{"id":25465,"date":"2025-03-10T00:01:09","date_gmt":"2025-03-10T00:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=25465"},"modified":"2025-03-04T01:22:32","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T01:22:32","slug":"piczle-cross-rune-factory-switch-pc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/10\/piczle-cross-rune-factory-switch-pc\/","title":{"rendered":"Piczle Cross: Rune Factory (Switch, PC)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Last year around this time I reviewed a game called Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 It was a nonogram puzzle game and those types of puzzles in video game form are often called Picross or a variation of that name.\u00a0 But this one had a theme.\u00a0 The pictures you could make were based off of things and characters from the Story of Seasons games.\u00a0 These were farming sims that were around way before Stardew Valley got popular.\u00a0 You might know these games better as Harvest Moon, as that\u2019s what those games were called before the rights changed.\u00a0 Anyway, the Harvest Moon\/Story of Seasons games had a spinoff series called Rune Factory.\u00a0 These were more fantasy based, and they streamlined the farming parts so you\u2019d have more time to go fight monsters in dungeons!\u00a0 I actually like the Rune Factory games more than Story of Seasons, and now there is a Piczle Cross game based on the Rune Factory series as well!\u00a0 It\u2019s available on Switch and PC but reviewed on Switch here.<\/p>\n

When you start, the game has a video tutorial on how to play the game.\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty good but I have played other \u2018picross\u2019 games that explain the rules better via interactive tutorials.\u00a0 To solve these puzzles, you must fill in spaces on a grid to make a picture, and you use number clues on the rows and columns to do so.\u00a0 I won\u2019t explain the rules any more than that, but you\u2019ll get the idea if you play this one.\u00a0 One thing this game adds are color puzzles, where you must switch colors to make pictures.\u00a0 Every picture has a regular and color version to solve.\u00a0 They have tutorials you can watch for the color puzzles as well.\u00a0 Play control is easy and you can use either the controllers or touch screen in handheld mode.<\/p>\n

There are two main ways to play this game.\u00a0 Adventure Mode lets you solve puzzles on a map, and you unlock new puzzles by solving ones next to them.\u00a0 Sometimes you must solve \u2018boss puzzles\u2019 where you get a limited amount of time and no hints are allowed.\u00a0 If this gets too challenging for you (it certainly did for me) you can always switch to Puzzle Mode.\u00a0 Here you can solve any puzzle you want in any order, and you can get hints and have unlimited time.\u00a0 But if you change to this mode, you can\u2019t go back to the other.\u00a0 I don\u2019t like that design choice, but otherwise I\u2019m glad they give you lots of options on how you want to play.<\/p>\n

Just like in the Story of Seasons Piczle Cross game, when you make a picture of a crop, weapon, or character, they\u2019ll appear in the background of your farm.\u00a0 But this time you can edit what you can have.\u00a0 You can choose what vegetables are in your garden, which spouse you have, and what weapon you hold when fighting bosses.\u00a0 It\u2019s just in the background and you don\u2019t see it much, but still a cool feature.\u00a0 You can also view the tutorials, play music, and view an artbook with characters you\u2019ve unlocked, as well as a bestiary of monsters you\u2019ve fought.<\/p>\n

Aside from the design choice when switching from Adventure to Puzzle Mode, my only other problem with this game is that when the puzzles get bigger and more complicated, the numbers get too hard to see.\u00a0 Granted, they try to rectify that by letting you highlight rows and columns, but it wasn\u2019t enough for me.\u00a0 But maybe I just have old eyes.\u00a0 I still like the Story of Seasons version of this game more, as it\u2019s more relaxed and chill, but this one is still pretty good.\u00a0 Start with Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons first, and if you feel like you\u2019re up to the challenge, give this Rune Factory a try after that.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Piczle Cross: Rune Factory is rated E-10 with an ESRB descriptor of Fantasy Violence.\u00a0 When you solve boss puzzles, the background shows your character swinging a weapon at a cloudy mystery monster, but that\u2019s it.\u00a0 Strong reading and math skills are needed (which does make the game educational), and younger gamers may need help with the tougher puzzles.<\/p>\n

Check out my other Rune Factory game reviews that are featured in this title:<\/p>\n

Reader Review: Rune Factory 5<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Rune Factory 4 Special<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Rune Factory 3 Special<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year around this time I reviewed a game called Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons.\u00a0 It was a nonogram puzzle game and those types of puzzles in video game form are often called Picross or a variation of that name.\u00a0 But this one had a theme.\u00a0 The pictures you could make were based off of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25458,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25465"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25467,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25465\/revisions\/25467"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}