Pros:
- The chosen music is dang near perfect
- Core idea of the game is interesting
Cons:
- Theme adherence is a bit lacking
- I have issues with the hungrycat ruleset
- The seemingly random puzzle generation feels unsatisfying
Here & There:
I've played far too much Picross over the years, so seeing this and hearing about it got me real excited, even intending to put it off until the end of my jam playthroughs to have time to savour it. I failed to hold out. For the most part this plays like most Picross games and you end up with a pretty little picture by the end of it. The colours can be quite hard to differentiate sometimes though, and being able to erase (especially on remix sections) would be a huge improvement (oh how perfect a right-click erase would be). Also, the numbers at times do not reflect the reality of the puzzle, either not acknowledging that the colours are placed or that they've been removed.
The hungrycat ruleset also strays from what I tend to enjoy about Picross which is the idea that there's never a reason to guess what goes where, it's always flat-out deduction. This ruleset however, in conjunction with random puzzles, does not provide enough information for a single deductive solution mostly because of the collection of non-linked blocks into one number (lets say 4, which can be three different permutations). Because of this and the randomized puzzles resulting in randomized imagery it doesn't feel as satisfying as the base 5 canvases do and so I was yearning for more designed puzzles.
This puzzle has at least two solutions
The theme adherence I feel is lacking because it wasn't taken in some new direction, like Bob Ross started to paint some style other than simple landscapes, or the paintings turned out to be puzzles in themselves that carried a narrative or something, or Bob Ross is at home painting in his garage and just talking to some stuffed animals and a rock with a face painted on it. I enjoyed my time with this (barring some specific frustrations), and congrats Klades for getting off the Wall and doing so in style!