Saturday Casual Gaming 209: Nonograms Katana

I play a lot of games that no one else I know would enjoy. That's kind of my thing. I don't have many friends who'd find the idea of a match-2 game where you make the world out of seeds & air to be an entertaining prospect. That's okay.

I may have found the one style of gameplay that 0% of my friends would enjoy: Nonograms.

Don't ask me why, but I absolutely love picking my way through the math-and-logic-based puzzles to create art. If you're a Pokemon fan, you might have played Pokemon Picross, which is basically the same as Nonograms Katana, which is today's game.

Yes, it's a game involving numbers & art. Sorry.

So how do you play this madhouse of a logic game?

Carefully. You play carefully.

You have a grid. You have numbers on the outside of the grid. In Black & White puzzles, the numbers are the amount of black squares uninterrupted by white ones. If you see 1, 1, 10, 5 then you have 1 black square followed by any number of white ones, another black one, more white, ten black, more white, five black. It's... a lot more intuitive in the actual game.

And eventually, after filling in your black squares, you end up with pictures!

I've gotten up to the 30x30 puzzles in black & white, and I'm only now beginning to have real issues solving the puzzles. Some are harder than others, too, with some 10x10 puzzles being somehow more difficult to figure out than some 30x30 puzzles! I'll be honest, if it weren't for the alternate fills for the squares, I'd be well boned by now.

Your two main fill styles are a solid block of black or an X to mark which sections of the puzzle are 100% not colored in. If you're unsure, there are other symbols you can use! In B&W puzzles, I stick with a simple dot. I like to fill in experimental squares with the dots and see how that goes. Sometimes, I've solved puzzles that way!

And then there are the color puzzles...

I'll be honest, I haven't gotten to the color puzzles yet, but if they're anything like other nonogram/picross puzzles I've played, they'll be both easier and harder than the simply b&w ones. I've had three-color puzzles that have blown my mind and 15-color puzzles that were easy as pie. And you never know which you have until you start working with the numbers!

Personally, I love these games. I like to make a picture while trying to think my way around the numbers. It makes me feel far smarter than I am, and that's always a nice feeling!

If you're looking for a fun challenge, then I can suggest picking up a nonogram or picross game! It's kinda like if sudoku and paint-by-number had a baby... a weird cyberbaby...

That'll do it for me today!

Go Enjoy Something!!!
FC