For more on Picross e4, check out our full Picross e4 review. Or, for more of the best Nintendo 3DS games for a 10 year old, why not try our Family Game Finder
What is Picross e4?
Picross e4 is a puzzle mosaic game, in which players use numbered clues to fill in squares on a grid to reveal a picture. Requiring a logical mind, you'll need to work out which blocks to colour in, and which to leave blank through a process of elimination. As an example, on a 10x10 grid, a row with the clue "3 6" can be solved by filling in three squares, leaving a gap, and then filling in the remaining six - but not every clue can be solved as easily as that! As you fill in rows, you'll slowly start to figure out where the remaining squares go, and where squares definitely can't go, until you gradually start to build a pixel picture.
How do you play Picross e4?
Picross e4 packs over 150 brand new puzzles to play through, offering a lot of puzzling fun. Starting off small (5x5), you'll slowly work up to the biggest grids on offer (20x15), with the difficulty, and the complexity of the picture you'll be drawing, increasing as you'd imagine. From an apple to the Arc de Triomphe, there's a lot of puzzles to figure out!
Picross e4 also sees the return of a few other modes, including the dastardly Mega Picross, which gives you certain clues spread across two rows (it's up to you to figure out how the tiles spread across both rows) and the much easier going Micross mode, where you'll chisel away at dozens of smaller 10x10 grids, to eventually reveal one giant classic work of art.
How easy is Picross e4 to pick up and play?
In terms of accessibility, Picross is a hard one to place. There's a lot of logic involved here, and it does require a very specific way of thinking. As with most things, you'll soon get better with practice - but depending on the mode you play in, incorrect stabs at the screen could result in a time penalty, edging you closer to the 'max' time of an hour for each level.
More often than not, you'll find yourself having to work through probabilities in your head, trying to work out which spots can most likely be coloured in, adding up line totals, and often counting forwards and then backwards across a row to see which squares would be filled in either way (that's one of our pro-tips). Luckily, there's a handy feature that highlights rows you can definitely place a square in, so you know where to direct your search.
Picross e4 also has more of a focus on the much more complex Mega Picross puzzles, which introduces numbered clues that span two rows rather than the one. Requiring a very different way of thinking compared to standard Picross, these are enough to challenge even the most experience of players - although there are plenty of other puzzles to cut your teeth on first.
On the plus side, for the youngest of players, there's very little in the way of reading here too - as long as you can recognise and understand the numbers 1 to 20, you're good to go. The only real barrier to younger players is in the logic you need to employ to figure out many of the puzzles, particularly in the latter half of the game.
Being a puzzle game, Picross e4 is as clean as they come - no bad language, sex or violence.
Age Ratings
Format Reviewed: Nintendo 3DS
