There’s nothing new about picross games. Technically known as nonograms, paper versions of the grid-based number puzzles have been around since the 1980s, with video game versions starting in the ‘90s. I’ve tried my hand at a few in that time, but never found one that turned me into a devotee like so many others have. As it turns out, they were all missing the same thing — rats.
If you’ve ever played a picross game before, you know how to play Squeakross: Home Squeak Home. You start with a blank grid with numbers on two axes showing how many squares in each column and row are filled in. It starts off easy, especially being a paint-by-numbers exercise. The puzzles slowly escalate in difficulty, demanding more complex logical reasoning as the patterns you’re drawing become more complex. Squeakross doesn’t mess with the fundamentals of picross at all, instead making everything around it as joyful and approachable as possible even for players like me who’ve typically bounced off of similar games.
