CiniCross

Lackluster

stressy nonograms.

ドパガキ向けピクロス ヴァンパイアを解放して生存していたらメチャクチャになった やりたかったピクロスと違うけどまあヨシ！

Fun variation on one my favorite types of games

I really fw the idea of a picross roguelike, but this isn't executed super well. the difficultly especially on the higher settings would kind of look like a exponential decay if you threw it on a graph. It starts off kind of interesting, having to manage the economics but after round 5ish on a good run it rly plateaus and kind of seems like doing the puzzles isnt even the fastest way to beat the levles w all the items that trigger when you ♥♥♥♥ up. If they did something like making the shops cost more or adding a gimmick that wassn't just making the board bigger to the longer stages (and also took out the bosses that put up an invincible shield you have to wait for them to lower every couple seconds) this could be a great. ts bang if i playing it on the 3ds a decade ago and you could use the toggle controls w/ the circlepad and stylus. I also think you can play this for free on itchio if u a frugal miser

I knew there had to be a monogram roguelike somewhere on steam. It's pretty fun although the time element makes it difficult to really enjoy the puzzling aspect. you really just had to get lucky with items and spam large number blocks and hope for a good combo to clear the board. I also recommend demon crawl if anyone is interested in a minesweeper roguelike.

my two niches combined

This game's all about the timer, which is both the source of its novel fun early on and its biggest balancing issues later. Solving nonograms as fast and clean as possible to get better rewards for your run is pretty exciting to do, legacy knowledge to recognise which clues and their layouts guarantee certain patterns is aptly rewarded in this case. However, as you defeat each boss in a run, the rate at which your time runs out increases, scaling harder in higher difficulties as you'd expect. This timer scaling is the main issue the game has. The time you get from completing nonograms is *not* increased alongside this scaling, it is a purely negative influence on your run. After 2 bosses, your timer will often be over 2x regular speed which is simply not sustainable in any way, especially if you run into larger puzzles like 15x10s or larger (particularly on bosses, which have random assortments of boards you can't see ahead of time). The way to combat this is that, on floor 2 and onwards, there will always be a shop with fixed items that can reduce your time scaling, up to -1.0x on the most expensive item. You're effectively forced into saving several hundred for one of these anti-scaling items, the aforementioned -1.0x item costs 700. Keep in mind that this is in a game with an item system that often has you rolling for 1-2 items after each puzzle, each new roll doubling in cost, and each item that's decent-to-good costing 30-40. Other items that cost roughly 20 have effects like "5% to clear corners of any puzzle on starting". That's how weak most effects are, which wouldn't really be a problem... if you weren't reducing your chances to counter THE most difficult part of the game, which effectively becomes a run-ender if you don't have a great HP sacrifice item line-up. Of course, this isn't mentioning that items have a chance to be free which does help a good bit, but that's just not something you can really bank on. The timer just takes such a high priority in the economy that it disincentivizes engaging with the actual roguelite items, and if you deal with it well enough, it simply stops being an obstacle at all by being at or just above 0x speed: time-stop. Being at time-stop effectively removes all challenge because, well, the game is designed around being 'nonograms with timers'. Remove the timer and it snowballs into 'nonograms with a mountain of items that autosolves everything and makes you unbeatable'. TL;DR, the timer— the core difficulty— fluctuates between 'draining time much faster than you can reasonably solve puzzles and gain time' and 'non-existent'.