Game Thoughts - Picma: Picture Enigmas by Moonberry Arcade

Note: This is a repost from our Tumblr.

At one point, we got an urge to play a puzzle game on stream, but what it would be was something else altogether. We were thinking of playing one of the picross/nonogram games we have on our phone, but figured we might not find a category for it, so we looked for another game on Steam instead.

Lo and behold, we found this game. - Kochi

What’s It About?

As you might have guessed, it’s a picross/nonogram game, like what we intended to play. But unlike most other ones we’ve played, this is a combination of that and other picture-based games.

That’s pretty much it.

Art

The game itself has a pretty comfy aesthetic overall, which helps with the whole chill thing.

The free designs are pretty decent. They look nice, even the smaller ones, and what you solve is what you get. None of that somewhat random pixel pattern that gets “revealed” into an image that you didn’t really expect like you would get from some other picross games...

We didn’t get to play the player-made paid designs on stream (you can get currency for free, thankfully), but I would have to warn people that some of them that we’ve seen are based on copyrighted stuff. Just a heads-up for those who would want to stream the game.

Music

There’s only one track (or is it two?) that plays for the whole game at the time we played it (but the devs had said that they were going to add more), so you might get a bit tired of it as you play the game. I would suggest that you mute it and play your own music if that happens.

Otherwise… It’s pretty chill, and you won’t really mind it too much once you get absorbed in the game.

Gameplay

This is pretty much the meat and potatoes of the whole game. Aside from the usual picross/nonogram, which we might make a post about at some point, there are other play modes as well. Each of them have their own tutorials, and there are a few tips you can access in-game, so you don’t have to worry about how to play them.

However, I do kind of find the free designs for the different play modes repetitive. So basically, you’re doing mostly the same designs in different modes. Also, at the time when we played, the tutorials were unplayable due to a bug. The devs did say that they have fixed it already.

I also kind of find panning a bit clunky... or did I just not use a hotkey for it?

Overall

There’s quite a lot of game compared to how much it costs (which is free) and it’s nice that you can make your own designs that you can share with other people. It’s certainly not perfect, however, and there are a few notable things that could still be improved. Then again, this is still in Early Access, hence it still being a bit rough.

Also gotta note that the devs are really nice and thanked us for streaming it. I think they also watched it at the time we played, cause we got to know about the bug through them. And we found that they're very responsive, too.

You can get it on Steam. (Also just found out it was a flash game before!)