Review #008: Piczle Lines DX (Nintendo Switch)
Updated: Oct 8, 2019
Reviewer: Allan
Developer: Score Studios
Publisher: Rainy Frog
Release Date: 8.24.2017
Download Piczle Lines DX from the Nintendo eShop here.
Overview
Piczle Lines DX is a puzzle game where you connect numbered dots together with lines to form pixel art pictures. Each pair of dots have a matching number that shows how many tiles the connecting line must cover to complete the line. Once all lines are completed, the board shows a hidden picture.
Controls
The controls are fairly basic. You use the A button to select the dot where you wish to start creating your line, and then use the directional buttons to control the path and direction of the lines. If you make a line that you want to change, you can grab the end of the line and reverse course until the line is gone, or you can double click on the line you want to delete it will disappear entirely. You can also opt to use the touch screen to simply draw the line you wish to create from point A to point B with your finger.
Audio & Visuals
The music is OK, but fairly repetitive. The puzzles do get progressively larger and more complex, but the overall difficulty remains pretty much the same as you progress through the chapters. The graphics during the puzzles are simple, but bright and smooth. During the cinematic manga cut scenes, the graphics are smooth and bright.
Story Mode
From what I can tell, Story Mode and Puzzle Mode seem to be almost the same, except story mode has a couple of manga-style cinematic shots at the beginning and end of each chapter. The story starts out with a professor and his friends accidentally dropping a container of pixel dust in his lab, turning all of the items in the lab into pixels. By solving the puzzles and forming the complete pictures, you systematically transform the items back into their original 3-D form. It’s a fairly thin story designed to give you a reason to solve the puzzles, which is fine. Most of the time, when I feel like playing a puzzle game, I’m not really in it for the captivating storyline anyway.
As you progress through each puzzle, you unlock the puzzles for Puzzle Mode play as well. At any time, you can go in to Puzzle Mode and replay some of your favorite puzzles if you choose. I found the gameplay to be a bit redundant, and the larger the puzzles got, the more tedious the puzzles became. Many of the puzzles take up a much larger space than what fits on the screen, which requires that you scroll past the screen edge to reveal the rest of the puzzle board.
This in and of itself is not so bad, but the problem I had was that when I was using the joy con controls, the scrolling took forever as I waited for the cursor to make it to the other side. If I was using the touchscreen controls, I would often struggle to find a free enough area on the board to grab and scroll the screen, usually landing on an unintended dot and creating a line inadvertently. I usually ended up resorting to the directional pad to scroll anyway, which kind of defeated the purpose of using the touchscreen.
Wrapping Up
Piczle Lines DX is not a horrible game, but it feels more like painting-by-number than puzzle-solving. I can attest to the fact that it has a definite time-passing ability, but mostly I just ended up getting bored with the game after about 20 minutes or so of playing and putting it down.
Again, if you have a few minutes of free time, and are not looking to get into anything of serious consequence, this game will definitely serve that purpose well. If you are looking for an epic and immortal puzzle gaming experience, this game is probably not for you. It doesn’t deserve a bad rating, but I was certainly not blown away by it either.
Final Score: 6/10
Download Piczle Lines DX from the Nintendo eShop here.
Follow Score Studios
Follow Rainy Frog