Pictonico! Review (Mobile)

When first revealed, Pictonico was clearly channelling serious WarioWare energy. That madcap microgame series got two Switch entries — 2021's multiplayer-focused Get it Together! and 2023's Move It!, inspired by the Wii's Smooth Moves — but the microgame format feels particularly well-suited to touchscreen mobile devices.

However, I didn't expect this to be WarioWare pretty much 1:1, minus the Wario.

It's all here, just streamlined: the thick-lined, colourful presentation; the three-lives format as you scramble to parse what's required in just a few seconds; the escalating audio that ramps up the tension between games; the anything-goes, collage-like aesthetic that somehow gels.

The microgames themselves, too, riff on some of WarioWare's greatest games and themes. You can't move for unshaven moustaches, sprouting flowers, and interactive nostrils. And yes, you will be plucking nose hairs; the only difference being it's your nose hairs for the plucking this time. That, and you're doing it on your phone.

Downloading the app, you get almost nothing for free. It's a small demo that will last you a matter of minutes after you've gone through Nintendo's T&Cs and various privacy assurances. There's definitely a 'trust us' vibe to those, but no photos leave your phone at any time, and the safeguards and options for selecting specific images for individual games, tailoring which ones are pulled for use, deleting your play history, and removing any pics at any time are extensive.

Pictonico functions by scanning uploaded photos for faces to use in its microgames. Should you accidentally add random images you downloaded from the internet — or if you want to remove pics following a breakup or other painful life event — it's a fairly simple process.

Obviously, everyone's photo albums are different (you may have fewer t-shirt models posted by the menswear guy or shots of random bequiffed dudes to show the hairdresser on your Camera Roll), so it's good to have granular options to create albums and block images if you've just imported everything into the app. Personally, I'm more selective, but you do you.

It's worth noting that no internet connection is needed beyond the initial download/setup or buying paid microgame Volume Packs, which you'll need to do to access the meat of the game.

There are two available at launch: the larger Volume 1 ($7.99 / £6.99 / €7,99) has 50 games and 20 stages, and Volume 2 ($5.99 / £5.39 / €5,99) has 30 games across 12 stages. I played on an iPhone 17 Pro, which you'd hope would be snappy, and was instantly impressed with the general feel and presentation of the UI - big chunky buttons and fast responses, no spinning loading symbols. It feels like A-team Nintendo fare.

As for the games themselves, anyone who's played a WarioWare will know exactly what to expect. For the uninitiated, you're given a few seconds to follow an instruction to manipulate the screen in some way - unwrapping a present, peeling a banana, zipping up the mouths of chatty opera attendees, banging drums to attract a baby as it crosses an obstacle-strewn street, that sort of thing.

Whether you're defeating evil wizards or unravelling mummies, nothing lasts longer than 10 seconds and the barrage of Python-esque mania and gradual speed increase keeps the energy high - now with the added charm of seeing you and yours popping up in-game in surprising ways.

This introduces a welcome element of Tomodachi Life-style random interaction and micro-narratives as you poke sleeping classmates or skydive with random people on your phone. That off-the-wall, distinctly personal feeling complements the traditional WarioWare loop nicely.

Playing through those stages (10 microgame rounds in each) unlocks Score Attack mode, a Games list (where you can play any microgame you've unlocked), and a Random 10 option, which does what it says on the tin. There's also a Mix mode, which gathers games from any Volumes you've bought.

Completing stages nets you coins used to pull gatcha-style collectible fortune cards, or to Continue if you run out of hearts while playing. Things get very frantic in the latter stages, but "SUCCESS" in all 10 games bags you bonus coins and a little crown on the stage 'map'. Something for completionists to shoot for.

Cautious about giving any app unfettered access to my albums (and conscious of needing usable pics for this review), I wanted to test how it worked with a fairly small sample size, selecting just 41 photos featuring me and my kids. As you'll see from the screens on this page, it's mostly stupid grins and surprised-face selfies. Apologies.

And it works fairly well with a fairly restricted selection. Obviously a wider image pool makes for more surprises, but Intelligent Systems gets plenty of mileage from the same snaps, pulling faces from different photos into new scenarios and contexts, flipping, rotating, and animating them to keep things fresh and manic, just as you'd expect from WarioWare.

We already know the series pairs well with a touchscreen — and DSi's WarioWare: Snapped! previously experimented with camera microgames, with mixed results — and Pictonico dovetails beautifully with your phone. There's none of the dissonance you may have felt on seeing Mario reduced to a jump-tap in Portrait Mode, or Tour's simplified take on Mario Kart. This feels like Nintendo's most natural mobile fit by far.

A summary at the end of each stage gives you the opportunity to download and share a shot of every game you played, also displaying which photos the faces came from. Many of the screens on this page come from that round-up, so there's plenty of scope for sending relatives snaps of them as a sunflower or marrying Commander Riker or whatever. (Come on, surely everyone's got at least one Riker shot saved on their phone!?)

Cards on the table, I went in expecting Pictonico to be a 'lite' take on WarioWare, scrubbed and sanitised for a new audience unaccustomed to the anti-Mario's flatulence and nose-picking. I was expecting something 'lesser', but what we've got here is the unadulterated WarioWare experience — with a little bit of Face Raiders mixed in — tailored and streamlined expertly for your phone. It's...really good!

It's also quite short. Familiarity with the series may be a factor, but after a few hours I'd burned through all the stages and microgames within both packs. There's more to do if I want to unlock Game Centre achievements and get little crowns on every stage, and adding new photos would freshen things up again, but you're not getting the full quantity of 'Ware you would from a console entry.

Then again, you're not paying for a full console entry. The Volume Packs are on the pricey side, perhaps, but for the smiles they've elicited, it's a worthwhile investment, especially if you have kids to guffaw at the sight of you as a tank engine. Let's put it another way: I'll definitely be downloading future packs.

I'm intrigued to see the form they'll take, too. Perhaps it's fitting that Nintendo ousted Wario — who's exploited his friends for his microgame empire long enough — from his own series and took the format to a new platform. But he could return.

Who am I kidding? I don't really care about Wario. I just want a 9-Volt pack.