing this is....well it's a lot. Very enjoyable 10/10 would play again.

I don't really play a lot of visual novels. I got this solely because of the Picross element, thinking this was just going to be another silly little 'date all of your friends, do all the storylines' thing. The story ends up being waaay more interesting than you'd expect. You can play this with a mouse or a controller and there's an option to block all the screen flashes and stuff for people struggling with epilepsy and the like. Some people might not like the fact that you don't get any hints for your pixel puzzles until your timer runs out and you 'Game Over'. You can immediately restart the puzzle and get the option to have one row and one column randomly filled. There was only a few times I really ever needed those hints, but I've also been playing Picross for a while.

Honestly, this is the first game I ever played after discovering pixel puzzles. It is really good into pushing beginners and teaching you the strategies slowly before throwing you into the deep end with harder puzzles. It also has several options to ease up the puzzles if you need to. Foe example, starting with two rows already filled in, not allowing you to make mistakes, turning off the timer, etc. I personally used the one which highlights which rows can be added to with the information that you have. It's a nice way of helping without being too obvious. Any of these can be turned on or off at whim during the whole game, and as far as I know, do not affect any of the achievements. Now onto the story. Judging by the title I did not expect much going into this story. The art is simple, but seems to fit the story in a nice way. Going into this, I saw that the author asked players to vote for this game as the best story driven game. This seemed off to me at first. When you begin the game, it has a basic story line and typical characters. I expected the obvious. The heroes save the day and defeat the villain. To my surprise, the game quickly developed into something more, even going as far as breaking the forth wall multiple times. I'm not afraid to admit that I actually cried in some moments. The relationships were also deceiving at first. All of the characters seemed already infatuated with you, including the walking puzzle piece. (This is not a joke, you can romance a jigsaw piece.) Over the course of the game though, they developed. I found myself actually liking the characters and rooting for them. It was difficult to pick who I liked best. Each had their quirks and negatives. I can now see why the author wanted the votes. The story is really something in this. It may not suit everyone as sometimes there is a lot of dialogue between puzzles, but if you want both then this is the game for you. If like me, you are looking for a game that you can complete to 100%, then this is also a good choice. You only need to replay the ending once to get all of them. It is also separated into sections, so if you want to replay a scene you like, it is very easy to do. I really recommend this game.

I think this is the first game I've ever actually left a review for- felt the *need* to leave a review for. Going by the store icon with a superhero girl and an anime puzzle piece, I came into this game expecting a dumb (affectionate) dating sim with some relaxing puzzling along the way. What I got was a legitimately fascinating mystery and some serious drama, twists, and heartrending emotion along the way. I bought this game while it was on sale and now I feel bad that I didn't buy it at full price because the developers deserve every penny for the writing alone.

These puzzles are more than the sum of their pixels lol

This dumb game about dating an alien puzzle piece while cosplaying as a superhero turned into Spec Ops: The Line and I recommend it