PictoPull Review Mini – Review Mini

An indie dev made a Pushmo game and it’s out on Switch now. If you miss Pushmo, you should check it out.

That’s basically all you need to know, but if you want some more details, let’s start where it all began: the 3DS eShop. You see, back in those days of yore, Nintendo and Intelligent Systems made a brilliant downloadable puzzle game called Pushmo. They followed it up with two sequels on 3DS in Crashmo and Stretchmo as well as a Wii U game called Pushmo World. Those games were all soundly great, but as of early 2023, none of them are available to buy. Like clockwork, developer Screen Smith Studios released PictoPull on PC following the Wii U and 3DS eShop closures. Several months later, it’s now coming to Nintendo Switch. This is the RC Cola of Pushmo, but it’s more fulfilling than the average off-brand soda.

150 puzzles split across a number of worlds are playable here and while I had some early doubts with the puzzle design, they follow an enjoyable difficulty curve that throws in enough twists to keep it enjoyable. While it doesn’t have the polish of Pushmo, it feels close enough to scratch the itch that Nintendo removed from the public world. I fought with the platforming a little too much, especially when trying to pull off diagonal jumps, but thankfully you can easily rewind a puzzle if you flub a jump and fall all the way back down.

The later puzzles get very complex in a way that reminded me of some of the complicated excess of the original Pushmo. Even with the ability to glance at the full puzzle at the press of a button, it’s still easy to get lost in a giant mural. The Steam version offers a level editor that isn’t found in the Switch version. That’s disappointing, but for the price of this game, it’s not a major loss.

PictoPull isn’t quite as good as its inspiration, but it does the job. It was nice to play this style of puzzle again. PictoPull will do as we wait for Pushmo to have its Crashmo 99 renaissance.