Nintendo has created some absolute masterpieces over the last several decades, and their titles on the Switch are no exception. But even with terrific adventures like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey, one small indie game sticks out to me as one of the greatest titles on the system: Lightwood Games’s Pix-a-Pix Deluxe, a picross game packed with challenge, seemingly endless puzzles via the numerous DLC and hours upon hours of gameplay for less than $8. When I found out another of their previous games was being brought to the Switch, Fill-a-Pix: Phil’s Epic Adventure (also known as Phil’s Epic Fill-a-Pix Adventure), I was ridiculously excited!
Lighthouse Games describes the game as “a mix of minesweeper and picross”, and while I’ve struggled to come up with a better description of the game over the last week, it just doesn’t quite do it justice. This puzzler is entirely unique, a challenge that’s both extremely casual and yet still makes me feel rather brilliant every time I complete an image. The rules are simple: you go around the grids filling in squares with black or greying out areas based on the numbers scattered around. Not every square has a number, there are just enough to paint a picture. Fill-a-Pix also introduces the Smart Cursor, a 3×3 cursor grid that, when you click a numbered square while using it, automatically fills in the grey Xs and black squares if there’s only one possible solution. If you click a number that has multiple possibilities instead of just one, it’ll simply refuse to fill it in.
This sounds far more complex than it is, and in all honesty when I started the game I was worried I wouldn’t get the hang of it. Check out the image above as an example: The 6 in the center of the Smart Cursor already has 6 filled-in squares inside it. As such, clicking it will automatically place Xs in the two remaining spaces. The opposite is true in the image below: the 8 already has one greyed-out X inside the Smart Cursor, so everything else must be filled in black. Clicking here will fill in the rest of the spaces automatically.
The Smart Cursor is a double-edged sword. So many of these puzzles are so huge that they already take 30-90+ minutes each as it is, and requiring you to individually fill in each square on such huge grids would take forever even if it was just a color-by-number. Heck, some of the biggest maps I’ve seen thus far were 50×75 and 100×65! But on the downside, it takes away the potential for making mistakes. The worst that can happen when using the Smart Cursor is nothing at all, and even that tells you that you need to try somewhere else.
Because the grids are so huge, the game includes the ability to get a hint as to where to work next. This shows up as a little pulse in the smaller image, and it often comes in incredibly handy. You may work on a spot for a good 5-10 minutes and then realize there’s nothing more you can accomplish there, and that the nearest spot is halfway across the grid!
While the game lacks a fear of failure, I still somehow felt like a genius as I developed the images. There’s only one music track for the puzzles but it’s absolutely perfect, and combined with hunting down where to go next it still gave me that same “AHA!” feeling that Pic-a-Pix does despite being so much more casual. I really felt as relaxed as Phil must feel after such an incredible vacation as I went through the various pictures and assembled them. It was amazing how much easier I could look at a screen and figure out which numbers can be clicked after completing a dozen images. Patterns and shapes jumped out at me like I was an expert code cracker!
Fill-a-Pix comes with 120 images across 12 areas like Australia, Japan, Las Vegas, the African Safari and Japan, and each image takes between 15-120 minutes. All in all, Fill-a-Pix is a delightful vacation and I’ll be devouring these levels the same way I’ve devoured the Pic-a-Pix levels. With any luck, Fill-a-Pix will get the same DLC love that Pic-a-Pix did and there will be a veritable eternity of puzzles between the two games!
Fill-a-Pix: Phil’s Epic Adventure is available now for Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Switch (reviewed). It will be available for PS4 and PS Vita in Q3 2018 according to Lightwood Games official website.
I received a free copy of this game in exchange for an honest review.