Colour Cross Review - Screenshot 1 of 1

This review has already been delayed twice in the past month; first by Royal Mail taking two weeks to deliver the game, then again by my inability to put the game down long enough to review it.

Colour Cross is a new take on the Nintendo favourite puzzler Picross, but with its own pigmented personality. Each puzzle is a grid that tells you how many consecutive squares of each colour are on each line. All you have to do is colour them in using logic and deduction.

Once you’ve cleared the first few puzzles you’ll start to get the hang of it and it might seem easy, but then the puzzles get more complex with five or six different colours over a grid of some 80 squares. Later puzzles can take anywhere up to an hour to complete, but sadly there’s no resume function, meaning all grids have to be cleared in one sitting, meaning those short games soon take over your entire evening.

Colour Cross is a great game to relax with - soothing music accompanies each puzzle, and the scrolling backgrounds are a little on the hypnotic side. With no time limits or other obstacles you can take each puzzle as leisurely as you like, but that’s almost the game’s undoing, though; with no real challenges or possibility of failure, the only incentive to clear each puzzle is to see the next one. There’s too little replay value too, with no reward for improving on your previous best times. It’s a shame developers Little Worlds Studio didn’t add the option to download new puzzles, which would have boosted its longevity and added another star to its score.

Conclusion

Colour Cross is a very enjoyable and addictive puzzler, and with 150 built-in puzzles there’s plenty here to last you, particularly considering the increasing size and difficulty of later grids. When you factor in its budget price it’s a good buy if you’ve beaten Picross or want a more relaxing experience than Tetris or Puzzle Quest can offer.