Might as well face it I’m addicted to Picross

I’m not sure exactly when it was that I first heard of Picross DS.  Sure, it’s been out for awhile, but I don’t think I was really paying close attention to it’s release.  So perhaps it was in one of N’gai Croal and Stephen Totilo’s exchanges.   Or perhaps I was just looking into well-reviewed DS games and saw this strange entry in the higher ranks of IGN.  Whatever it was, I became curious about it, but I just wasn’t convinced of its greatness.  Certainly, the screenshots look pretty bland, and the concept seems just silly and boring.  I figured it was just another “casual” game that would bore me to tears after just a puzzle or two at a time, like Sudoku sometimes does now.

So, while I was curious about it, I never picked it up.  I looked at it on Amazon, and occasionally I would see a new copy floating around Gamestop, but I just never pulled the trigger.  I figured that I could just wait until it’s at $10 on clearance, or on sale used somewhere or whatever and that I could pick it up on the cheap (yes, even cheaper than it’s already low $20 price point).  But, a funny thing happened: I stopped seeing the game altogether.  Amazon stopped selling it direct from their store (it now sells from Target through Amazon), new copies were nowhere to be seen at my Gamestops, and I never saw a single used copy.  That has to be a good sign, right?  If there are no used copies to buy, that means people are keeping their copies of the game, meaning they must like it, right?  Obviously, I could’ve used Ebay, but used copies would often sell for nearly the same price as new ones, and despite my curiosity, my uncertainty in the game made the commitment to buying something on Ebay too much of a hassle.

So, on a random whim while on a trip to a Target in a city I only visit on occasion, I checked their “bargain” titles game rack only to find a single, brand new copy of Picross DS right there in front of me.  Hoping that, because it was on a bargain rack, perhaps I had finally found my deal/steal that I was looking for, I snapped it up.  Of course, it was the standard $20, but that didn’t stop me at that point.  It had been so long since I had seen a copy of the game, I figured it was probably time for me to give it a shot.

And now, I’m hopelessly addicted.  I have no idea why I find the game so damn engaging, but I do.  There are elements to it like Sudoku, which as I mentioned, I like, but find can get frustrating and tiresome.  With Picross I’ve found myself losing hours at a time doing puzzle after puzzle.  It even has some “Brain Training”-esque features that test you in different ways on a daily basis. I haven’t even tried out the Wi-Fi capabilities yet (which, I think, allows me to download new puzzles).  All in all, it’s an extremely solid package.

Unfortunately, like Sudoku, my enjoyment of the game, at least in extended sessions, will probably decrease over time.  But for now, I’m quite content to let my addiction go untreated.