Picross -LogiartGrimoire- Review – Review

Game developer Jupiter has been putting out consistently good Picross games for ages across the 3DS and Switch. We’re talking about thousands of Picross puzzles from Jupiter available just on Switch, split between more than a dozen releases. Along the way, they’ve made a few experiments with the style, whether it was the anime tie-in Picross: Lord of the Nazarick or the fast-paced Picross X. Those didn’t really click with me in the same way the Picross S series does, but now, with their latest release Picross Logiart Grimoire, I believe Jupiter has found an exciting new aesthetic and presentation for Picross games.

Logiart Grimoire, which debuted on Steam in Early Access in 2023 (and was fueled by a Kickstarter campaign), takes the rock solid foundation of Jupiter’s other games and adds a novel new look and a pleasant change-of-pace puzzling way to unlock new nonograms. You play as Emil, a magician who is trying to restore the titular grimoire. Naturally you do that by solving boatloads of nonogram puzzles.

While like their recent games, you can skip basic tutorials, the structure here does not let you just skip to the high-level 20×20 puzzles right away. You have to follow the progression, knock out some easy 5×5 puzzles and level up your hero to gain more access to the pages of the grimoire. The salve for that for high-level Picross players is that there are numerous bonus puzzles (mostly created from Kickstarter backer requests) that are generally harder and accessible right away; when you do get deeper into the game, there are 40×30-size puzzles to feast on. The best thing I can say about the pace and flow is that the Switch version is my second time playing Logiart Grimoire (also played the Steam version) and I was relatively unbothered by the slower start, mostly due to the new presentation and the neat way you unlock puzzles.

Specifically, unlocking different puzzles requires you to use existing solved puzzles to form new ones. Through various different chapters in the book, you will get a prompt, like “It is collected from the ground and water is added to mold and shape it,” with the bolded words highlighted, cluing you in that those are the two items you need to fuse to make the puzzle playable. In the case of that puzzle, I selected soil and water from my Primordial puzzle list and selected those to fuse. It gets more complex from there as you unlock more items and sometimes need to fuse more than two items for success. It’s just enough of a brain teaser to break up the Picross play and keep everything more fresh. It can get overwhelming at times, but you level up by completing puzzles, which slowly unlocks more puzzles to find and fuse. It’s well paced in that regard.

Picross Logiart Grimoire is not a full-on replacement for Jupiter’s past Picross S games, but it’s a wonderful addition to their library. If you’ve been put off by the presentation of Picross S, this might be the entry to bring you back to Jupiter’s delightful world of nonogram magic. If you’re like me, a loyal soldier who shows up for every single one of these Picross games no matter what, the new presentation might seem like it’s just the same old with a new wizard hat, but this is one of the best Picross games that Jupiter has put out, largely because it feels new and has a nice sense of progression.