• Price: $9.99 USD
• Developer: Score Studios
• Publisher: RAINY FROG
• Release Date: February 27, 2024

A review code was kindly provided by PR Hound on behalf of Score Studios and RAINY FROG. We thank them for being able to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

I don’t play puzzle games very often, but when I saw that they were making a Piczle game based on Story of Seasons, I was immediately interested in playing it. Gameplay involves solving nonograms, which are are grid-based puzzles where you fill in squares based on numbered clues in order to complete images.

Each row and column displays the number of squares you have to fill in. If there are multiple numbers that means that they are separate pieces of a row or column that are spaced out. 22 means that somewhere in that row or column, 2 squares go together, then some space, then another 2 squares.

I definitely appreciate how straightforward the gameplay is, and they included a wide variety of accessibility features and puzzle settings that you can customize to your liking. They conveniently made it so that we can save our progress on a puzzle and quit, and I like the way they highlight your current row and column.

Puzzle Settings:

• Clue roulette
• Show timer
• Autofill 0s
• Autofill Complete
• Axis lock
• Autocounter
• Autocorrect
• Clue marking
• Cursor looping
• Hints
• Theme
• Hide check for mistakes

The first few puzzles are pretty easy, but once you get past the 5×5 puzzles they become more challenging. There are 270 individual puzzles across 18 categories, plus 5 collage puzzles that have you complete several individual pieces to combine into the final image.

Categories:

• Farm
• Mining
• Crop
• Town
• Animal
• Home
• Tool
• Foraging
• Food
• Fishing
• Bachelors (Trio of Towns)
• Bachelors (Friends of Mineral Town)
• Bachelors (Pioneers of Olive Town)
• Bachelors (A Wonderful Life)
• Villagers (Trio of Towns)
• Villagers (Friends of Mineral Town)
• Villagers (Pioneers of Olive Town)
• Villagers (A Wonderful Life)

With every puzzle you complete, days will pass in the farm screen behind the puzzles, and you’ll get to see adorable chibi versions of Pete and Claire (Mineral Town) working on the farm. Crops will grow and livestock will make an appearance there. It’s a fun way of highlighting Story of Seasons in the game. My one complaint is that it took a while for the larger livestock like cows to appear because I think you need to complete their puzzles first to unlock them.

I liked most of the puzzle designs, although I will say that some of them were better than others. Characters like Huang and Thomas were instantly recognizable, while other images – such as the Cliff puzzle – were less distinct to me. It started to get easier to figure out the patterns in each puzzle as I went along; I made use of the helpful “check for mistakes” feature when I had trouble.

Although the mining and fishing categories are certainly relevant to the Story of Seasons theme, I will say that I wish they had designed more puzzles for the townspeople and reduced the ore and fish puzzles. To be fair, most of the townspeople have puzzles, but as an example, out of the Mineral Town characters, Basil, Dudley, Duke, Jeff, Mei, and Yu all lack puzzles.

I really liked the collage puzzles, which depict scenes from the festivals in Story of Seasons. As I completed a few pieces in each one, I began to get an idea of what was happening in the image. It was exciting to recognize scenes that I’d experienced in the main Story of Seasons games! I just wish there were a few more collage puzzles – perhaps they could have referenced some heart events?

And speaking of references, they included a lovely almanac with character art (and even some chibi versions of the love interests), their likes and dislikes, and their completed Piczle puzzle – if they have one. You have to complete every puzzle to unlock the entire almanac.

It’s another great tie-in to the series; however, I think the descriptions were translated in a slightly awkward/simplistic manner. They also got Marian (p.11) and Inari’s (p.27) genders wrong, as Marian is actually male and Inari is a fox spirit whose gender depends on yours in the original game. Other than that, the almanac is well done overall.

There’s also a music player, which includes tracks from all five of the Story of Seasons games covered in this one (Story of Seasons, Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns, Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town, and Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life). You can also earn achievements for your puzzle progress.

Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons doesn’t always take its theme as far as I would like, but I think it’s worth playing. Even if you’re more of a SoS fan than a puzzle player (or vice-versa), you’ll still get something out of this. They did a great job of filling the game with nostalgic imagery and music tracks that bring you back to the time you played a Story of Seasons game. I’d love to see them make a Rune Factory version next!