Piczle Lines DX (Switch) Review

There’s an episode of Brooklyn Nine Nine (one of my favourite TV shows), in which Captain Holt, the stern and serious leader, gets addicted to a stupid puzzle game called Kwazy Cupcakes. He says he can quit at any time, but it takes over his life, and interferes with his work. Why am I telling you this? Well, these past few weeks, I have been Captain Holt, and Piczle Lines DX has been my Kwazy Cupcakes. This game has taken over my life. I can’t stop playing it, and when I can’t play it, I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m serious, I need help. Somebody send help.

Joking aside, Piczle Lines DX is an excellent little puzzle game. The premise is simple, you’re presented with a grid, and in that grid you’ll find a bunch of squares with numbers on them. Your goal is to draw lines to matching numbers of the same colour, drawing through only as many places as the numbers in the boxes you’re trying to match. Match all the boxes in the grid, and you’ve made pixel art! As I said, it sounds simple, and at first it is, but the difficulty ramps up so fast you barely have time to worry about difficulty.

There are a couple of game modes on offer, the first being Story Mode. Yes, there is a story, and it’s a bit strange. The story follows an eccentric scientist who’s invented a machine called the Piczle-Matic 3000 that can turn everyday items into pixels for easy storage. Sounds convenient, right? Of course, the Piczle-Matic falls into the wrong hands, in this case it’s the family cat, D-Bug, who runs around the neighbourhood pixelising things. And you, the player, have to solve puzzles to put the pixels in their place to bring them back. It’s a pixel cat-astrophe! Real talk, it’s not a particularly engaging story, and it only really stands to get in the way of the excellent gameplay. The visuals are nice though; I really enjoy the cartoonish style that carries through the whole game, from the story segments to the menus and everything in between. That said, I found myself just mashing the A button to get to the puzzles.

Alongside Story Mode is the Puzzle Mode, which is where all the DLC levels live. Yes, there’s DLC, but it’s not what you think. See, you can play Piczle Lines DX on Android or iOS, and it’s free to start. So why bother paying $19.99 for the game on Switch, when you can get it for free on mobile? Well, there’s a lot of DLC available for download, and more on the way, and they can retail for up to $5 a pop on mobile. On top of that, story mode has to be paid for on mobile, with only the first of five chapters available for free. On Switch, however? It’s “free”. Forever. By “free,” I mean that it’s built into the (very reasonable) price. The base game comes with 11 puzzle packs, and any future packs that come out will be totally free on Switch. If you add it all up, you’re getting a much better deal on the Switch if you’re interested in playing it all, and believe me, you will want to play it all.

So what’s the difference between Story Mode and Puzzle Mode? Not much, really, except that Puzzle Mode doesn’t have any story elements, just themes for each pack, like sports or dinosaurs. It’s 100% pure Piczle puzzling goodness, and it’s the best experience the game has to offer. The puzzle packs range in difficulty, from the more simple 20×20 grids all the way up to the monstrous 128×128 grids. It took me over an hour to play through the first level in the dinosaur-themed puzzle pack, and I loved every single frustrating moment. That’s one of the best things about Piczle Lines DX though, it can be played in short bursts or long marathons, and with the game autosaving after every move, you can even take down the monster puzzles in bite-sized pieces. The game knows that it’s frustrating, and gives you all the tools to make it fun.

So how’s the performance then? It’s good, but not perfect. There aren’t really any frame rate issues, simply due to the nature of the game. That said, the loading times between levels are strangely long. Having played a bit of the game on mobile, I’m a bit confused as to why this is. Levels that will load in a second or less on mobile will take a good 10-15 seconds on Switch. It’s not a game breaker, but it is perplexing, and it’s a frustrating barrier between levels.

You can play either with traditional controls, or on the touch screen, and both are serviceable options. Playing using the traditional controls, it can be a bit slow to get things done, which can break up the pace of quick thinking when you finally get an “aha!” moment. However, the touch controls can be a bit iffy, sometimes selecting the wrong squares, causing you to backtrack and redraw your lines. This isn’t an issue with the Switch hardware, however, as I noticed similar issues playing on mobile, so maybe this is something that can be fixed in future updates. It’s also worth noting that, when going back to get pictures for this review, my game would invariably crash on startup. A quick archival and reinstall fixed it, but it’s definitely worth knowing about. On the positive side of things, the game comes with a reasonable set of options, including the ability to enable or disable both the music and the sound effects independently, which is something not enough games do and all games should do. It also boasts 9 different languages, and my favourite feature, colour blind options.

See, I am extremely colour blind. Like, not living the monochrome life, but if you were to hold up a colour, there’s a 90% chance I’ll get it wrong. And a surprising amount of games are unplayable because of that. Puzzle games are the worst offenders, with their tendency to have similar colours (orange and green, blue and purple, pink and light blue) side by side and crucial to gameplay. So going into this particular puzzle game, I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to play the game, let alone review it. And when I booted up the game for the first time, my fears were confirmed — it was unplayable. I complained to a friend of mine who’d been obsessed with the game on mobile for some time, and he said “oh, pretty sure they have a colour blind mode in the settings.”

Hmmmm. Not all colour blind modes are made equal, some are good for only one type of colour blindness, and they usually don’t work for me. I opened up the menu, and I was blown away. Not only does the game have a colour blind mode, it has three — one for each type of major colour blindness. And after fiddling around a bit, I found the one that works best for me. Suddenly, the game was playable. And it was good. I can’t stress how pleased I am with Rainy Frog for implementing this. It’s a minor addition, but it means the world to someone like me.

In my opening paragraph, I compared my time with Piczle Lines DX to Captain Holt’s addiction to Kwazy Cupcakes, but there’s a major difference. In the Brooklyn Nine Nine episode, Holt gives up the game after finding out that Hitchcock, the unlikeable buffoon of the office, also loves the game — but no amount of unlikeable buffoonery could make me put down this game. Piczle Lines DX is an absolutely stunning puzzle game, with engaging gameplay and charming visuals. All the extras — free puzzle packs, colour blindness modes, free content going forward — well, they’re just icing on the cake. Even without all those things, this would still be one of my favourite games on the Switch, and I’d still be more than happy to pay $20 for it. It might just be a puzzle game ported from mobile, but it’s a damn good puzzle game ported from mobile, and the Switch is extremely lucky to have it.

Rating: 4/5