It seems that more and more each day that people are getting into puzzles, crosswords and of course Sudoku. What was once the leisure of grandparents and their aged friends has now become a craze for everyone, from middle-aged professionals to young kids. [I loved word searches when I were a lad! Ed]. In direct response to this there's been a massive upsurge in the number of puzzle titles available for the Nintendo DS in an effort to tap into this new audience. I'm sure many of us have lost count of the number of DS titles with 'brain' in the title in recent months and it seems like every developer is jumping on the puzzle bandwagon and churning out identical games. Now and again though, somebody thinks outside of the box and tries something new - and that my friends, is where Picross comes in.

Picross is a puzzle game that's a blend of crossword and illustration. You start the game with an empty grid surrounded by numbers. Reading horizontally and vertically at the sides of the grid, these numbers provide clues as to which squares of the grid should be filled in with colour. When you decide on a correct square, you simply tap it with your DS stylus and if you're right, the square fills itself in. As you fill in the squares of the grid, a simple pixilated image starts to reveal itself until you finish the picture and complete the puzzle.

Initially as you play this game you'll find yourself relying on pure guesswork, but as you play more and more, things become ever clearer. You start to put aside the Minesweeper approach and learn the various subtleties of the game. Via a series of logical steps and a process of educated elimination, you can replace the guesswork with informed decisions, as you complete each puzzle and reveal the picture within the grid. The pictures themselves are very varied, covering everything from the animal world to basic household utensils. On one puzzle you might be completing a pictures of an elephant's tusks and on another a simple red teacup. As you're revealing the puzzle and you start to work out what the picture 'might' be, you can fairly confidently predict which is the next square you should fill in on the grid. You'll not always be right, but that's half the fun really though, isn't it?

There are plenty of game modes on offer in Picross. Playing on the Easy Mode you're assisted by receiving suggestions on how to solve the puzzles, by suggesting which squares to colour in. In Normal mode, everything gets much more challenging and you're given one hour to solve each puzzle and as you progress you'll need every last minute! Plus, every time you select an incorrect square, time is deducted from your hour deadline, so sometimes that hour can disappear very, very quickly. However, if you're not so keen on pressure you can also play in Free Mode, where you aren't penalised for messing up and you can play away to your heart's content, taking as long as you like with each puzzle. Another great feature is the ability to create your own pictures, which you can then convert into puzzles and share with your friends wirelessly.

There are plenty of grids in the game to provide longevity for weeks to come. However, it does start to lose its appeal once you've really mastered the knack of the puzzles. As you solve bigger and bigger puzzles and the playing area expands, you need to use a zoom tool to focus in on different areas of the grid. This tool is really rather clumsy and it can be a struggle to navigate around the full playing area to work out exactly which part of the picture you're revealing. As well as being confusing, this zoom tool only serves to make the game a frustrating experience at times, particularly when playing a timed game. Really this game works best when you can view the puzzle with the entire grid visible. Once the zoom tool comes into play, it's a case of a game over unless you're exceptionally patient.

Graphically this game does what it's expected to. Everything is very well presented and colourful, as always with Nintendo, and the in-game interface is very easy to grasp. What this game does do well, which many recent DS games most certainly don't, is that it doesn't crowd the screen with colours. Everything is very soberly presented and appealing to the eye. The sound isn't so good however - there are only three tunes that you can play in the background and they're all pretty awful, so I'd suggest putting on your own music in the background instead.

I very much enjoyed my time with Picross. It makes a real change from many of the other puzzle games out there for the Nintendo DS and if this crowded genre is going to survive, we're going to need a lot more innovative games like Picross that try something different - and succeed. Simple and harmless fun, Picross is definitely worth a look if you're a fan of puzzle games or just in need of a new title for your DS.

Reviewed by Ross Alexander for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).