If by now you’re not familiar with the Picross or nonogram style of puzzles yet, you’ve been missing out. These are logic puzzles where you’ll need to determine which pixels in a grid should be filled in, and which shouldn’t, in order to form what’s usually a pretty primitive and blocky picture of some kind. You’ll find quite a number of franchises with titles on the Switch in this style, with the Piczle Cross series typically being in the mid-to-top tier, not quite reaching the level of the best in the space.

In the case of this specific title, the main draw is that it sports a very respectable 350 total puzzles, but also that it has been paired with the popular farm-sim series Story of Seasons to help make the experience feel a bit more themed and fun. To be clear, outside of the fact that the puzzles are generally farm-oriented in some way, and that you’ll see bits of a working farm slowly evolve as you continue to play, there isn’t much significance to this pairing. Yes, you will also unlock a pretty substantial almanac that helps celebrate the Story of Seasons series, but this is also pretty peripheral to the actual game experience so I count it more as a bonus than a feature.

In terms of how it fares against the competition, that is an area where things get pretty ugly. First, rather than feature multiple puzzle styles, here you’re sticking with only the classic black and white method. There are some nice and much larger collage puzzles, each representing a piece of a much larger image, but since there are only 5 they’re not something you’re able to appreciate too much of. The thing is, rather than have an equivalent of the Picross Mega Puzzles or even multi-color puzzles that have even been part of the Piczle series before, it seems to have put more value in the force of numbers rather than in variety in gameplay. Throw in the fact that there’s no support for co-op multiplayer, and that while the interface is nice it isn’t the most polished overall out there, and this title gets knocked down a few pegs.

Overall, there’s no question that this is a competently put together package of puzzle challenges, it’s just also not hard to make the case that it seems to be relying on novelty and sheer numbers to prop it up, rather than featuring actual diversity. Depending on your tastes, this may be more than enough to suck you in and keep you engaged for quite some time. If, however, you want something a bit more feature-rich there are absolutely better options out there with more variety.