Black Falcon Games

This update will cover 23 games which I purchased between mid ’22 and January ’23. I have bought a lot of stuff this month as the shutdown approaches, but don’t have time to actually cover those games in any detail since it takes time to play the games and all, and these are oens I’ve at least tried a fair number of while those are not. Many of these I could have incorporated into the main list, but I chose not to in order to keep it focused on titles I’ve had for longer and thus, in some cases at least, have played more. I did add a few titles I bought in ’22 to the original list, chosen somewhat at random to fill out some updates with titles I wanted to cover. These are the rest of them plus the first few titles I got this year. This will probably be the last update I get out before the shutdown so this will have to do as far as helping with any last-minute purchase decisions. I love the 3DS a lot though, so I’m sure I will cover more 3DS (and Wii U) games in the future regardless of if the official shop is still up or not.

Oh, and a few of the summaries this time are long. Enjoy.

Table of Contents – 23 games covered

3D Game Collection
A-Train 3D: City Simulator (has DLC)
Automaton Lung
Blast ’em Bunnies (has DLC)
Bloo Kid 2
Brunch Panic
Color Zen Kids
CosmiBall 3D – New 3DS Required
Funfair Party Games
Glory of Generals: The Pacific
Horseshoe Crab Rescue! – New 3DS Required
Harold Reborn – New 3DS Required
Murder on the Titanic
Noitu Love 2: Devolution
Smash Cat Heroes
Splat the Difference
Sudoku Party
Urban Trial Freestyle
Urban Trial Freestyle 2
Word Logic by POWGI
Word Puzzles by POWGI
Yumi’s Odd Odyssey
Zombie Slayer Diox

Rankings for this update

The Summaries

3D Game Collection: 55-in-1 – Published by Joindots in 2012.  This is a collection of board and puzzle-style games done in stereoscopic 3d.  There are a lot of games here, which is somewhat impressive for a cheap title, and it’s done decently well.  The game has touch controls and it controls fine.  The games in the collection are broken into three visual themes, each with a different backdrop.  The three have 18, 17, and 20 total puzzles each, almost every one of them a different game.  There are no options within each puzzle, so the game has 55 total puzzles.  It’s an okay number, but some of these games could have had a lot more playtime with more options. So, you get a few puzzles each in a whole lot of different game types.  Also, it’s odd that there isn’t the same number of games in each environment.  There are several dozen different game types here, and while I could describe all of them in detail I shouldn’t, it’s too many.

I will list them all, though.  The types include versions or knockoffs of Minesweeper, Boxxle, Mastermind, Connect Four, spot the difference, sliding tile puzzles, card solitaire, mahjong solitaire, nine mens’ morris, sudoku, jigsaw puzzle, matching flip cards, checkers, Pipe Dream, Battleship, a match 3 game, Ludo, Dominoes, a dice game (Yachtzee?), Kakuro, Chinese Checkers, peg solitaire (jump the pegs to end up with one in the middle), Othello (which it calls “Token Wangle” for some reason), Backgammon, and Beano.  That’s a lot of games, but again, unlike some other games below, there aren’t any variations of each puzzle.  You can’t change difficulty options, play locally against a human, or anything.  55 puzzles is an decent number, so for the low price you pay get your money’s worth, but with so many games here, most of them done reasonably decently if somewhat basic in visual design, I can’t help but wish for a bit more in terms of features.  Also I can’t help but mention that the word puzzle games below on this list have over 700 puzzles each.  With more features I think this could have gone from okay to pretty good.  Ah well.

Even so, I do like the stereoscopic 3d backdrops in 3D Game Collection and the puzzles can be fun.  This is a good little board and puzzle game collection, it just has a somewhat limited playtime due to having zero options outside of the 55 included puzzles. s total, don’t expect much variety within each game type here.  There are only a couple of sudoku puzzles in this game total, for example. There is also no multiplayer, so you’re only playing against the fairly mediocre AI, not another human. Local or online multiplayer would make this collection a lot better.  The game does keep track of your best score in each game, and you can get gold, silver, or bronze medals on each game if you get a high enough score, so there is a bit to come back for, but not all that much.  I’d still possibly recommend this to anyone interested, but know what you’re getting.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

A-Train 3D: City Simulator – Developed by Artdink and published by Natsume in 2015.  This game has $2 worth of DLC.  Back in the early-mid ’90s, we got the original A-Train for the PC. I loved PC strategy and building simulation games at the time, but A-Train was a bit too much for me; I ended up sticking to the SimCity games and Civilization and such, and didn’t end up playing much A-Train at all. Why play this train-focused isometric strategy game when I could play SimCity 2000 and build a full city? You do build things beyond just a railroad, but the focus is on railroads in a fairly detailed way. But there is a place for this series, it has continued on for so long for good reason. The series is actually Japanese, something I didn’t know back then. Why am I talking so much about the original A-Train? Well, this 3DS game is highly reminiscent of the ’90s ones. It has the same isometric perspective, similar graphics, and gameplay clearly based on that classic.

This game, and series, is about planning train routes, setting them up, building train track routes, putting trains on those routes, and developing areas around the train. You can set up other businesses such as banks, run streetcars, and more, as you develop mostly transportation-related infrastructure and watch each area develop. Your goal generally is growing the local population, but you have to do this somewhat indirectly, unlike SimCity where you directly build zones. The game is also about just watching time pass, as the game has a full day-night cycle and a calendar. You can watch your trains run. Roads also exist but you won’t see traffic on them apart from streetcars if you have those. This series is focused on trains, after all. As you look at the town, one thing that is immediately apparent is that this game is very obviously set in Japan, but the localizers kind of half tried to hide that. So, the buildings are clearly modern Japanese structures, and the calendar and holidays are Japanese, but the anime-style characters who work for you and give the tutorial and such are given Western names. Heh.

The game has a good number of different scenarios to play, starting with three which thoroughly go through how use all of the gameplay systems. It’s great that there is a complete tutorial. You can also just go straight into it and start the first full scenario, but you will want to do the tutorials first if you want to not quickly go bankrupt after building ill-advised train lines and wasting your money. A-Train 3D isn’t very 3D — you mostly play on the lower screen, and if there is any stereoscopic 3d stuff on the upper screen I haven’t noticed it — but it is a very good, complex simulator. It’s impressive that they managed to basically get a full PC building simulation game running on the 3DS. Of the PC-to-DS or 3DS strategy game conversions I’ve played this is one of the best. It’s certainly better than the (cart-based) 3DS version of Roller Coaster Tycoon, that one is unfortunately a janky mess. Whether people outside of Japan will appreciate this heavily Japanese-train-route-focused game is another question, but if you might, definitely buy A-Train 3D and its $2 of DLC. This game did get a physical release in Japan, as you might expect, but sadly the English-translated versions are all download-only so pick them up while you can. This game is 3DS-exclusive, but as I’ve said is based on a long-running PC game series.

Automaton Lung – Circle Pad Pro or New 3DS enhanced. Developed and published by Luke Vincent in 2022.  This 2022 release from the developer of the Harold games got some attention for its late release date and weird design.  This game is much improved control and camera-wise over the Harold games, it plays well.  This game is a third person 3d shooter/platformer with giant, mostly empty levels to explore.  It’s all in very nice stereoscopic 3d.  You play as a female character in a sci-fi setting.  Most of the game takes place in a giant 21-story tower, but you can also leave the tower and explore some areas outside of it, flying around in a weird bug-like ship.

For controls, you move with the stick, L is a lock-on target lock (which works well), and face buttons shoot, jump, boost, and hoverboard.  Either a touch input or the circle pad pro or N3DS right stick controls the camera.  The lower screen also has a health indicator but is otherwise black. There is no pause menu, so close the system to pause.  The boost is a key feature to understand. See, your jump only jumps up a very very small distance, maybe a foot at most.  What you do is jump and then hit boost, and you’ll be able to actually jump up to higher platforms.  You can also boost on the ground to zip along on foot.  You can also manage to get into the air with the hoverboard, which is neat.  The controls feel fine, thankfully; finally, one of this dev’s games has no major control problems!  The shooting is average, but the lockon works well.  Enemies are only a minor threat, but if you do take damage you will die quickly, you can only take a few hits.  If you die you go back to the last checkpoint, which looks like a floppy disk icon floating in space.

But what is your goal in this game?  It isn’t really to kill the enemies, they are just there to get in your way . Many areas barely even have any, anyway; you will spend a lot of time just wandering around empty 3d spaces, exploring around and maybe getting lost.  Don’t worry, there isn’t a map, so if you get lost you’re on your own as far as figuring out where to go.  Heh.  Your actual goal here is to collect these rectangular pickups.  There are five on each floor of the tower. Some doors in the tower go to other rooms or to the outside, but others go to an elevator system which connects all of the floors. You just need to explore to figure out which is which.  The elevator menu shows you how many of the collectibles you have found on each floor, and shows which floor you are on.  If you leave the tower, a minimap appears on the lower screen showing white dots at each point of interest you can land on. Most of these areas are pretty empty, but they are there for you to explore.

And that’s the game. Explore weird, largely empty 3d spaces.  Look for the rectangular collectibles, which you will find in some areas, but in others you’ll look around aimlessly for a long time finding nothing. Shoot the occasional enemy robot.  Pick up health powerups if needed.  Try to not get too hopelessly lost.   And repeat until you finish the game.  If you know what you’re doing apparently this game can be finished in a few hours, but that would take practice.  Overall, I wish that there was more stuff in the levels that are in this game, but even so I think that Automaton Lung is good. It has a ’90s retro feel while also being modern.  I like exploring and finding stuff, and the visual look, with the stark, empty environments and decent soundtrack, is interesting and a bit creepy.  I guess I recommend it, though this game definitely isn’t for everyone.  Also available digitally on PC (Steam).

Blast ’em Bunnies – Developed and published by Nnooo in 2016.  This game has a bunch of DLC. You can buy a $15 bundle for all of the content DLC, or buy it separately.  You also can buy money multipliers or ‘unlock all upgrades right away’ purchases to skip grinding on upgrades.  Yeah, this game is one of those.  But what is the game?  Blast ’em Bunnies is a target-shooting game where you play as a good bunny shooting at evil bunnies from a static, rotatable turret with various silly weapons such as a carrot gun and a bunch more things like that… once you grind or pay for anything beyond the basic weapon.  The game has some things you can buy with the money you earn from playing, but the content addons and money multipliers are paid DLC only.  But hey, at least the graphics are good, with fun cartoony art and VERY strong stereoscopic 3d effects. That’s nice.

All of the money-grubbing elements of this game are bad, but (unfortunately?) the core game here is fun.  You can rotate and tilt the turret with either the analog stick or the system’s tilt sensor.  The motion controls work well and are nice to see, though you will probably want to play with a combination of tilt and controller.  Tilt is great for fine pointing, and analog for aiming around as enemies come at you from different directions.  I really like that you get both tilt and analog aim, it makes it so much better than it would be with only one or the other.  The lower screen has a radar showing where enemies are approaching from.  Blast ’em Bunnies is a fun, well-made light gun style shooter.  The graphics and 3d effects are good.  However, it is also very simple, and do you want to play a game as grindey as this, with a bunch of paid DLC?  I’m not sure it’s worth it.  A lot of mobile-style-game-to-3DS ports scaled down the paid DLC, but this one did not.  Too bad.  Also released digitally on PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Bloo Kid 2 –  Developed and published by winterworks in 2015.  This game is an okay 2d platformer with some stereoscopic depth.  It is a sequel to an iOS game, and was first released on smartphones.  Clearly inspired by ’90s platformers but not as good as the better ones, Bloo Kid 2 is okay but just doesn’t control quite well enough for me to call is good.  The design is also very safe.  I love platformers so I do somewhat enjoy this game, but it is average at best for sure.  You play as a boy, Bloo Kid, and you’re on an adventure.  In each level you have a bunch of objectives, each of which will get you a star at the end if accomplished: finish the level, get some or all of the stars, kill all of the enemies, finish with full health, and finish the level within a fairly tight timer.  This objective star system adds a little bit to an otherwise pretty average game, but the controls hold the game back.

The lower screen shows how you’re doing on the objectives and also shows a bar marking how far in the level you are.  That’s nice.  This is a classic platformer, so all you is run around and jump on foes. You have a double jump and will use it frequently.  You can take three hits before dying.  There are checkpoints, enemies to jump on or avoid, and the aforementioned stars and health powerups to collect.  The game has infinite lives from the last checkpoint. There is no lives system here, that’s fine.  But again, the main issue I have with this game is the control: your controls are very floaty.  Movement and jumping both feel somewhat vague, as if you don’t have precise control of the character.  You can use either the d-pad or analog stick for movement, but the controls are digital either way. So, use the d-pad.  You eventually get used to the controls, but they’re never good.

So, even when I am having fun exploring levels for enemies and hidden stars, which does happen while playing the game, the hits taken because of the loose controls happen too often for me to unreservedly recommend this title to platformer fans.  Bloo Kid 2 does some things right, though.  There are a decent number of levels here, I like the level designs reasonably well, and the objective system adds a bit of replay value.  I don’t regret buying it.  Still, with very bland design and irritatingly floaty controls, this game is, unfortunately, average to slightly below average overall.  I see quite a few positive reviews of this game out there, but I guess that I’m not as impressed as most.  The controls just are not quite there.  Fix that and this game could have been good, but it’s not.  Maybe on phones people don’t care about good controls, but this is on a Nintendo system.  Also released on iOS, PC (Steam), Ouya, and Nintendo Switch.

Brunch Panic – Developed by Flyhigh Works and published by Circle in 2013.  Brunch Panic is a fairly simple food service puzzle/sim.  You play as a young woman who was just given a van by her grandfather to use as a food truck.  She decides to sell breakfast food, hence the games’ name.  The presentation here is a bit odd, because the visuals are a Japanese attempt at a Western cartoon look and clearly is aimed to be set in America, but the game has Japanese-language voice dialog.  The US release translated the text, but not the voice lines.  Oh well.  The graphics are 2d sprite-based stuff, and unfortunately there is no stereoscopic 3d.  The ingredients are on the lower screen, and the customers waiting at the window for food are on the lower one.

As for the gameplay, in each stage, playing with the stylus, you grab each ingredient, put it together if multiple parts are involved by dragging the sauce onto the ingredient after putting it on the table, and then drag the resulting food up to the window for delivery.  At first the game is very simple, with only bagels and croissants and a pair of sauces that you simply drag to the window with no prep needed other than perhaps a sauce.  You don’t need to toast the bagels or anything, this is a fairly simple game.  The game does get slightly more complex as you proceed, since you will soon get a waffle maker which you need to click on to open, drag a waffle into the waffle maker, and then wait for it to cook.  There is more after that as well, so there is a decent difficulty curve here.  Even so, this game stays very easy for probably too long.  There is some complexity to getting each order right and once in a while I make a mistake and have to redo an order, but thorough the first few worlds this is a mostly simple game that, despite that this is not a kind of game I’ve played much at all in the past, I found myself getting max ratings on almost every level on my first try.

Despite that, the good news is that there are some things to play for. For one, there are unlockables which add cosmetic changes to your van.  You unlock these not through a money system or something, instead they basically are Achievements: if you accomplish certain tasks, you unlock a new cosmetic thing for the van, such as a sign for the top, new colors or patterns, or such.  It’s a nice touch and some of these have requirements that will take a bit more effort than most of the levels do on their own.  Even so, overall Brunch Panic is probably a food-delivering game aimed at beginners at this subgenre.  I kind of am one so I think this game is okay, but it’s probably a bit too simple to be great.  Still, it’s a decent game maybe worth a look.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Color Zen Kids – Developed by Large Animal Games and published by Cypronia in 2014.  As the name suggests, Color Zen Kids is very similar to the original Color Zen, which I covered last year earlier in the first list, but easier. And it is indeed easier; the puzzles in this game, while fun, are generally quite simple and easy to solve. I loved the first Color Zen, it’s a somewhat brilliant puzzle game, but it’s disappointing that its only sequel is this easy-mode title. Just like in the first one, your goal in each puzzle is to make the lower screen the color of the screen border. Playing with the stylus, you can move small colored objects around, and when two collide they turn the color area of the screen they are currently in to their color. You need to figure out the correct order to set off collisions in which will result in the whole screen, with no objects left, being the correct color. As before I love the visual look and gameplay of this title, this is a great game. It’s just really too bad that we never got a sequel which is as challenging as the first one, this game’s great but it is clearly aimed at a younger audience. Still, definitely buy it. It’s fun while it lasts.  Also released on iOS, PC (Steam), and Nintendo Switch.

CosmiBall 3D – New Nintendo 3DS Required. Developed and published by Desk Ink in 2022.  CosmiBall 3D is a very late 3DS release.  It’s a simple but fun 2.5d physics platformer where you play as a ball trying to make your way through floating (in space) courses to a green square that is the end point.  The game plays on both screens, and you will often go back and forth between the two.  Levels scroll horizontally, but not vertically since instead you’ll go between the two screens.  It’s a nice system, though it does highlight that the upper screen has 3D and not the lower one, since this game has nice stereoscopic 3d which you can only really take advantage of half of the time that you are playing. Ah well.

Otherwise, though, this game is an alright, fun time.  You move with the analog stick or d-pad. Control is analog and you gain speed as you move, though your max speed is a bit slow.  This game was designed for accessibility.  At first you can only roll, but after a few levels you get an upgrade that lets you jump with A.  That adds quite a bit to the game.  The jump is slow and floaty, but the game is set in space so it works. You later will get another upgrade that adds a boost button on B. You also can respawn by hitting X.  If you hit respawn when you’re still on the course you will respawn, but your old ball won’t disappear, it will stay on the stage as an obstacle.  That’s a neat touch.  Also you can drop spawn points with Y at any time you’re on the ground on a platform. That’s pretty cool, so when you roll off the course you can choose where you start again from.

The levels start out very simple, but once you get to levels with things like fields that you can only travel straight through with the momentum you entered them with and such the game gets more interesting and physics-puzzle-ey.  I like that.  On the whole, CosmiBall 3D is a simple, fun little game. The graphics are decent and controls alright.  It’s fun enough to play if you like platformers, but certainly doesn’t do anything special. Overall it’s probably a bit above average.  I’d recommend it I guess if you like simple platformers.  There is also a CosmiBall game on the Wii U.  I think it’s the same basic game, with the two screens being your TV and Wii U Gamepad.

Glory of Generals: The Pacific – Developed by EASY Inc. / Easytech and published by Circle in 2015.  This hex-based strategy wargame is a sequel to the first Glory of Generals, and as with the first is an iOS port.  It is very similar to the first one, except as the title suggests it has a Pacific Theater focus this time.  That means that while for the most part this is very similar to the first one, it’s a more complex game since you need to deal with oceans a lot, and moving land troops between islands with ships will be necessary.  They make it relatively easy here, though; this isn’t the most complex strategy game.  There are two main modes, Campaign and Legion.  In either one there are four main campaign scenarios, first the WWII Pacific Theater, then a late 1930s Asia one and two early 1950s ones.  Each will take quite a while. Glory of Generals isn’t like European/World Conqueror, it’s a dramatically better series of legit wargames. It does have a grind component, though, unfortunately.  On mobile this probably required real money, but here you buy stuff with ingame earnings.  In addition to the campaigns, there is also a Headquarters mode where you can spend money you’ve earned on generals and upgrades for your troops.  You do start out with a fair amount of money, at least.

Visually, the game has sprite-based graphics with stereoscopic 3d depth that makes the units appear above the ground.  It’s a nice looking game with good sprite art and maps.  The upper screen has the map, and the lower screen a zoomed out map of the whole area and your interface buttons.  You move the upper screen view with the d-pad and control the cursor with the analog stick. Most functions are done with touch controls.  The controls work well.

As for the differences between Campaign and Legion modes, in either one you choose a scenario, if you have unlocked any beyond WWII Pacific.  In Campaign you then select a side, either Allies (US and allies) or Axis (Japan).  Each has a different a sequence of missions. In each one you have an objective, and once that objective is complete you move on to the next mission.  You have to play the missions in order.  In Legion mode you can select any level from a campaign from the start, they all start out unlocked.  You don’t choose a side here either, instead you choose a general.  You then control that general’s forces only, and not the rest of your alliance, and have 99 turns to defeat all enemy generals.  If you win you move on to the next mission.  Legion mode games have pretty long between-turns waits as you wait for all of your allied forces to be moved by the computer, along with your enemies.  Still, it’s a fun mode.  The AI in this game is okay.

Within missions, you will control a bunch of different troop types.  This isn’t just a pure wargame though, you can build units.  Some missions mostly just have you use the troops you start with, but others do involve building.  So, in addition to moving around your ships, tanks, and soldiers, and converting your land troops to transports via a button for when you need to go island-hopping, you also will build units from bases, somewhat like an Advance Wars game.  As for air forces, you do not directly control planes.  Instead, you just order air attacks or observation flights from airbases, after which a plane will fly over that spot and attack it or such. It works fine.  The game is a good mixture of simple but challenging enough to satisfy most.  Obviously this won’t be enough for serious wargaming fans, but nobody would expect that kind of game on the 3DS.  For this platform this is pretty good. Glory of Generals: The Pacfic is just as good as the first one, and I definitely recommend it.  There was a third game in this series, but it seems to unfortunately have stayed mobile-only.  Oh well.  Also digitally released on iOS.

Horseshoe Crab Rescue! – New Nintendo 3DS Required. Developed and published by Kevin Foley in 2021.  This is an extremely basic $1 game.  Does it have $1 worth of gameplay?  I’m not sure, that’s kind of borderline.  Set on a beach, in this title you click on flipped-over horseshoe crabs in order to put them back on their feet so they won’t be in trouble anymore.  Horseshoe crabs have very interesting big shells, and really aren’t a crab.  Like a turtle, if they flip over they often can’t really flip back without help.  There are 15 stages, each with a certain number of horseshoe crabs to flip back over within a time limit.  You have to play the stages in order, though they are all on the same beach, the game just starts requiring more crabs within a shorter time limit.

Within a stage, the left stick moves you around the moderate-sized beach, and the right analog nub moves the camera if you want to adjust your view.  The default is usually fine. The beach will appear on both screens, though of course only the upper screen is in stereoscopic 3d.  When you find a flipped-over horseshoe crab, touch it with the stylus on the lower screen in order to flip it back over.  Then, continue wandering around looking for more crabs to flip over. There are a lot of crabs on this beach, most not flipped over, so it will take a little searching. You cannot interact with the horseshoe crabs beyond flipping over the ones in trouble, which is probably the right design decision; otherwise people would hurt the beings that this game is about helping.  And that’s the game.  I’d say this might be a dollar’s worth of game, but … maybe not.  It is VERY basic.  It would have been nice if there were a few more horseshoe crab facts included, in addition to the few in the tutorial, but oh well.  It’s quite charming that this game was released at all, it seems to be the developer’s only published game, but it is simple.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Harold Reborn – New Nintendo 3DS Required. Developed and published by Luke Vincent in 2021.  The second of the three 3DS 3d platformers from Luke Vincent, Harold Reborn is an interesting but flawed experience.  You play as Harold from Harold’s Walk, a pretty silly-looking character indeed.  The game has intentionally “bad” graphics.  This is a pretty fast-paced game.  The main view is on the upper screen and is in stereoscopic 3d with lots of depth.  The lower screen shows a useful overhead map of the current area. You run around with the stick. Hold Y to walk, this is important for narrow paths.  You jump and double jump with B, and dash with A. The dash is critical and can also be done in the air to clear large gaps.  You need to be holding a direction on the analog stick to do an air dash, so jump, hold stick direction, dash. The controls feel okay and I like exploring this kind of simple, low-poly 3d landscape.  Occasional pickups are scattered around, including health ups and the things you want to collect.  As for enemies, they are silly things like legs without a body.  You defeat them by jumping on them, classic platformer-style.

This game has a lot more levels than the pretty short first Harold game, which is good; it’s a more full-fledged experience, not a borderline tech-demo like that one is.  However, it still has problems. The most notable problem is the camera.  As you move, the camera constantly bounces up and down with Harold’s footsteps.  Games do not make me nauseous easily and this one doesn’t either, but I can imagine some people having a bad reaction to this effect, particularly given that this game is entirely in full stereoscopic 3d.  It’s a really bad camera bounce effect that holds back the whole game.  I know the developer was going for a very silly style to this game, and that’s fine, but this camera bob goes too far.

Otherwise, this is an okay indie 3d platformer.  It’s great that we have gotten to a point where games like this are possible, in the past indie devs would have stuck to only 2d platformer games and not 3d ones like this.  3d is harder to do well, and this one doesn’t entirely get it right, but if you can stomach the camera there is a decent amount to do here.  Harold Reborn is a simple and flawed but interesting game maybe worth a look if you like amusingly weird games or 3d platformers.  I don’t think I could call it above average, not with its mostly-sparse levels and awful camera, but it’s certainly interesting.  In short, if you only play one Luke Vincent game make it Automaton Lung, it smooths out all of the control and camera issues of these games, but the Harold games are also worth a look for their weirdness.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Murder on the Titanic – Developed by Easy Interactive and published by Joindots in 2012. The original PC version was developed by Suricate Software and published by Bigfish Games earlier that year.  One part hidden object game and one part puzzle game with an adventure game story, Murder on the Titanic is a casual adventure game ported from the PC. It was also on the original DS as well.  You play as the unseen assistant to a professor, and the two of you are on the Titanic during its fateful voyage.  A crew member on board has been murdered, and you two are tasked with finding out who did it.  This is a fictional story with a real-world setting.  After an introduction, the game begins.  The current room or area is shown on both screens, with a zoomed-out view on the upper screen and a zoomed-in regular view on the lower one.  There is some use of stereoscopic 3d on the upper screen, but there could have been more.  You can look around each area with either the analog stick, d-pad, face buttons, or stylus.  The upper screen tells you what you should be looking for with words, and you need to find and touch that thing on the lower screen.

In some scenes you are looking for certain specific objects related to the plot, while others enter hidden-object areas where you need to find a list of random stuff in an image full of things.  The objects you need to find are listed in text, again. If you get stuck you have a limited number of hints which you can use with a life-ring icon on the lower screen. You can also go into your inventory with an icon.  The hidden object minigames are the most common in this title by far, but there are also some other kinds of puzzles.  The first, for instance, is a very easy ‘slide around the blocks to free the one being blocked by the others’ puzzle.  You also will get inventory items you will need to use in specific places.  You can’t wander around the ship, though, only look at each scene, figure out what to do there, and proceed to the next area.  As far as adventure games go this is definitely stripped-down, unfortunately.

Overall, I like adventure games, but have never been much of a hidden object games fan.  Even so, for its genre, Murder on the Titanic is solid. It’s got nice graphics, stereoscopic 3d, okay controls with the stylus, and a good amount of content.  There is a mystery to solve and people to talk to as you try to figure out what happened.  This is a somewhat simplistic title in terms of gameplay, with totally linear design and mostly easy puzzles, but still, the game is alright.  Try not to go down with the ship… Also available on PC and, in Europe only, on the Nintendo DS, though this version is visually enhanced in some ways for the 3DS.  The 3DS version got a physical release in Europe, but here in the US the game is digital-only.  On PC the game’s title is Inspector Magnusson: Murder on the Titanic, and it did have both digital and physical releases.

Noitu Love 2: Devolution – Developed and published by MP2 Games in 2016.  Noitu Love is a run & gun action/platformer.  The first Noitu Love is an indie PC game from the ’00s.  Unlike a lot of indie PC games from that era, Noitu Love isn’t a Newgrounds-style mysanthropic underground-ish title, but something more normal.  You played as a hero saving the world from evil forces with a mixture of platform jumping on keyboard, and dash-attacking left or right or spin-attacking upwards with the mouse.  This sequel is similar, except it’s on consoles now and is much improved over the little freeware PC original.  The controls are similar though, so you use gamepad and stylus together to imitate mouse and keyboard in this 2d side-scrolling platform-action game.  You move around with the d-pad and dash-attack with the stylus.  The movement controls are digital, so you can use the analog stick but shouldn’t.   The game is fast and a lot of fun to play as you zip around defeating your foes. The controls work well if you can find a comfortable way to support the system while playing.  That’s always the flaw with button + stylus games on the DS or 3DS though, if you’re holding it with one hand while playing your hand is going to get tired quickly.  It’s the same here.

Even so, though, Noito Love 2 is definitely a good game.  It’s got nice sprite-based graphics, very responsive controls, good gameplay, good enough level designs, and a good pace. The levels are linear corridors usually focused more on shooting than on platforming, unfortunately, but there are some obstacles to avoid such as giant moving spike barriers, so you will need to platform some as well thankfully.  The sci-fi story is decent enough as well. This game was pretty popular and it’s easy to see why, it’s a good game that deserved its popularity.  For some reason I never got into this game as much as some people, and never finished it, but it’s certainly good.  I think I generally prefer sidescrollers which use buttons only over this kind of button+touch/mouse combo.  I’m not a big fan of Bleed, for example.  Even so, Noitu Love 2 is a game you should pick up for sure.. Also available digitally on PC (Steam) and Wii U, though sadly the Wii U version was deslisted some time ago so you can’t buy it anymore.  The 3DS version is still available, for a few more days at least.

Smash Cat Heroes – Developed and published by Tom Create in 2014.  With cute graphics and a great concept I was hoping that this game would be pretty good, but unfortunately find it fairly mediocre to play.  Smash Cat Heroes is a top-down action game.  You play as one of three adorable cartoon samurai cats, and need to fight against large numbers of enemies attacking you.  Cats are the best!  Each level is an arena consisting of only the two screens and does not scroll most of the time.  After a long time of beating up regular enemies screens sometimes do autoscroll to a second screen where you fight the stage boss, but otherwise each level is what you see, and there’s very little to see because there are almost no obstacles or features in these stages.  Most levels have no to one obstacle and otherwise are just a blank two-screen space with some graphics.

As for the combat, this game has a combo-based combat system but it’s pretty much just a basic button masher.  Most of the time you will just be mashing the attack button and watching your cat repeatedly swinging their weapon identically over and over as you whack the baddies.  Once enemy cats are defeated they are sent flying off the screen, so this game is fortunately not too violent.  You can also dodge-roll with another button and use a super attack if a meter is full.  If you keep hitting different enemies you will build up a combo.  It’s a very bland combo system; sometimes it does reward you with bonuses for doing a long combo, but it really is mostly just ‘mash the button’.  I know that that’s basically the Warriors genre, but those games have a lot more variety than this one does.  The game does provide a decent challenge, as your health goes down fairly quickly when you take damage, particularly from the bosses who are quite deadly, but it’s all so incredibly repetitive that it’s hard to get myself to keep playing.  If you do die you need to restart the level from the beginning. Yeah.

If you do keep playing, though, once you complete a level you can spend the money you earned in each level on upgrades in the shop.  These upgrades increase your stats, so yes, if you get stuck you can grind for money for upgrades.  I don’t think I’ll be doing that, though, the game is a repetitive bland grind that I don’t have much fun with. The graphics are really cute, with cartoon cats all over, but the gameplay?  I’ll pass.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Splat the Difference – Developed and published by Lightwood Games in 2016.  This title is a pretty tricky “find the difference between these two versions of a picture” game.  The game has an impressively large number of images, if it has ever repeated while I play it I haven’t noticed.  The game mechanics are simple.  All you to is touch the screen with the stylus where you notice a difference between the picture on the lower screen and the one on the upper screen or press a shoulder button or the flip icon on screen to flip the two images from one screen to the other if you wish. If you tap in the right spot a paint spot will obscure the difference.  There is a hint icon as well which shows you one difference.  There is a somewhat long timer on the hint button though before you can use it again, so you will only be able to use it once every few rounds in most modes.  Do not touch wrong, the game substantially punishes you for it.  Yes, this game may be easy to play, but you will immediately notice that this game is HARD.  Finding the differences can be difficult, and all modes have timers ticking down. If you run out of time, that’s it, Game Over. And the game will NOT show you what the differences you missed are.  That’s probably good, it extends the playtime since you won’t know what you missed on that image.

The game has several modes on offer, which is nice. It also keeps track of your best score in each mode.  All have the same basic gameplay, but with a little twist in each one.  In Classic, you have a timer on each stage and must find three differences in each picture.  The timer is tight, but it’s long enough that with some focus I was at least able to get a few screens in fairly consistently.  If you beat a screen you get points based on how long finding them took.  If you fail to find all three differences before time runs out it’s Game Over and you lose. Frenzy mode is similar, but ramps the difficulty up even more: you must find one difference on each screen in a very tight timer.  This mode is crazy-hard, I’ve never gotten past completing only one picture.  Casual mode is the easy mode — here there is no timer, so you can keep going for as long as you want pretty much.  There is no score in this mode.  And last, Mirror mode might be the hardest of all, because the image on the upper screen will be mirrored from the one on the lower screen.  Flipping the images can be very helpful here, but you still need to find three differences in a timer about the same as Classic. Tough stuff indeed.

In addition to the single player, Splat the Difference also has a multiplayer mode for local co-op play, which is nice if you know anyone else with a 3DS.  This game is simple and difficult, but if you like this kind of thing at all pick it up.  The game has a lot of pictures to try to figure out differences on so there is plenty here to last for hours.  There isn’t any stereoscopic 3d, but still, it’s fairly good at what it does.  Also released digitally on iOS.

Sudoku Party – Developed and published by Lightwood Games in 2017.  It’s a sudoku game.  It’s got a lot of puzzles, broken up into several difficulty groupings, and some interestingly … aggressively noticeable? music.  The music was a choice, but I guess it gets me interested in playing the game a bit more than I otherwise would.  For the most part though this is standard stuff, but it’s the good kind of standard.  In each puzzle you can earn up to three balloons: one for completing the puzzle, one for completing it in under ten minutes, and one for completing it without using any hints.  The game keeps track of how long it took you to solve each puzzle.  So, the game has a nice hint system which will tell you if you have made any mistakes in number placement, but if you use it you won’t get that balloon.  Otherwise, gameplay here is good as expected: you select a tile with the dpad or stylus, then either put a full-sized large number or small ‘these numbers might work for this tile’ number on the space by touching the number in question.  The large numbers are on the upper right, and small numbers on the lower right. It’s a fun sudoku game with plenty of content.  There’s even multiplayer, including online multiplayer, if you can find a match!  That’s a rare feature for a sudoku game.

However, the game does have one design decision which makes things much easier: while you can place an incorrect large number, you cannot place incorrect small numbers. If you try to put a small number on a space but that number cannot be placed on that space, it will blink red and not be placed.  So, when I said that the game doesn’t let you use hints if you want al three balloon rewards, that is not true; there’s a built-in hint system you cannot disable that blocks you from putting incorrect small numbers on tiles.  And worse, there is NO punishment at all for trying to place small numbers incorrectly! You still could put a wrong number on the board, but this makes it dramatically easier.  While playing this game I am often tempted to just select each tile one after another and press all of the small numbers on each one without paying any attention to the rest of the board until I’m done, because that takes a lot less time than actually working out which numbers can go on each one.  The game seems to have ben designed to encourage this kind of play, too.  It’s a fine option to have, I just wish you could turn it off if you wanted.  Punishing the player for mistakes with time penalties, Picross e-style, also would have worked, but the game doesn’t do that.  Oh well.  Otherwise, with plenty of puzzles and (hard to make use of given the small userbase of this older title) online play, Sudoku Party’s a good time worth a look.  Also available digitally on the Wii U.

Urban Trial Freestyle – Developed by Teyon and published by Tate Multimedia in 2017.  If you were expecting another Trials clone on the 3DS beyond Toy Stunt Bike, well, there is indeed another one, or two rather, in the Urban Trials Freestyle series.  This game is incredibly similar to that one in controls and gameplay, but it has much more detailed graphics for the environments and some gameplay differences.  As in Trials or Toy Stunt Bike, you play as a motorcycle dirtbike rider guy, trying to get through some very tricky courses with your incredibly hard to keep on the ground bike.  You can unlock and buy new clothes and bike colors as you proceed, but at the start the rider is shirtless.  That look for the guy fits the grungy urban style of this game, honestly…  You can accelerate, brake, and reverse with buttons, and steer with the stick.  You also can do stunts in the air by spinning around and such, and will need to.  Each level in this game is a good-length side-scrolling course.  You travel through an environment, with fairly detailed stereoscopic 3d backgrounds behind this flat 2.5d gameplay experience, trying to make it to the end of each course while accomplishing several mission objectives along the way.

First, the controls.  Nearly identically to those other games, your bike is incredibly tippy, and merely pressing down on the accelerator while not holding forward on the stick will cause the bike to instantly wheelie up so much it’ll flip over in a second.  So, you need to use the stick and buttons very carefully in order to stay upright.  The controls are tricky and momentum is important to make it up the various curving slopes and ramps that fill each stage.  This is how all of these games play, but I’ve never entirely loved it; it gets frustrating, I want to just be able to drive forwards without flipping over constantly! That’s not what these games are about, though.  Perhaps that’s why I’ve never played anywhere near as much of any Trials games as one might expect.  If you crash you can restart with a button press from the last checkpoint, of which there are many per stage, but still.

This game is somewhat unique, though, it’s not only a clone.  The question is, will you like its unique element? I’m not sure that I do. It is those missions which differentiate this game from Trials or its other clones.  There may be other games in this subgenre which are like this, but if so I haven’t played them.  Unlike Trials or Toy Stunt Bike, you cannot progress in this game by just completing each stage.  After getting to the end of each stage you get a rating of one to five stars.  Yes, five, not three… rarely seen on the 3DS, heh.  You are graded on completion for one star, but the others require accomplishing certain tasks at certain points in the course well enough.  A specific jump may have markers after it grading you points based on how high you can jump at that spot, for instance.  Or it might grade you for how many stunt points you can get on a big jump or drop.  There are several kinds of objectives, so the variety is nice, but you only get one chance at each mission on each run though a level, no matter how many times you crash and restart, so if you mess up a mission you will need to replay the level from the beginning to try to improve.  This is a relatively short game, with six worlds of four races each, but it’ll take quite a while with each one to actually be able to proceed to the next one so it will feel long.

And lastly, the game has a very cool track builder editor.  You can fully customize a track and save lots of courses.  You can’t fully design the track, it basically gives you a course that you add obstacles to, but it’s still good.  There is no online level trading though, only online high score tables.  Ah well.  At least it does have online high scores!  Overall, Urban Trials Freestyle has decently nice visuals and fine gameplay, but I find the mission-based design not very fun and the controls typically iffy.  This game is okay but average.  Trials fans will want to give it a try.  On the 3DS I’d probably rather play the much more basic looking Toy Stunt Bike though, that doesn’t make me do the missions to advance.  Also released on PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, PC (Steam), and iOS.

Urban Trial Freestyle 2 – Developed by Teyon and published by Tate Multimedia in 2016.  This sequel is very similar to its predecessor, just with new tracks to figure your way through.  This game has twice as many tracks as the first one, and they are all-new.  Otherwise, though, it’s basically the same, see the review above. You play as the same at-first-shirtless guy as before, going through new, trickier courses.  You still must accomplish objectives to proceed in Stunt Mode, that has not changed.   There is also a Time Trial mode where you only need to finish as quickly as possible, but you are meant to play the stages in both modes, not one or the other, and getting those good ratings is still quite difficult.  The graphics are nice, though, and are slightly improved over the original.  They are still in full stereoscopic 3d.  The menus look a little better than the first games’.  The track editor returns, though they did make one very nice addition here — it not only has more objects you can place in the stages, but there is online level trading.  However, it works via basically in-game equivalents to friend codes, so you can only download a stage if you know the code to enter.  That’s incredibly obnoxious.  Ah well.  Other than that, though, this game is mostly just a level pack with a graphical overhaul. If you like the first one definitely pick this one up too.  Otherwise, pick one or the other.  Maybe get this one, it does add a few things to the game.  Overall it’s a bit above average.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Word Logic by POWGI – Developed and published by Lightwood Games in 2016.  Lightwood Games has released many word games on various modern consoles, but only the first two released on 3DS.  These word games have a lot of content but very simple presentation.  Each one has six different word games to challenge yourself with, many quite difficult. I’m going to cover all six so this will be long.  The graphics are very simple, with lines and letters and no stereoscopic 3d.  All of the word puzzles in both of these games could be done with pencil and paper, but they work just as well or better here on the 3DS.  The game has stylus-based controls for the most part, though sometimes the dpad and buttons do something as well, and there are hints in most games that you can enable with L+R.  What the hint does varies depending on the game.  The game keeps track of how long each puzzle took you to finish, but that’s it; there are no extra rewards for not using hints or such.  It’s fine, with how hard these are completing most puzzles at all is quite a task.  Fortunately you can save puzzles in progress so you won’t lose much if you have to stop playing.  Just pause during play and you can save any game as it is.  You can save a separate puzzle in each of the six games, it’s not just one for the whole collection.

First is Kriss Kross. No, not the early ’90s rap group of a similar name, a word puzzle.  This is basically a crossword puzzle where you are given all of the words and need to figure out which word goes in which space on the board.  When you select a word you see the words of that number of letters, and you need to place all of the words so that every word can be placed.  These puzzles start out easy, but do get more challenging later on. It’s nice that something in this game is relatively easy!  Here the hint tells you if you have placed any words incorrectly.

In Ladders, you start with one word and need to turn it into another word by changing one letter at a time.  Each time you change a letter it needs to make a word, so the challenge is in thinking of what words you can make that lead you to change the letters towards the word you need to end up with.  This starts out with relatively easy 3-letter words, but the 4 and 5 letter words are much harder.  There are no hints in this game, good luck.  You can write letters in a box if you don’t want to click on the letter buttons, either works fine.  I find it easier to touch the letter buttons.

Word Sudoku is just like it sounds like, a sudoku game with letters instead of numbers.  This is identical to regular sudoku as there are still only 9 letters used per puzzle. One row or column will spell a 9-letter word that the 9 letters make up.  Other than that though, it’s just sudoku.  You can either use letter buttons in the upper right or draw letters in the lower right, but I’d rather use the buttons.  A button in the corner of the letter grid lets you place small help letters to remind you of which letters could possibly go on a space.  Just like the Sudoku Party above, the game does not allow you to place incorrect small letters and doesn’t punish you for trying to place letters that can’t go in that spot, which makes the game a lot easier if you are stuck.  There is also a hint mode which tells you if you have placed any big letters incorrectly.

Crypto isn’t cryptocurrency, it’s cryptography.  Each puzzle in this mode has a long quote on the upper screen, with a simple letter-substitution cyper making it look like gibberish.  You need to figure out which letter to substitute for each one in order to make the puzzle into the correct quote.  Hint mode here tells you if you have any errors.  This is a good puzzle game which is tricky but fun as you figure out the correct letters.

Wordsweeper is a bit like Minesweeper, but with letters.  It’s not quite as random as minesweeper, though.  In this game some blocks are black and have small letters in them, and others are white blocks for you to put letters in.  The letters in a black block show you what letters are in the white blocks touching that block in any of the 9 directions, including diagonals.  Your challenge is to place all letters and make words as you do so.  I’m a fan of minesweeper, and this has enough of that game in it for me to quite enjoy this.  Wordsweeper is pretty good, as you try to use deduction to figure out where you can place each letter.  It has a good balance of challenge and fun. Hint mode tells if if you’ve placed any letters incorrectly.

Lastly, Gaps is a tricky puzzle game where you need to make a word by finding the missing letters in a bunch of words shown on the upper screen.  So, there is an unknown word, say six letters long, and the game shows six numbered boxes.  Below there are six words, with one letter missing with a _, each with a number.  Each number corresponds to that letter in the hidden word.  Often there are multiple words that can be made by adding one letter into the missing letters in the one-letter-missing words, so your challenge will be finding the ones which work to form the hidden word.  As usual you can either click letter buttons or draw letters on the lower screen, and select which of the letters of the word you are filling in as well.  This is a solid word game, as usual for this collection.

Overall, Word Logic is a good word puzzle game.  There are no traditional crossword puzzles here, but that’s fine, they were trying for some other things.  Of the two Powgi word games on the 3DS, this is the easier one; the game is challenging, but not insane like some puzzles in that game are.  There are 720 puzzles in this game so there is a huge amount of content, too, and it certainly gets harder as you go along.  I definitely recommend this to anyone interested.  Also released digitally on Wii U.

Word Puzzles by POWGI – Developed and published by Lightwood Games in 2016.  This collection is very similar to the other one presentation-wise, just with harder puzzles.  So, you get some of the most basic graphics imaginable which are mostly text, no stereoscopic 3d, and six different quite difficult types of word puzzles to challenge yourself with. In each puzzle you use the stylus to play.  This time you just select words or highlight spaces in a puzzle though, you won’t be entering letters with letter buttons this time.  Somehow this makes the game harder, not easier.  Most games still have a hint you can enable by pressing L+R together.  In some puzzle types the hint is very useful and in others it’s not, it varies.  The game doesn’t punish you for using hints, though it does keep track of your time in each puzzle, but I’m okay with that because with how hard these puzzles can be I’m more just relieved to have completed them at all, if I manage to.  I don’t think there are any extra rewards for finishing puzzles quickly, this is a basic game presentation-wise.  Still, it’s good.  I am going to describe all six games, so this summary will again be long.

First is Word Maze.  This game is a rectangular grid of letters with one word’s worth starting out outlined with black lines.  You need to start from the last letter of that word, find the next word, and continue finding all of the words, each connecting to the end of the last, until the whole maze is filled in.  The maze is on the lower screen, and the upper screen only has the category for words in the current puzzle.  Starting out in these puzzles can be tricky, but since all of the words connect together into a single path it’s not as hard as it looks.  If enabled, the hint in this mode shows a list of words on the upper screen that you are looking for on the lower screen, highlighting the ones you’ve found so far.

The second, and for me hardest, game is Mixups.  Here you have a bunch of letters scattered on the lower screen and three lines on the upper screen for words you need to make with those letter . The game shows how many letters long each word is, and if you enable the hint it shows you the first letter of each word, one word at a time, but that’s the only help you get.  I’m sure some people are good at this but I am not, and despite many tries cannot beat the second puzzle in this mode.   Fortunately you don’t need to play the puzzles in this game in order, you can play the many theme categories within each puzzle type in any order, but still it’s frustrating.

One Word is the third game.  It shows a quote on the upper screen and a grid of letters on the lower screen.  This is a word search, except there is only one word on the lower screen at a time.  So, even once you figure out what the word is, it may be tricky to find since the entire grid is made up of just the letters in that word, but the actual word’s only in one spot on the field.  Each word you find brings you to the next word in the quote.  It’s a solid word game.

Flowers gives you the middle few letters of a word, shown on the upper screen.  A flower-shaped ring around those central letters is there for you to fill in with words.  On the lower screen there are a bunch of pairs of letters.  You need to make words by placing each pair of letters in a spot where it makes a word when ended with the pair of letters on the other side of the flower.  So if HI is in the middle, put TA on one side and NI on the other to make Tahini.  If you need to delete a pair you have placed, you can select them with the d-pad and delete with B to return a pair to the bottom screen.  This is probably one of the easier games in this collection, it’s good.

Three Connected Words puts three circles on the lower screen, each with letters in them.  You need to make three words, with each one including the letters shown within its circle.  Some letters are question marks and you will need to figure out what those letters are from context.  Here the hint fucntion again gives you the first letter of each word.  You can press it up to three times to get all three first letters, and a fourth use gives you the puzzle category.  This is a tricky but fun game.

And last, Crossovers are two-part puzzles.  First, you see a pair of crossing words as if in a crossword puzzle. The letter where the two words cross over is empty and you need to figure out what that letter is, from four the game shows you.  There are no hints here, but you only have four letters for each word to choose from so you can just pick until you find the right one.  The hard part of each puzzle is part two.  Here you need to take the letters you just chose and solve the clue by unscrambling those letters and finding the hidden word you can make from them.  The game gives you a category but that’s it.  There are, unfortunately, no hints here either, one to give you the first letter would have been incredibly helpful.  I’ve always been bad at this and this is no exception, I often get stuck at this point and usually can’t solve the puzzles… ah well.  I am okay at writing, but some elements of English are difficult.  The game does save your progress though, so if you give up it’ll save that you were at the unscramble part and you can go right back in to that step.

Overall, Word Puzzles is a very simple game in terms of presentation, but the amount of content here is quite significant, there are over a hundred puzzles in each of the six modes.  If you like word puzzles definitely pick this game up.  Lightwood Games have made a lot more games like these on the Switch, but I’d much rather play this kind of thing with a stylus so I haven’t bought any of them.  Also released digitally on Wii U.

Yumi’s Odd Odyssey – Developed by Studio Saizensen and published by Natsume in 2014.  A part of the Umihara Kawase series of platformers, as always in this series you play as a girl with a fishing pole who uses it for platforming, not fishing.  This series started on the Super Nintendo in Japan, but this was maybe the first one released here in the West. The game is 2d platformer with nice stereoscopic 3d depth.  In this fantastic platformer, your goal is to use your fishing line as a grappling hook in order to work your way through challenging levels. The fishing line is the key unique feature of this series, and it’s great.  It works as kind of a hybrid grappling hook and bungee cable, as you can hook it on to things and swing around. It’s a fishing line, though, so while you will swing, the controls here are very different from, say, Bionic Commando.  This game is much less straightforward than that one, it is much more of a physics puzzle game.  Trying to figure out what combination of regular jumps and fishing line bouncing will get you to where you need to go in order to complete each level is the order of the day here, and it’s great, challenging fun.  As with all titles in this series, this is more of a platform-jumping game than it is a combat game, but there are foes, all of them various types of sea life. I would say more, but you need to experience this game for yourself.  Yumi’s Odd Odyssey is a great, highly recommended platformer, definitely buy it while you can. Highly recommended!  This 3DS exclusive is a digital exclusive in the West, but got a cart release in Japan.

Funfair Party Games –  Developed by Avanquest Software and published by Joindots in 2013.  This is a minigame collection containing digital versions of eleven popular carnival games.  It has local and online multi-system multiplayer and nice graphics for a downloadable 3DS game.  It has online high scores too, and the high score tables still work, with a local and online top five for each included game. Unfortunately it does NOT have any AI to compete against, so if you’re playing this by yourself it’s a much less interesting experience.  That’s too bad for a handheld title.  The game has two modes per title, with either motion-based or button and stylus-based controls.  Yes, the 3DS has a rarely-used motion sensor in it, did you forget? Arcade mode is motion controls, and Classic is button controls.  The game has nice stereoscopic 3d graphics and usually-decent controls, but is pretty simple.  Most people probably won’t play Funfair Party Games for long, but I imagine some might get into it.  I recommend reading the instructions screen before each game, the controls are not always intuitive so knowing what to press or how to move the system is essential.  Fortunately it is explained in the help.  Always go through the help before entering a game.  I will describe how some of the games control but not all of them.

These are the games. First is Shooting Gallery.  Here you either use motion or the analog stick to aim a popgun, and then try to fire at pig targets moving in a straight line across the screen.  The concept is good, but why are all of the targets identical pigs, that’s a bit bland.  The motion controls are okay, though you will almost certainly want to turn off the 3D slider while using motion since the 3d effect breaks if you move the system much.  You fire then reload by shaking the system.  With buttons, you fire with L and reload by pressing X and then Y.  Yes, it’s X Y L repeat.  Odd.  This game is alright but more target variety would have been good.  Next is Basketball.  It’s one of those ‘shoot the ball in the hoop’ games. Here the motion controls are alright, but with buttons you press L+R to increase shot power.  Actually getting the ball into the hoop is much harder than I’d like, I found it hard to get any shots in at all.  Next is Duck Fishing.  This is a magnetic-line fishing game where you need to grab floating ducks and drop them in shark mouths on either end of a river.  You move left or right on the stick, then zoom in with a shoulder button, which lets you move in all four directions on the current screen.  Get over the magnet on the back of a duck to grab it. This is definitely more fun with motion, where it’s a bit less basic and easy.  With buttons this is forgettable.

High Striker is a ‘how hard can you hit the thing’ game.  You build up power by alternating L and R rapidly, then hit by touching the touchscreen.  It’s harder than it may sound to get a good hit, not bad if you like button-mashing minigames.  I generally don’t.  Can Knockdown is a ball-toss game. The button controls have you aim with the stick, then alternate L and R presses to build power on a meter which otherwise rapidly declines. Press both buttons at the same to throw. These controls are awkward and kind of annoying, but the minigame is otherwise okay.  Claw Crane is a crane game. Use buttons or the touchscreen to move the claw and drop it with a touch.  This is a very difficult crane game where you will have a hard time seeing where to put the claw in order to grab targets.  I hate all claw games, including this one, but the small, narrow perspective of the machine doesn’t help at all either.  Camel Race is a ball-rolling game.  You roll balls up a slope, trying to drop the balls in holes which get you different amounts of points.  The board is empty of obstacles other than the holes you’re rolling towards, but despite this this game is deceptively tricky, it’s easy to roll and miss and have the ball fall off the table.  This is decent fun, though.  Hot Wire is next.  This is one of those ‘try to move the ring along the electric maze without touching the wire, which will shock you a bit’ games.  Irritating Stick (PS1 or N64 versions) is a pretty good videogame one of these, but this one is kind of annoying, as you need to rotate the ring with the shoulder buttons as you move down the wire.  This is a pretty awkward procedure that makes the game quite tough.  Still, it’s okay.

Next is Ball-In-The-Glass. You throw balls into glasses in rows on shelves, with a typically odd buttons-and-stick control scheme.  If you can get used to the controls this game is fun, different glasses give different amounts of points, and you even get points for not landing in a glass.  This is one of the better games, I think.  In Balloon Burst, you toss darts at balloons.  It uses L and R to grab and throw darts, and the stick to aim.  Why does this title like L and R so much for controls, it’s bad.  When you throw it sets off a spinner wheel, and whether your dart goes straight or not depends on where you stop.  This one is okay.  And last, Ballroll is Skee-Ball, the carnival game classic.  This is a good version of Skee-Ball, weird L+R or tilt-based controls aside. It has the expected skee-ball board, and as expected you roll a ball up then try to land it in the holes.  This is different from Camel Race because here the are curving walls in the board which restrict the ball to different areas, depending on how hard you roll it.

Overall, Funfair Party Games is average.  I have issues with a lot of the minigame controls either with the motion or button options, and it’s too bad that there isn’t any AI opponent or high score table at all to compete against, but even so, with nice visuals and a solid variety of games, for cheap this might be a decent way to spend a few minutes.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.  This game had a physical release in Europe, but in the US it is digital-only.

Zombie Slayer Diox – Developed and published by UFO Interactive in 2012.  In this music game you play as a rocker guy fighting zombies with the power of music.  Why in the world would I buy a “do the inputs with perfect timing” music game, when as most people probably know I absolutely hate this genre?  I have no idea, beyond that it is a 3DS game, but the zombie theme doesn’t make me hate this game any less than the rest of its genre, unfortunately.  The catch here is that instead of pressing buttons, you use stylus swipes for your inputs.  You need to do the correct direction slash that matches the symbol on each zombie coming at you, either horizontal, diagonal, or vertical.  Do the right kind of slash at the right moment and you will kill the zombie. Otherwise, you will take a hit.  So yeah I’m hopelessly bad at this, I can’t do timing minigames at all.  If you do like this kind of game consider this one, it’s low budget but otherwise maybe okay.  Personally I hate it. You might not though?  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Rankings for this update

Great!

Yumi’s Odd Odyssey
Noitu Love 2: Devolution

Good to very good

Glory of Generals: The Pacific
Automaton Lung
Color Zen Kids
A-Train 3D: City Simulator
Sudoku Party

They’re alright, maybe good

Harold Reborn
Splat the Difference
Brunch Panic
3D Game Collection
Urban Trial Freestyle
Urban Trial Freestyle 2
Word Logic by POWGI
Word Puzzles by POWGI
CosmiBall 3D
Urban Trial Freestyle
Urban Trial Freestyle 2

Below Average to Subpar

Horseshoe Crab Rescue!
Bloo Kid 2
Blast ’em Bunnies
Murder on the Titanic
Smash Cat Heroes
Funfair Party Games

Bad

Zombie Slayer Diox

It’s finally part ten, and I’ve covered all of the games I started out trying to cover, plus some more!  Is this the last part of this series?

No, I’ve got more games to cover, the many games I’ve bought since I decided on this title list a year ago.  However, there’s no way I’ll cover all of those before the shutdown later this month.  I decides some time ago to not add many titles to this list because of how much longer it would take to cover a lot of games I haven’t played at all.  Even so, I do plan on covering at least some of them. Look forward to coverage of some more 3DS games next week.

For now though, the last games of the original list.

Table of Contents for T to Z – 20 games

Tappingo
Thorium Wars: Attack of the Skyfighter
Touch Battle Tank – Tag Combat
Toy Defense
Toy Stunt Bike
Tumble Pop
Turkey, Please!
Turtle Tale
VectorRacing
Wakedas
Witch & Hero
Witch & Hero II
Witch & Hero III
Worcle Worlds
WordHerd
Word Search 10K
World Conqueror 3D
Zen Pinball 3D
Zombie Incident
Zombie Panic in Wonderland DX

Rankings for this update

The Summaries

Tappingo – Developed by Goodbye Galaxy Games and published by Circle in 2014.  This game is a simple logic puzzle game.  The game has okay but somewhat bland sprite-based graphics with a bit of stereoscopic 3d.  While it has some things in common with some other games on this list, Block-A-Pix most notably, this one is much simpler than that one… too much simpler.  The problem with Tappingo is, it’s a fun enough basic concept, but the game is way too easy and basic to hold my interest for long.  So, each puzzle in this game is an image that you are trying to create, as in Picross, Block-A-Pix, and such.  As in Block-A-Pix or Link-A-Pix, when you enter a puzzle you see a bunch of start points of blocks.  Each block is a certain color and has a number on it. That number represents how many spaces long this color block needs to be in order to complete the puzzle.  A 1 means that the block needs one space in addition to the one it starts on, a two means two, and such.

However, in this game you don’t control how many blocks a block extends to.  Instead, by touching a block and dragging either left, right, up, or down, you tell a block to start sending out blocks in that direction until it hits something.  If it is the correct number of spaces long now the number disappears, but if it is too short or too long you see a number in red telling you how far over it is. Tap on the block to retract it and try sending out blocks in a new order.  The game does not have any kind of error-check function, but it doesn’t need it because once you get the basic concept here, gameplay is easy.  Every block with a number must be extended out the correct number of spaces to complete the puzzle, so if a block is blocked off just undo the blocks around it and try a new order.

The issue here is mostly in how limited what you can do is.  In Block-A-Pix or Link-A-Pix, you can click and drag the blocks to any size you wish as you try to fill in the image.  Here, though, you just choose a direction and send out the line. If it’s the right length it’s good, otherwise retract it and try a new block order.  As a result, pictures start out with a lot of blocks already filled in, and the gameplay is often less of a puzzle and more just of an order-of-operations simulator, as you start at some obvious point and go around the puzzle filling it in as the lines you complete make other blocks able to extend to their correct distances.  The only challenge here is in figuring out which direction to send some of the blocks.  The game does occasionally present glimmers of challenge at the midpoint of solving some puzzles, but it never gets at all difficult.  The game has a lot of puzzles, but the later ones are just bigger, not harder.  Perhaps due to the games’ core design there isn’t much that can be done to actually make the puzzles a challenge, unfortunately.  I love 3DS puzzle games, but Tappingo is a disappointment.  The game is too boringly easy and repetitive to be worth playing for long.  It’s a “puzzle” game where, most of the time, you aren’t actually solving a puzzle, just clicking on lots of little blocks in a usually-obvious order.  Probably skip it.  Nintendo 3DS Digital Exclusive.

Thorium Wars: Attack of the Skyfighter – Published on 3DS by Big John games in 2014.  This is a decent sci-fi flight action game.  You control one of several fighters, flying around planets shooting various alien threats.  This is a simple flight game, not a serious sim. The analog stick controls the ship, two face buttons increase or decrease your speed while you hold the button down, R shoots your guns, L puts a target icon around the nearest enemy though you don’t have any weapons that actually lock on to enemies, and d-pad directions enable turbo boost or weapon change between your two types of guns.  The two guns are a machine gun which auto-fires while you press the trigger and a charge shot that powers up while you hold the trigger down. I prefer the charge shot.  There are only eight missions in this game, so this isn’t a long game, though each one is a decent length so it will last a little while.

The controls are decent, but it is a bit annoying that you don’t have any kind of missile attack and can only shoot at targets straight in front of you.  Slow down, slowly fly towards target, shoot at it, repeat.  You have enough health that you can take a fair number of hits. Enemies are mostly either turrets, barely-moving ground objects, or things which infinitely spawn around you, so you won’t be doing much dogfighting in this game.  You don’t have the space in most missions to circle around for realistic air combat, anyway; you fly close to the ground blasting stuff.  I don’t mind this though, the game is decently fun and plenty of ’90s flight action games work this way, it’s just how Thorium Wars is.

On screen, the upper screen is the game, done in nice stereoscopic 3d, and the lower screen has a map of the surrounding area.  Unfortunately the map does not show the walls or areas that you can go, only your ship, your targets, and a marker showing where your current objective is. The levels are often in slightly mazelike canyons, so despite the objective marker you will sometimes get lost.  There is no time limit, though, so pay attention to the paths and you should make it out.  If you die you have infinite continues from the last checkpoint, which is pretty nice.  However, you can choose between three difficulty levels for each mission, and the game does record which difficulty you played the game on and gives you a medal which varies depending on how many times you died in the mission.  It’s nice that the game does reward you for better play.  Overall, Thorium Wars is a pretty average flight action title, but it’s decently fun if you like this kind of game as I do.  Maybe pick it up.  Nintendo 3DS Digital Exclusive.

Touch Battle Tank – Tag Combat – Published by Circle and developed by SilverStar in 2016.  Circle Pad Pro supported.  Touch Battle Tank is a slightly isometric overhead-view tank action game.  This game is actually the fourth game in its series on the 3DS, but the first three were published by Agetec and all Agetec games were delisted from the 3DS eshop back in 2018, before I had bought any of them, so unfortunately I can’t cover those.  As for this game, though, it has polygonal graphics and decent stereoscopic 3d. You move around with either analog stick and fire with the touch screen. It’s nice that it supports both sticks because this means a left-handed person would be able to play with analog controls too without much of a problem. The controls are good and I really like aiming your shots with the touchscreen, it works great. Your goal in each small, only several-screens-sized level is to destroy all enemy tanks and turrets. Once they are all dead you move on to the next stage. This won’t usually be much of a problem, I often beat levels first try in this game. You have several tanks to choose from, each with different stats, and a good number of stages to play through. Even so this isn’t a long game at all, though, because each level is very short. The game has local multiplayer as well as single player, so if you know anyone else with a 3DS you can play against them, but doesn’t have online play. This is a very simple but fun little game with simple graphics, good controls, and fun but mostly easy gameplay. I don’t think the game will last long, but you may be entertained while it does. I guess I recommend it.  Nintendo 3DS Digital Exclusive.

Toy Defense – Published by Circle and developed by Melesta in 2016.  Toy Defense is an irritatingly grindey tower defense game.  It was first designed for mobile, and removing the microtransactions as they did here only made the game cheaper, not better, unfortunately.  This is one of the most common types of tower defense games, where the enemies move along a preset path and you build towers at certain preset points along the sides of that route. I prefer tower defense games where you build defenses that the enemies have to go around, but this style is good too.  The game has okay graphics and competent tower defense gameplay, but the game has an upgrade system that you spend money you gained in the levels on.  Units also build up experience as they kill enemies, and you can take some troops from level to level as well.  Both of these features may sound good, but unfortunately the game feels way too heavily rigged towards forcing you to play the same levels over and over as you build up enough money to upgrade your troops enough to be competitive in later stages.  At first I tried to just move on to the next level each time that I finished a stage, but got destroyed pretty quickly and initially thought that the game was impossible. It’s not, though; you just need to grind for upgrades.  I hate that, it makes this otherwise fun game really irritating.

I do like the theme here, though.  You control some Army Men-style toys, defending against attacking enemy toys.  You can build several different types of troops, only a few at first and more once you buy them in the shop, and as I said can only place them on the preset spots.  As in all tower defense games each unit has a specific attack range and damage, and different weapons will do better against different enemy troop types, such as flamethrowers being better against infantry.  Combined arms with well-placed units of the correct types will do better than flooding the screen with weaker units, which is nice.  However, some levels get harder by artificially limiting the number of spots you can put units in, emphasizing the focus on grinding for upgrades even more.  Overall, Toy Defense is an okay tower defense game for genre fans, but the heavy focus on grinding is a pain. It’s probably average overall.  It’s a shame that mobile games are so often ruined by grindey, clearly originally meant as microtransaction-bait, nonsense like this.  Oh well.  Also available digitally on iOS, Android, and PC (Steam).

Toy Stunt Bike – Developed and published by Wobbly Tooth Ltd. in 2014.  This game is an indie take on Ubisoft’s popular Trials franchise.  Just like in a Trials game but in stereoscopic 3d, you play as a motorcycle bike rider trying to make it though 2.5d sidescrolling platform-puzzle challenges.  This game started out on Xbox 360 Indie Games, before going to iOS and then here on the 3DS.  Fortunately, unlike some games on this list this one was not ruined by being on smartphones.  You can customize your rider and bike in this game, but start out as a shirtless guy; you will only unlock other clothing and such later.  This is a precision driving game, and you will need to drive just right to get through each level.  You will need to carefully have the exact right throttle speeds and bike rotation in order to get past the challenges without crashing.  The controls in this game are touchy, but once you get used to them this is a fun Trials-style game.  The graphics here are simple, but the visuals do have nice stereoscopic 3d depth.  Just like in Trials, stages have checkpoints in the level.  However, the game is keeping track of your total time, so if it takes you a long time to get through a checkpoint you might want to restart from the beginning if you want a good time on the stage.  The game keeps track of your time on each level.  There are also three collectibles to try to get in each level.  If you’re thinking ‘does this game have a mobile-style three-star system?’… yes, of course it does.  Even so, though, despite the touchy controls and simple graphics, I do think that Toy Stunt Bike is a decently fun time.  I like platformers and racing games, so this combination of the two works well. Recommended.  This game had a sequel, butt unfortunately the second one was not released on 3DS.  There is a third one on the Switch, though.  Also available digitally on iOS, and it was also on Xbox 360 Indie Games.

Tumble Pop [Game Boy Virtual Console] – Published by G-mode in 2012.  The original game was published by SunSoft (licensed from original arcade game developer Data East) in 1993.  I still have my original Game Boy I got back in the early in the ’90s, so I understand that due to screen blur, it’s best for Game Boy platformers to scroll somewhat slowly if you want the player to be able to see what’s going on. However, this game took that way too far.  Tumble Pop is a sidescrolling platform-action game in the Bubble Bobble vein. You play as a guy using a vacuum for a weapon, and need to destroy a certain number of enemies on each level. Once they are all dead, you beat the level and can move on. Unlike Bubble Bobble this is a scrolling game, though, not single screen.  So, over-correcting for the Game Boy’s screen blur, this game is slow, slow, SLOW. Your movement is slow, enemies are slow, and everything here is tediously slow.  The game does have powerups you can purchase in between levels and use, and one of those is a speed-up, but unfortunately it’s not permanent and you can’t afford to have it all the time, so this is only a very temporary improvement.  Even with it the game is still slow, though. On the more positive side the game has password save and even a level editor, and of course with this version you can make savestate saves.  The manual is also extensive and surely copies everything from the original paper manual.

If you do play it, though, Tumble Pop has an overworld, this isn’t just a level-based game.  You can freely move around the overworld. From the overworld you can travel to worlds which have levels and bonus stages in them.  On this map you move along paths which connect the stages, and can only move past each stage once you’ve beaten it.  Worlds have multiple routes and end with a boss at the end, but sadly you will only see the ‘you’ve beaten this world’ flag appear on the overworld map if you beat every single level in the world, so I’m not entirely sure why this is.  Once you enter a level, you move with the dpad and jump and use the vacuum with the buttons.  Once you have an enemy in your vacuum you can shoot it out as an attack, which will follow a downward-curving path.  The number of enemies you suck up at once affects the power of the shot you shoot out If you suck up two or three enemies at once you will shoot out a more powerful shot.  Three is the max power, though.  You can move around with an enemy in the vacuum for a few seconds, but wait too long and it will escape and you will lose a life.

Some people like this game, but I find it incredibly boring and kind of bad.  First, again, movement is very tediously slow.  Everything feels like you’re moving through mud, stages take way too long. Play Bubble Bobble instead of this.  Additionally, your attack feels perhaps overpowered, as most enemies are helpless once you start it up, they will be sucked up.  You can take damage even when using the vacuum, though, because the enemies in stages drop out of certain marked spawn points.  Your best strategy in most levels is to find the right place to stand where the enemies will keep spawning out of each spawn point and wipe them out one after another.  It’s even better if a stage has ones in each direction, because then you can just shoot the ones from one direction at the enemies the other way.  You can just repeat this until they’re all dead, they’ll walk straight into your attack over and over.  But if the level makes you get close to the spawn points, you can be killed unfairly by enemies suddenly appearing behind you.  Even if that happens, though, there isn’t much of a penalty of death.  Oh, and as for those bosses, you need to figure out how to hit them then repeat that until they go down.  Do not expect variation.  This game is playable, but after a few stages I got incredibly bored and barely had the patience to keep going long enough to finish even a single world.  I’m sorry, but I don’t like this game at all, it’s pretty bad.  I love my original Game Boy, but not this game. Skip it.  Also available on Game Boy.  This title is a heavily altered version of an arcade game.

Turkey, Please! – Published by Nostatic Software in 2019.  This is another adventure game in the ____, Please! series.  You once again play as the little girl from the previous games in this very ’80s or’90s-nostalgia-styled title.  As the name suggests this time there is a Thanksgiving setting. Other than that it’s similar to before, so it’s set in the same house and environs, just with Thanksgiving decorations around this time.  You need to help Mom prepare Thanksgiving dinner (while your brother plays videogames in his room, so he’s unhelpful like usual in this series…), so the puzzles involve finding specific ingredients, going to your neighbors’ house to take things from his place, and more.  As before this is a very simplified adventure game, as there are no dialog options, conversations are extremely short and your character rarely speaks, and you can only hold one item at a time.  Once you find the next item you need, you will need to choose between just tossing the item you have on the ground or going back to put it where it originally came from.  Those are your two options.

Despite the simplicity of the design and the small number of locations you can go to, though, the puzzles are plenty tricky.  I definitely found myself stuck during this game more than a few times, since you rarely know where to go to accomplish your current objective or, sometimes, how to get the item.  For instance, you will make a slingshot that shoots brussels sprouts, which you fire by flicking the analog stick. But what should you shoot? You’ll need to figure that out. Fortunately ammo is infinite.  If you want a break, you can also play the videogame in your brothers’ room.  It is a Flappy Bird clone with the dragon from the 3DS/Wii U game Fat Dragons. It’s alright but a bit boring, like usual for Flappy Bird games.  Overall, this is a charming adventure game I recommend. You can play it on other formats but this is a good version.  Also available for PC (Steam) as DLC for the Quiet, Please! collection.

Turtle Tale – Published by Saturnine Games in 2014.  Is this yet another mobile port? If not it sure feels like one.  Turtle Tale is a very simple 2d platformer.  The gameplay here is very plain, but at least this title does have one thing going for it, a very strong stereoscopic 3d effect.  The game is standard 2d side-scrolling platformer with sprite based graphics, but the developers made the background layers look quite far apart. The 3d effect is really noticeable and looks great, I like the depth it adds to the image.  It’s a shame that glasses-free 3d didn’t catch on, it’s a fantastic technology! Other than that there isn’t much to say about Turtle Tale, though.  You play as a cartoon turtle.  In each level you have 100 fruits to collect, and you walk to the right, collect fruits, get checkpoints, and shoot enemies along the way to the goal.  Your gun seems to be a water gun of some kind, but it’s enough to wipe out the various creatures trying to stop you.

The game is playable but, again, extremely plain.  Levels are very basic assortments of platforms and pits.  All levels are straight left-to-right paths made up of basic rectangular platform blocks and enemies, there are no mazes or more complex layouts to be found.  You don’t have a double jump or anything, either, and while some of the controls are responsive, turning around to shoot the other way is not; there’s a noticeable delay when you turn around that often makes hitting an enemy approaching you from behind difficult.  Combine this with the fact that you get knocked back when enemies run into you and that if you fall into a pit or run out of your five hit points you go back to the last checkpoint, and occasionally this game can get annoying. It is quite an easy game on the whole, though, as a little caution should be enough to get you past most obstacles. Just plan ahead when you first see a foe instead of trying to react on the fly and you can shoot them all down easily enough.  Overall, Turtle Tale is a below average game with some of the most basic platforming and shooting around.  The games’ very strong 3d depth effect is neat, but I wish that the game was anywhere near as interesting as the amount of 3d depth is.  Ah well.  Also available digitally on Wii U.

VectorRacing – Published by Arc System Works in 2012 (and perhaps developed by Sweet-Soft?).  Vector Racing is an indie futuristic racing game which is an enhanced version of a smartphone game.  The game has a great visual style with a nice vector-style 3d graphics, but the gameplay is somewhat plain, its mobile roots show.  Visually the game kind of looks like a 3d Virtual Boy game but with color.  I love the wireframe 3d you see here, and the stereoscopic 3d effect is great. The game has simple graphics with no backgrounds at all, only a solid black screen, but the look fits what they were going for well.  There are a decent number of hovercars to choose from as well. For content the game has three cups of four tracks each.  That would be plenty of tracks, but most of them are pretty simple so it feels a bit sparse.  It’s okay, though.  There are several modes, including circuit mode where you play all of the tracks from one of the cups, get points depending on your finishing position, and try to have the most points at the end of each circuit; a single race mode; and more.  For the price point it’s an okay feature set.

The controls are pretty average.  You drive with the stick and accelerate and brake with buttons. And that’s about it; this game doesn’t have a weapon system or anything.  There are boost pads on the tracks which give you a speed-up for a moment after you drive over them, but that’s it.  The game doesn’t have controls as tight as F-Zero or Wipeout and doesn’t have dual airbrakes Wipeout-style, either, so while Vector Racing’s graphical style is great, its gameplay is unfortunately average.  The game can be fun to play as you zoom in nice stereoscopic 3d through wireframe 3d courses, trying to learn the boost pad locations, and the sense of speed is decent, but after not too long I do start to get bored here.  The game is okay, but it doesn’t do anything to keep me coming back for its gameplay, only for its graphics.  Based just on gameplay this is a playable but somewhat bland game with repetitive and simple gameplay.  There is some learning to do as you try to race a better line, but reasonably decent play will do fine, just keep going and you will win most races on the medium difficulty.  VectorRacing is an alright game definitely worth a look for its aesthetic, but with such average gameplay it’s hard to recommend too strongly.  I wish that this game was better, but ah well.  It does look cool at least.  Enhanced remake of an iOS game.

Wakedas – Published by Circle in 2013.  Even if you hate sliding tile puzzles, Wakedas might be worth your time.  This game is a sliding tile puzzle game with a bit of a twist.  Don’t worry, it’s not your classic incredibly frustrating sliding tile puzzle game, in this title the tiles slide as full rows. Each puzzle is a grid, 3×3 for the easy levels, 4×4 for the medium, and 5×5 for the hard ones, made up of different colors.  Your goal is to get all of the blocks of each color in a contiguous group.  The key feature of the game is how you accomplish this: when you move them, the tiles slide around the edges of the edges of the screen. You can control the game with either the d-pad, analog stick, or touch controls, though touch is best of course.  Slide a row vertically or horizontally and the blocks will shift from one side of the puzzle to the other.  Once the tiles are broken up into a few single-color groups, the puzzle is over.  Most puzzles can be completed in a handful of moves.

The game is fine, but simple.  The game starts out easy, and stays that way for perhaps too long.  It does get more challenging over time, though, and there are plenty of puzzles so it is a fair challenge overall.  The game gets harder once the triangular half-block tiles are added that have two different colors on them, those can be tricky to line up.  Additionally, as with so many mobile-style games on this list it does have a three-star system which rewards you for taking fewer moves to complete a puzzle, but it’d be nice if the difficulty curve went up faster, I solve most puzzles first try in under ten moves.  Still, the game has okay sprite-based graphics with solid colors.  The game may be too easy, but its simple but satisfying light puzzle gameplay is above average fun.  I’d probably recommend this title to puzzle game fans.  Don’t expect too much, Wakedas is a simple mobile-style game, but it’s alright to good, maybe pick it up.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Witch & Hero – Published by Circle and developed by FK Digital in 2013.  This game started a trilogy of simple but fun classic-style games.   As with many Circle titles this started out as an Asian mobile game, but this one is good.  The visuals are somewhat NES-inspired, but with a lot more sprites on screen than a NES could have done. The game is framed as being an RPG adventure and it does have a leveling system, but the gameplay is mostly classic arcade-style stuff. This is a top-down action game with Ys-styled bump combat. Each level plays on a single screen, as waves of monsters attack you from all directions. The story is that you play as a hero warrior guy trying to save the day from the demon king or such, so you’re off on an adventure. It’s all somewhat comical. You have a witch companion, but she got turned to stone by a curse. She stays immobile in the center of the screen, and the monsters head at her. You need to keep her alive by killing them first.

For control, you move the hero with the dpad or analog stick, and controls are analog if you use the stick.  You rotate the witch with the L and R buttons for aiming her regular attacks, and use her super magic attack with a face button when a meter is charged.  Again the game has bump combat, so you fight enemies by walking into them.  You will take less damage if you bump enemies on their sides instead of their front.  The hero takes some damage each time you bump an enemy, though.  Once your health runs out you are stunned for a few seconds.  Pressing directions on the pad will speed up your recovery time.  During this time the witch is probably going to take some damage and once she runs out of health you lose and need to try again, so you need to manage offense and defense well to keep the team alive.  Dead monsters drop lots of stuff, including money and meter.  You can bank meter on the hero, and when you go back to the center of the screen and touch the witch it will transfer to her to use for magic attacks.  Each time the regular meter fills she does a regular attack, and when you fill up the additional super meter you can do her super attack.

Overall, Witch & Hero has a well-balanced gameplay system that is a good mixture of fun and challenge. Once all of the monsters in a wave are dead and you’re still alive, you beat the stage and move on to the next one.  The game can be frustrating at times, but you always get money and experience so if you lose you will soon be able to get some more upgrades and beat the level.  The last level is hard, though, but you would expect it to be.

Once you beat a stage, on the world map you can choose a level or go into a shop where you can spend the money you collected in the stage from killing monsters on upgrades for your characters. You can upgrade five things, three for the hero and two for the witch. The game has 20 stages and each upgrade maxes out at 20, and levels don’t take all that long, so as I said the game is on the short side. The gameplay is fun, as you walk around slashing various enemies and then blasting them with magic. The game is definitely on the short side, as there aren’t all that many levels, but the few hours you will spend with the game are worth it. I like the sprite-art graphics as well. Witch & Hero has a silly premise, good controls, solid difficulty balance, and fun gameplay. It is a good game which I I recommend for sure.  Also available digitally for iOS, PC (Steam), and Nintendo Switch.

Witch & Hero II – Developed by Flyhigh Works and published by Circle in 2016.  This time the Hero and Witch are both missing and in trouble. So, you play as the Little Witch and Little Hero and are going on an adventure to save them and defeat all of the monsters along the way. This game plays a lot like the first one. Once again you control two characters at once, though this time you do that more because the Little Witch is not stone most of the time and can move, sometimes. You will still be controlling the Little Hero most of the time, since magic is limited while swords are not and she moves very slowly, but you need to pay attention to both characters’ locations.

The core gameplay is similar to before, with some tweaks. The game consists of a world map with shop, with the same upgrades as the first game, and about the same number of levels as the first game. Each level is a single screen overhead-view action stage, where you move around the screen killing all of the approaching monsters. You move the little hero with the d-pad or analog stick, though you don’t have analog movement this time for some reason, it is digital. That’s odd. Again the game has simple bump combat, so run into the enemies with abandon! … Well, preferably from the back or side, as you will take less damage that way and deal out more. It’s quite fun and rewarding to defeat enemies and watch them drop all kinds of goodies to collect.

For the witch, L switches magic between fire and wind, R activates her super attack, and the ABXY buttons move. You can also change her firing direction with the touch screen. However, you can only move her when using the wind spell. When using the fire spell you can only pivot her around in place. Otherwise the game plays like before, so it’s still quite fun, but sometimes frustrating when you keep getting knocked out and then lose. Still, it’s mostly pretty good stuff. Just like the first one, I finished this game.

And as before the sprite art is nice, the controls good and responsive, and the game fun to play. Witch & Hero II is a simple but fun sequel which improves over its predecessor across the board. I like that you can move the witch now, it makes the game slightly more varied and interesting than the first one, and improves the feeling of having a party instead of just a sole warrior. Witch & Hero II is a good game definitely worth playing. It’ll be a fun few hours.  Also digitally released for iOS and Nintendo Switch.

Witch & Hero III – Published by Circle Entertainment in 2017.  In the third and sadly final entry in the Witch & Hero series, you play as three characters at once: the Hero, Little Hero, and Witch. As in the first game the witch cannot move, is stuck in the center of the screen, and must be protected until she can use magic when you return meter to her. The two warriors, meanwhile, move around the screen fighting the badguys. This game is tricky to get used to because this time you really are playing as two characters at once — the Hero is controlled with the analog stick or d-pad (control is digital either way, though), and the Little Hero with the ABXY buttons. That may sound hard, but the game has optional AI for the Little Hero to help you out. This time, the rest of the controls are touch buttons on the left and right sides of the touchscreen. Here you can change the Little Hero between protecting you, protecting the witch, or standing in place for you to fully control him; use the Witch’s super attack; and change her magic between fire and wind as usual. The game has a few new powerups, including a version of the super attack which pushes enemies back.  This move has a nicely quick timer, so you can use it often, and will need to.

Otherwise, though, the game is the same as before.  You need to kill the enemies with bump combat, collect the many things they drop, return meter to the witch so she can use magic, and repeat.  Because of having two heroes, this game gets more hectic than either previous one, with many more enemies on screen. It gets a bit overwhelming at times in a way the previous games don’t.  I recommend turning on the AI unless you are very good at tracking multiple things on screen at the same time.  And even then, you will need to replay levels for experience and money.  The game is still simple fun, but the added complexity holds it back a bit, I think.  Additionally, I find it annoying that the Little Witch, who can move, was dropped in favoe of just the static original witch, I preferred it when both the male and female characters could move around.  Overall, Witch & Hero III is a good game, but with a higher difficulty level than the previous games and a few drawbacks I liked this game a bit less than the second one.  It relies on grinding a bit too much.  It’s still a good game I recommend playing, though.  I didn’t finish this game, unlike the first two, though I should; it’s still quite fun.  I recommend getting all three Witch & Hero games, this one included.  Due to the increased difficulty I think that this is a fitting conclusion to the trilogy.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Worcle Worlds – Developed and published by Lightwood Games in 2017.  This is a word puzzle game where you make words.  This game basically plays on a one dimensional playfield, in that it plays on a circular line curving around the lower screen.  It may look like a circle, but it’s actually just a curved line because words only can go one way, left to right like standard text. You can’t go backwards or diagonal or anything.  You shoot letters from the center of the screen into the almost-ring around.  You can control the game with d-pad, analog, or touch.  I prefer touch.  If the ring fills up you lose and have to start the stage over.  The game has simple but good enough sprite-based graphics and uses a bit of stereoscopic 3d depth.

The game starts out easy and reasonably fun, but by the midpoint I would say that it gets much more frustrating than fun.  The problem is, you get a random assortment of letters, and whether you can make words or not in the fairly limited amount of space you get — you can only fit a couple dozen letters before it’s Game Over — is a matter of chance.  You must play each letter you are given and may not be able to make anything with them, so expect to restart levels over and over.  The levels are fairly long, too — where I stopped playing is at one where you must make 50 four-letter-or-more words.  My best so far is about 30, which is okay, but once I failed it’s all the way back to the start.  Worcle Worlds starts out as simple fun, but overall I find this game mediocre.  It’s just a bit too limited in word creation and frustrating in how little room for error you get before losing.  It’s average.  Nintendo 3DS Digital Exclusive.

WordHerd – Developed and published by Nellyvision in 2020.  In this word puzzle game starring Mia from Mia’s Picnic (or rather the other way around, this game released a bit before that one), you need to make words. This game is not endless, it is stage-based.  You complete a stage by making a certain number of words.  Letters drop into a screen, like the tiles in a puzzle game, and you need to make words from those tiles.  When you make a word those tiles disappear, making space for new words to fill in the space. If you try to make a word but the word is not accepted, the game turns those letters grey.  If you fail to make a word on that greyed-out letter again, that letter turns dark grey and now it is useless, you cannot make matches with that letter and it is effectively just a block now taking up space.  You start with three health hearts and can take three hits before losing and having to restart the stage.  The game mixes things up eventually by having some other block types drop, such as blocks that take up a space or red letter tiles which you can make a word with but which take away one of your hearts when you make a word with red letters in it. You can remove a block by double-tapping on it as well, but this also takes away a heart.  The core concept here is great and I played many hours of this game; according to my 3DS’s time tracker this is one of my most-played 3DS games.  I beat the game on both Normal and Hard difficulties; Hard makes the game tougher by having to win an additional, harder round at the end of each stage to complete it and move on to the next one.

Unfortunately, those were not all happy hours, because this game is incredibly flawed for one simple reason: the dictionary is unacceptably small!  I can’t even count how many hundreds of times this game blocked my plays because sorry, that word wasn’t in the dictionary.  I got a strong sense that this game was not made by an American, because a lot of American words are missing from this dictionary. Even beyond that, lots of words are missing, period.  It’s ridiculous how many should-be-accepted words don’t work here!  And there’s nothing you can do about it, either — unlike, say, Boggle Plus for the original Game Boy, you cannot view or add to the dictionary.  Yeah, that is a better game than this one for sure. So, do I recommend WordHerd? On the one hand, if you like puzzle games this is a very addictive one. I wouldn’t have played dozens of hours of this game if it wasn’t fun.  But the limited dictionary is so incredibly obnoxious that I can’t entirely recomend it.  There are far, far too many missing words that absolutely should be makeable for this word-making game to be a definite recommendation.  If you do play this game probably don’t play it on Hard, that additional round on each one adds a lot of time to the runtime.  Or at least don’t play on both Normal and Hard as I did.  I guess I do recommend the game overall, though.  Despite many sometimes-unfair failures I kept trying until I completed everything in this game, after all, that says a lot about a game.  Also released digitally on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4.

Word Search 10K – Developed and published by Lightwood Games in 2017.  If you like word searches, well, this is your game.  Instead of being a game with a lot of smaller single-screen word search puzzles, though, instead Word Search 10K is, as the name suggests, a single ludicrously gigantic word search with 10,000 words to find in its dozen-plus-screens-wide-and-deep space.  The game puts part of the field of letters on the lower screen, and a list of words that are on that screen on the upper one.  The biggest problem I have is, that’s only partially true: words that start on the next row of letters just OFF of the screen also often appear on the list!  So, the word you are looking for may or may not actually have any letters on the screen.  This game is tricky like that.

Otherwise though, this is a fairly standard word search, just in gigantic scale.  The puzzle is broken up into blocks, each of which have a theme. So one block is all colors, one things from Indiana Jones movies, and more. There is one big oddity about this game, though: the controls.  As you would expect you select letters to form words with the stylus and scroll around the gigantic puzzle with the analog stick.  The odd thing is, though, that for some bizarre reason, the analog stick’s controls are entirely reversed.  So, you press right on the stick to scroll the screen left, and down to scroll it up.  I do not understand this, but it’s how it is.

Other than that, though, this is a totally fine game which accomplishes what it set out to do.  The graphics are extremely basic, with no stereoscopic 3d and visuals that almost entirely consist of letters and words, and the gameplay is extremely repetitive as all you do is look for words which may or may not actually be on the screen you are currently looking at, but if you like word searches this game certainly should satisfy.  I somewhat lost interest after a while, since this puzzle is so ridiculously big that I’d never have the patience to actually find all of the words and that words are sometimes just off of the screen despite appearing on the word list is very frustrating, but still, Word Search 10K is an okay game I guess.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

World Conqueror 3D – Published by Circle in 2013.  World Conqueror 3D is a World War II turn-based strategy game.  This was the first console game in this previously mobile series.  This game is the predecessor to European Conqueror 3D, a game I covered earlier in this series.  I probably should have covered this game back in that update since I tried to put most series together, but unfortunately I did not.  That is indeed unfortunate because the two games are extremely similar. I would highly recommend going back and reading my summary of European Conqueror 3D, because this game plays the exact same.  The only differences are in which countries you can play as — the United States is in the game this time, most notably — and in the map, which is, as the name suggests, the whole world instead of only Europe.  Other than that, both games play nearly identically.  This previous game in the series is unfortunately just as seriously mechanically broken game as its sequel is . I like the world map, but if you were hoping for better gameplay from this one, well, unfortunately you won’t find that here.  The controls are the same too, so the game still has a mixture of touch and button controls that don’t entirely make sense.

For modes, just like in the last one, you have a general conquest mode where you choose a nation and try to conquer the whole world, and a scenario mode with zoomed-in maps of only parts of the world where you have more limited, though still often time consuming, goals.  There still is no multiplayer and the same bad AI.  The biggest difference is that this time you will be doing a lot more naval combat than in European Conqueror, which adds a bit of complexity to the game, I guess.  Or not; navies here are just land troops that you pay to turn into troops that can go onto land or sea, so for the most part this game is just as simple as the other one is.

To reprise my coverage of the core gameplay from before, this is a turn-based military wargame.  It has stereoscopic 3d depth in that the units stand out above the map below them.  You can play as any of the five major World War II combatants, and some minor nations.  The map is highly stylized so, for instance, the Pacific Ocean is much smaller than it is in reality so Alaska is right next to Japan, but it works.  Once you choose a mode and start up, you will see the land and oceans broken up into territories.  Many of the land territories, and some sea ones, start with troops on them.  The game has a build sub-menu.  Here you can buy troops to place on any province which has facilities that started at or are upgraded to the max, level five.  Here we again get to this series’ biggest flaw, how hard is is to take a province which can build troops due to the seriously flawed design.  You can also buy some other upgrades for your provinces, such as the one to turn an army into a navy that you still can move back onto land at any point to turn it back into an army.  Note, you must pay this fee again EVERY TIME you want to turn an army into a navy, it’s not a one-time fee.  That’s kind of annoying.  As before, there are three types of troops, infantry, tanks, and artillery.  You can only have one type of troops in each territory at a time.

But this is a wargame, so how is the combat?  As I described before, annoyingly slow and broken.  When you attack one army with another, you send up to five units forward.  The enemy sends its first five forward, and a set of die rolls shown on screen determine how many troops each side loses.  Then your turn ends.  So yes, once again each territory’s troops can only do up to 5 damage each turn.  This means that a large army takes a long time to break down.  This becomes even harder on a territory which can build units.  I’ve mentioned this issue repeatedly because it is one of the series’ most defining “features”.  You can build generals to boost your chances, but still it’s a major problem.  Fortunately the AI here is just as bad as it was in the last game so taking advantage of the AI is a good strategy, but still.  Despite the many problems I do find this game fun to play for a while, because I like the genre, but it is far too flawed to recommend.  Play Risk or Axis & Allies instead. With annoyingly long games and fundamentally flawed design, while it is possible to have fun playing this game since some of the ways the game are broken are to your benefit and I do enjoy it sometimes, it could have been a LOT better and I can’t recommend it.  This series started out with mobile games, and unfortunately when it went console with this game it did not improve over mobile “quality”.  Both of these games are, unfortunately, overall failures.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.  I’m not sure how similar this games’ iOS predecessors are.

Zen Pinball 3D – Developed and published by Zen Studios in 2013.  Zen Studios is one of the primary pinball videogame developers, and have been so since the later ’00s, with their Pinball FX / Zen Pinball franchise.  They are probably best known for licensed pinball games, but they have also made original tables, these among them. Zen Pinball 3D is a collection of four tables, all of which previously released on other platforms: El Dorado, Earth Defense, Excalibur, and the very culturally sensitive (hah) Shaman.  All four tables have plenty of options and look like real pinball tables.  The graphics are done in nice stereoscopic 3d, so there is a solid illusion of depth as you look towards the back of the table.  The pinball physics are good, and with four tables there is a good amount of content here.  The paddle controls are responsive as well.

The big problem with this game is, since these tables were not originally designed for the 3DS but were first made for TV systems, down-porting them to this portable means shrinking the size of everything so small that it’s very hard to make out details.  You have eight camera view options to choose between, but all feel a bit too zoomed out to actually make out all of the details on the boards.  The stereoscopic 3d is nice, but the screens’ low resolution is a big problem that the game does little to address.  Tables designed for this screen size and resolution could have worked well, but they didn’t do that here, they just ported console tables over and called it a day.  Oh, and for one more issue, this game had online leaderboards but the servers are down, so that feature doesn’t work anymore.  Too bad.  So, despite being a solid game, I probably don’t recommend Zen Pinball 3D. The tables just are not suited for this screen at all!  You can play it and whack the ball around and hitting ramps isn’t very hard, so you can have some fun, but if you want to actually accomplish table objectives it’ll be difficult.  Everything is just too small to make out all of the details of the tables.  If you want to play Zen Pinball, play a console version of these tables instead.  And probably don’t play Shaman, it’s incredibly stereotypical in quite culturally insensitive ways.  This title is Nintendo 3DS exclusive, but it is a collection of tables also available on PC (Steam), iOS, Android, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and more.

Zombie Incident –  Published by CoderChild in 2015.  This game is an open-exploration-style 2d platformer with simple sprite-based graphics.  This is a modern homebrew game designed for retro platforms, but was also ported to 3DS.  The game is also available on MSX and Colecovision, and this is a faithful port of the original with enhanced graphics, stereoscopic depth, and an on-screen map on the lower screen.  You play as a girl fighting zombies.  The game has very small sprites, but looks decently nice. I will say though, the title screen has a detailed image of the girl, drawn in an anime style and wearing a bikini top and shorts, but the in-game sprite is not exactly like that, you’re only a handful of pixels tall.  Yes, this is one of those games that tries some somewhat false advertising to sell based on an oversexed title screen, but at least the game is good beyond that.  There are a certain number of zombies on each screen, and your goal is to kill all of them in each screen of the game world.  This task will be quite challenging though, because you can only damage them by jumping on them and it is quite easy to take hits.  You have a long health bar and can take dozens of hits before it’s Game Over, but it is quite difficult to replenish health so this isn’t much of a relief.  You see, the only way to replenish those quickly-lost health points is to clear all zombies from a screen.  Once you kill all of a screen’s zombies, you get a couple of hit points back.  So if you lose a lot of health somewhere it’s probably a much better decision to just die and try again from the last time the game saved than to keep going, you will need that health.  The controls are reasonably responsive, but it can be difficult to not end up taking hits when you are trying to land on an enemy’s head.

Making it harder to kill the zombies, different types of foes have different levels, and you can only kill enemies of your level or below.  You will need to level up by killing zombies you can kill in order to be able to defeat the tougher ones.  And just killing the ones you can kill for now doesn’t get you any health recovery.  The game does save exactly which enemies are dead, though, which is pretty nice.  Once an enemy is defeated it stays that way, permanently.  To help you out, on the lower screen map, not only does it show where each screen connects to each other screen, but the tile colors indicate whether you can defeat any enemies on that screen right now.  Blue tiles mean that all enemies on that screen are defeated; tiles where there are still enemies you can currently defeat are green; and red tiles have exclusively enemies you can’t defeat yet.  A yellow tile is your current location.  Your goal in the game is to find eight rooms which have a pillar with a yellow (golden?) star on them.  Find all eight yellow stars and you beat the game.  The game autosaves when you collect a yellow star.  It may also save when you enter a room which previously contained a star.

The game doesn’t heal you at all when it saves, though, so this is definitely a game you will be starting over from the beginning more than once.  After all, you get Game Over when you run out of health and go back to the last time you saved, losing all progress since then.  Your health is precious.  The game world is relatively small, but it is large enough that exploring the world will take some time considering that you will need to be careful as you go if you want to stay alive and not take too much damage to be able to continue.  Overall, Zombie Incident is an above-average classic-style game which definitely gets some bonus points for not just being a simple modern classic-style platformer, but actually also releasing on some retro platforms.  Other than slightly more detailed sprites and stereoscopic backgrounds, this seems to be the same exact game on all formats, which is impressive for the MSX or Colecovision.  The game has issues, most notably with its difficulty but somewhat also with how easy it is to take hits while jumping, but I do like it overall. Perhaps pick it up.  Also released (as an unofficial modern homebrew game) for Colecovision and MSX.

Zombie Panic in Wonderland DX – This is a light-gun-ish shooter which, gameplay-wise, is a lot like Cabal on the NES or Wild Guns for SNES.  The game first released on WiiWare, and this 3DS version is an enhanced version of the original.  Of course the game doesn’t support a real light gun, this is the 3DS, but it does have very nice stereoscopic 3d graphics with good art design and nice-looking stages.  I don’t like the gameplay here as much as the graphics, though. This game is okay, but it has some design issues.  The core concept is that you control a character on the bottom of the screen and shoot at enemies.  Yeah, it’s very much like Cabal.  You move left and right with the analog stick when not shooting, and when shooting stand in place and the stick instead moves a cursor around the screen.  With buttons you can move left and right while shooting as well to dodge attacks.  You also have a super attack.  Each stage is a slightly scrolling area.  Enemies appear from various preset locations, and you will need to learn those enemy patterns in order to avoid their attacks and stay alive.  You beat each level when you reach a certain percent of enemies killed, and die after taking a few hits.  In the main game, you play as Momotarou, the peach boy of Japanese legend.  You cannot save in this mode and must play the entire thing in one go without dying, which is a major cause of the games’ problems.  Each level is long and difficult, good luck with this one.

The game has two modes, Story and Arcade.  Story is the main mode.  Story mode has cutscenes between stages, and must be played in one go, without saving or continues.  Take a couple of hits and it’s Game Over, start again from the beginning.  It’s crazy punishing.  You also must play as Momotarou in this mode and cannot change characters. If you beat levels in Story mode you unlock them in Arcade mode, which is a single-stage mode.  Here, you can play as a variety of characters, including Momotarou or several mostly female characters you will unlock as you complete the stages.  I really wish that you could play as the other characters in the main mode, but sadly you cannot.  You can beat stages here, but have to play the main mode in order to actually proceed.  And there you, again, can’t really save, which is ridiculous for a game as difficult and memorization-heavy as this one.  I liked playing Zombie Panic in Wonderland at first, as the shooting action feels nice as you blast away scenery and enemies, and the graphics are very nice with great stereoscopic 3d, but the main mode got too hard a few levels in for me to want to keep starting over.  It’s also pretty annoying that you can’t change characters in the main mode, when the others are in the game and there isn’t much of a storyline reason to not let you switch to the other ones you’ve unlocked.

Overall, I like Cabal on the NES, but despite the entertainingly nice graphical design here I would rather play that game than this one, it’s definitely more fun.  With some changes this game could have been pretty good, but unfortunately as it is it’s an overly frustrating game that I would call strictly average.  Pick up Zombie Panic in Wonderland DX if you like hard shooters.  Otherwise, skip it.  Also available, also digital only, on the Nintendo Wii (WiiWare) and the Nintendo Switch.

Rankings for this update

Great

(none)

Good

Witch & Hero II
Witch & Hero
Toy Stunt Bike
Witch & Hero III
Turkey, Please!
Wakedas

Average

Thorium Wars: Attack of the Skyfighter
VectorRacing
WordHerd
Worcle Worlds
Tappingo
Zen Pinball 3D
Zombie Panic in Wonderland DX
Touch Battle Tank – Tag Combat
Zombie Incident
Word Search 10K
Turtle Tale

Poor to Bad

Toy Defense
Tumble Pop
World Conqueror 3D

Yes, I got the next update done already!  I definitely wanted to make sure I finished this update while the store was still up, it’s got a lot of fantastic games covered.

Table of Contents for this update

Parascientific Escape: Crossing at the Farthest Horizon
Parascientific Escape: Cruise in the Distant Seas
Parascientific Escape: Gear Detective
Parking Star 3D
Pazuru
Phasmophobia: Hall of Specters 3D
Phil’s Epic FIll-a-Pix Adventure
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Spirit of Justice
Pic-a-Pix Color
Picross 3D Round 2
Picross e
Picross e2
Picross e3
Picross e4
Picross e5
PICROSS e6
Picross e7
Picross e8
Ping Pong Trick Shot
Ping Pong Trick Shot 2
Pirate Pop Plus
Pocket Card Jockey
Psycho Pigs
Pushmo
Puzzle Labyrinth
PUZZLEBOX setup

The Summaries for letter P – 29 games

Parascientific Escape: Cruise in the Distant Seas – Published by Circle and developed by Intense in 2015.  This is a somewhat simple but great adventure game.  You play as a girl in a group of girls stuck on a sinking cruise liner, and you need to figure out how to get off alive. The game has a first-person viewpoint, with prerendered rooms which you view and can interact with with the stylus on the lower screen.  You will collect items and use your abilities in order to solve puzzles.  While inspired by escape rooms and such, though, you can’t actually lose in this game, which I at least really like. I don’t like the pressure of having a time limit before your character dies or something, so this game, which has the tension of that kind of setup but doesn’t have the actual danger, is perfect. As the name suggests, the main character has psychic powers. She’s able to use several different abilities, and you will need to use them in the right places in order to solve the puzzles. Now, this is a small download-only title, so it is not especially long. The difficulty level is also somewhat moderate.  There are some tricky puzzles, sure, but for the most part this game isn’t that hard.  That was entirely fine with me, though, and I really liked this game. The four girls are all good, interesting characters, the puzzles are fun to figure out, and the visuals and setting are good.  I would say more, but I don’t want to spoil the story! I highly recommend any adventure game fan should get this game while you can.  I’d say that it is a fun little adventure that probably won’t take too long and is lots of fun while it lasts.  The game did well enough to get two sequels.  I like this first one the best, though.  It’s great.    Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Parascientific Escape: Gear Detective – Published by Circle and developed by Intense in 2016.  This title is a sequel to the one above.  This game has similar gameplay to the first one, but makes a lot of changes along the way.  Most notably, this time you play as a guy detective.  He’s got a sidekick girl who likes him.  Additionally, you aren’t stuck in an escape room-style setup this time. Instead you’re a young detective, as the name suggests, with a detective’s office.  Of course, you’re about to be pulled into a dangerous mystery. This is still an adventure game with psychic powers and items to collect, though, so apart from the change in setting and characters the core gameplay is familiar.  This game has a bit more consequences for failure than the first one, so I guess other people didn’t like that you couldn’t actually lose in the first game. I liked it better that way, but still this is a good adventure game well worth getting.  It’s cheap, good, and, again, entirely 3DS exclusive.

Parascientific Escape: Crossing at the Farthest Horizon – Published by Circle and developed by Intense in 2017.  The third and final Parascientific Escape game brings back both protagonists from the first two games, and switch between them at points in the story.  This game feels a bit more ambitious than the previous ones and has some good puzzles.  As with the second game it definitely has choices that can lead to a bad ending. I don’t like that kind of pressure, probably unlike most people, but still this is a good adventure game with an interesting story, good characters, and nice visuals.  As usual the psychic powers thing is a somewhat gimmicky puzzle-solving mechanic for the most part, but still this is a good adventure game I certainly recommend picking up while you can. This trilogy, based entirely around stylus-based precise touch controls, would not control anywhere near as well on the Switch as they do on 3DS, but even so it’s a shame that the series hasn’t returned.  I like all three of these games quite a bit, they’re short-ish but well made and very fun adventure games that any genre fan should definitely play.  Everyone knows the Ace Attorney series, but this series of smaller titles shouldn’t be forgotten. Pick them up.  3DS exclusive.  Buy it.   Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Parking Star 3D – Published by Circle and developed by Easytech in 2014.  This game is a driving puzzle game, but definitely not a racing game.  It feels like a mobile port, but it’s alright.  As the name suggests, this is more of a simulator, a parking simulator in specific. Using either button or touch controls, and the best option is a mixture of both, you try to park a car.  The controls are on the lower screen, and the fairly basic 2d overhead-view graphics on the upper screen. The game makes minimal use of stereoscopic 3d, unfortunately.  It is there, but not much of it.  In each level, your challenge is to park in a specific parking space, fully in the space with the parking space lines showing on all sides of the car, without hitting more than one thing.  You can bump one thing and keep going, at a cost of rating for the requisite three-star rating system seemingly all mobile games use, but a second bump means you fail, try again.

The controls are simple but take a little getting used to.  You have a forward or reverse lever, either on the dpad, face buttons, or on the right of the touch screen; the wheel, either on the touchscreen (preferred!) or on the analog stick; and a brake, either on the left of the toughscreen or on the shoulder buttons.  Using touch for the steering is preferred because you don’t turn the car like a normal car in a videogame.  Instead, you have to spin it as if it was a wheel, even with the stick.  This works well with the touch controls, just turn that wheel with the stylus.  It feels very odd to be rotating your analog stick around in circles, though, but that’s what you have to do here.  Yeah.  As with a real wheel it stops at certain points once you’ve turned the wheels as far as they can go, and then you will need to turn it back around.  The wheel doesn’t auto-center at all, it stays exactly where you leave it.  As for speed control, you can adjust your speed kind of, but it doesn’t feel fully analog.  For reverse basically you move at a standard speed as soon as you go into reverse, stopping when you let off it.  For forwards you can kind of control your speed, but you mostly have a speed you go at.  Fortunately, it is slow enough to work. Once you figure out the controls this game plays fine, as you go forward and back and turn in order to work your way into each parking space.  There are plenty of puzzles on offer.  It’s a decently average little game that you might want to pick up if it sounds interesting.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive, as far as I know.

Pazuru – Published by Joindots in 2015.  Pazuru is a puzzle game with one-button controls. This is baasically one of those bounce-the-light-on-angled-mirrors games, but with a bouncing ball and a timing element. The game plays on the upper screen, has basic sprite graphics, and doesn’t use any stereoscopic 3d, so it is certainly technically unimpressive. The gameplay is plenty challenging and interesting, though, so it may be of interest. This game has a light Japanese ninja theme, but mostly you are just watching an object bounce around the upper screen. Whenever you hit the A button, objects change depending on their type. Some angled blocks will turn on and off each time you hit the button, others will rotate each time you press it, and such. Each puzzle is a single screen and there are several gold shurikens scattered around that you are trying to collect all of with a single try. The challenge is, there are multiple exits scattered around the level, so you will need to hit the button with the correct timing to make everything line up correctly so you don’t end up in one before getting them all. After completing each level you get a rating on the standard mobile game three-start system Based on your time and if you got them all and such. Pazuru is simple, and probably is a mobile port, but it’s a decent puzzle game and is average or slightly above that.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Phasmophobia: Hall of Specters 3D – Published by In-D Gaming in 2019. New Nintendo 3DS required. This title is an extremely simple and short little game jam demo that you pay for, basically. It’s kind of neat though. This game is someones’ attempt to make a 3d, first-person take on Pac-Man. On the upper screen you see the first person view, and on the lower screen a map of the maze. It’s the standard Pac-Man maze. The map shows your location and the locations of the four ghosts. In this maze, you need to explore around and collect 12 pages attached to the walls. The pages are NOT marked on the map, so you will need to look around and find them. If you get caught by a ghost you lose a life, three lives and it’s game over. You move with the left stick and aim with the right analog nub. I kind of hate the analog nub, so it’s unfortunate that this game doesn’t have touch aiming, but sadly it does not. It also doesn’t have stereoscopic 3d; despite requiring the New 3DS, this game looks the same with the 3d slider up or down. Too bad.

If you can manage the camera stick the controls are alright, though this is about as basic a 3d environment as you will see on 3DS, but there’s literally minutes of gameplay here — there is only one level. You will definitely die several times before beating the level, but once you beat it the only other thing to do is Insanity mode, where you have only one life and a time limit. That only took me a few minutes more and with that the game was done. There is very low replay value here, it really is a techdemo. It’s cheap, can be fun to play, and it’s cool that it got released at all, but still, I’m not sure if it’s worth buying or not. Do you not mind buying one of the shortest games on the system in order to support an indie game jam project that actually got released on the eshop? I don’t regret buying it, but make your own choice.  Also released on Android and PC/Mac/Linux (itch.io). Note that while there is a PC/Mac/Linux (Steam) game named Phasmophobia, that is an entirely different game by a different developer.

Phil’s Epic Fill-a-Pix Adventure – Published by Lightwood Games in 2017. This third party somewhat Minesweeper-meets-Picross game is a huge disappointment.  This game has over a hundred huge, scrolling puzzles.  Numbers around the field tell you how many blocks next to each space need to be filled in. Picross-style you either fill in spaces or don’t, there aren’t multiple colors.  The concept is sound, I love both Picross and Minesweeper so sort of combining the two is a good idea.  Sadly, but you won’t want to try to solve these puzzles.   Of all 3DS puzzle games I have played, this is the only one at all like this which is missing something critical.  You see, this puzzle game… has button-only controls.  And I mean it has NO stylus support, not even in menus.  On the 3DS. I have no idea at all what the developers were thinking, but who would want button-only controls in a 3DS puzzle game like this? Why would anyone actually publish a puzzle game like this on 3DS with no stylus support? The game concept is great and is exactly my kind of thing, I love both Picross and Minesweeper and this is a nice cross of the two, but without stylus support my interest in the game goes way, WAY down. I don’t know how this happened, but it should not have been released like this. Skip this mess. This is the same publisher who released the pretty good ____-A-Pix games and this released after Pic-a-Pix Color (below), so I have no idea what happened with this one, but don’t buy it.  Also on Vita, PS4, and Nintendo Switch.

The Phoenix Wright series – The four titles released in 2013, 2014, 2016, and 2017.  Four Phoenix Wright games, including a collection of the three GBA games and three standalone releases, released in the US on 3DS, and two more in Japan-only, though they did finally get Western releases on Switch. I was going to cover these, but … I’ve still never played any of them, and I don’t think I could cover them now in the depth any fans would want. So I won’t. I will only say that these games are very good versions of these popular adventure games, and that these games are digial-only in America and are ideally suited for this system. With touch controls designed for a stylus touchscreen like this and stereoscopic 3d graphics that are much improved over those in the GBA and/or DS versions of the games which are ports from the previous generation, these are probably the best way to play the games. They have some DLC as well.   I don’t think any are 3DS exclusive.

Pic-a-Pix Color – Developed by Lightwood Games in 2017. Pic-a-Pix Color is a good, and pretty interesting, Picross clone. The main unique feature here is that unlike official Picross, the tiles in this came are in multiple colors. You switch between colors with L and R, and play with the stylus (or buttons if you really want). Because there are multiple colors, this makes for a pretty different game from classic Picross because different colors can be contiguous. So, where in regular Picross there are always white spaces in between the black blocks you carve out, Pic-a-Pix Color puzzles can have a string of differently-colored blocks that are all touching, without there definitely being spaces in between. I love Picross so this is a pretty neat take on the genre. The controls and gameplay are just as you’d expect. As wtih all of the ____-a-Pix games, you have a button that will tell you if you have any errors in the puzzle, and gives you the option of correcting mistakes if you wish. And as wtih all of these games, you get a gold medal after completing each puzzle if you don’t use the autocorrect feature. You can use the ‘how many errors are there?’ feature as many times as you want, that’s fine and isn’t punished at all, and as usual this is easy to abuse if you wish. The game does keep track of how long it took you to solve each puzzle but the only medals are for not using error correction. That is somewhat unfortunate, but even so this is a good Picross-style game with a nice twist.

And, it doesn’t end with the puzzles included: unlike the other ___-a-Pix games, this one has DLC. There are several dozen $2 puzzle collections available, and if you want to play them on 3DS, and I at least definitely do, buy them before 3DS purchasing shuts down. I wish that the other games in this series also had DLC, it’s unfortunate that they do not, but hey, I’ll take what I can get and like this game for sure. It has solid puzzle gameplay, a lot of content, and is definitely worth buying. Its DLC is as well. Also on Wii U, PS4, Vita, and Nintendo Switch.  Personally I would much rather play it on this system than any of those due to the combination of stylus controls and portability.

Picross 3D Round 2 – Developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo in 2016. This title is the second and sadly so far last Picross 3D title. This sequel to the original Nintendo DS game is fantastic, but unfortunately is cut down and lacking in features compared to its exceptional predecessor. The first Picross 3D is my favorite game for the DS, but this one is “merely” a very good game. On the positive side, the graphics here are very nice with good stereoscopic 3d, the puzzles are interesting, and there is a fair amount of content. However, the first game had a puzzle editor and lots of downloadable levels that you could download for free. Of course you can’t download anything in the original DS game now, but even so it still has more content than this one, and that puzzle creator. This game doesn’t have any of that. It has fewer puzzles built in, too. I love that the game is in actual 3d now, and the gameplay of chopping out the blocks of a 3d cube to make a picture is as amazingly fun and rewarding as ever. It’s just really sad that this game is so cut back versus the first one. This game had a physical release in some regions, but unfortunately not in America, so it is on this list. This is one of the best download-only 3DS games here, but it’s a pale shadow of its amazing Nintendo DS predecessor.

Picross e – Developed by Jupiter and published by Nintendo in 2013. I’m something of a Picross addict, and have slowly been playing through the 3DS Picross series, one game at a time. I’ve finished every puzzle in the first four games now, and have played a lot of several more. This series slowly improved over time, but all of the games are well worth playing if you like Picross. Picross, or picture crosswords, are nonogram puzzles which are simple and yet challenging. The board is a grid of squares. Numbers along the left and top sides of the screen show you how many tiles in each row need to be carved out. Picross is simple, since tiles are all either white, uncarved, or black, carved out. The grids can get large, particularly in later titles in the series, but the core is simple and approachable. You just need to figure out which tiles need to be touched by using logic, deduction, and, if you get stuck, guesswork. The game has a timer, and if you try to touch the wrong tile time gets added to clock. With each mistake more time gets added than the last time you guessed wrong. If you complete the level in under an hour of time, you win, get to see the image in color, and it is considered completed. Take longer than that and you will need to try again. Each Picross e titles breaks its puzzles up into several categories, and if you complete all puzzles in each mode a medal appears on the main menu showing that you have completed it.

This first game has 15 Easy puzzles of sizes 5×5 to 10×10, 60 Normal puzzles of sizes 10×10 and 15×15, and 60 Free Mode puzzles also of sizes 10×10 and 15×15. Free Mode is harder since you aren’t allowed to use hints while playing any of these puzzles. Most later games only have three Free Mode puzzles on each 15-puzzle page, but this one has more. And lastly, the game has 15 Extra mode puzzles, also 10×10 and 15×15. This game doesn’t have as many puzzles as the later ones and the maximum size is relatively small, so it’s a good starting point.

The core systems are similar across both this series and the several other licensed Picross titles, including the Hello Kitty one, the Pokemon one, and the mini Zelda Twilight Princess one, but they do add new features over time. The core controls are the same, but the later titles add larger puzzles, new modes, more puzzles, and some control improvements that make the games a little easier to use. However, start from the first one and it will feel good. This first game may not have the large images or such, but it does have plenty of puzzles mostly in smaller sizes, so it’s a perfect starting point for new Picross players. Buy all of these. If you’re only getting one the later ones are better, they add things like marking if you used any hints when you solve the puzzles instead of only ‘did it take you under an hour or not’ and improve the controls a bit, but such, but I at least say, get all of them! It’s great.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Picross e2 – Developed by Jupiter and published by Nintendo in 2013. Picross e2 is very similar to the first one, but with new puzzles. The number and block size of puzzles in the Easy, Normal, Free, and Extra categories are all identical to the first game, so you have 15 Easy puzzles, 60 puzzles each for Normal and Free, and 15 Extra puzzles, and a 15×15 max puzzle size. Additionally though, the new Micross mode is added. Micross puzzles have you making a famous work of art. The artwork is broken up into a grid of 8×8 tiles, some of which will be empty and some of which contain parts of the image. You touch each tile to start that puzzle, then try to figure out that block. Each block of the artwork is, as with the main puzzle, only 8×8, so these puzzles are easier to solve than the regular one. This game comes with five Micross puzzles, a nice amount. I like Micross mode, it’s fun seeing the larger image come together.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Picross e3 – Developed by Jupiter and published by Nintendo in 2013. Developed by Jupiter and published by Nintendo in 2015The third Picross e game again is based off of the first one with new puzzles. You get fewer regular puzzles this time, though, unfortunately. This time you get 15 Easy puzzles (5×5 and 10×10), 45 Normal puzzles (10×10 and 15×15), 45 Free puzzles (10×10 and 15×15), 15 Extra puzzles (all 15×15), and 30 puzzles in the new Mega Picross mode, in sizes of 10×10 and 15×15. Micross sadly doesn’t make an appearance in this game. It is missed.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Mega Picross somewhat makes up for the lack of puzzles in this entry, though, because these puzzles are harder than those in the other modes due to reduced information. You see, in a Mega Picross puzzle some rows are combined into paired rows. You will see only the block totals for both rows or columns combined, instead of for each one separately. Additionally, some numbers, in a black outline, are for a group of blocks which go across both rows in this group. Regular numbers are only in one lane or the other, as marked, and will never be directly touching another row. This makes solving the puzzles much trickier, as you can’t X out blocks nearly as easily because you could go sideways instead of just up and down. If that sounds a little complex, well, Mega Picross can be a bit frustrating sometimes because of how much harder it can be to figure out what you can X out or chip away. Still, it was a good addition and this is a good game. I wish it had more regular puzzles and some Micross, though.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Picross e4 – Developed by Jupiter and published by Nintendo in 2014. For the new year, this game mixes up the menu system a bit. Now, the Easy and Normal categories are combined into one mode just called [Regular] Picross. This mode has 105 puzzles of sizes 5×5 to 20×15, so a new larger puzzle size has been added. Three puzzles on each page of 15 are Free mode puzzles, the rest regular ones where the game docks you time for each mistake. This 20×15 size would be the largest size in the Picross e series. You also get two Micross puzzles, 45 Mega Picross puzzles of sizes up to 15×15, and 15 bonus puzzles, five of which unlock for each of the first three Picross e games that you own on your 3DS. Considering how muchl onger Mega Picross puzzles take and that the new size is larger, this game has a solid amount of content.

You get some new options, too — from Picross e4 on, in this series you have Hint Number Auto-Check, Hint Roulette, and ? Navigation options on the pause menu. If you turn the first of those options off the game will no longer tell you if you make mistakes, or dock you time if you do so. If you turn the second off, the game will stop asking before every puzzle if you want to have it start out by filling in one row and one column. And if you turn the third off, the hint mode will be disabled even on puzzles where you are allowed to use it. There are some nice new features here.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Picross e5 – Developed by Jupiter and published by Nintendo in 2014. This second 2014 Picross game is very similar to its predecessor, though with a bit of a graphical improvement; the on-screen interface looks a little better than it did before. This title has 120 regular Picross puzzles in sizes of 5×5 to 20×15, with three Free mode puzzles per 15-puzzle page; three Micross puzzles; 30 Mega Picross puzzles in sizes of 5×5 to 15×15; and 15 puzzles that unlock if you have the first three Picross e titles. Yes, it’s always just the first three that unlock bonus puzzles. It’s another great entry in this series.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Picross e6 – Developed by Jupiter and published by Nintendo in 2015. At this point, Picross e became a yearly series instead of one more frequent. This game has 150 regular Picross puzzles in sizes of 5×5 to 20×15, 150 Mega Picross puzzles in sizes of 5×5 to 20×15, three Micross puzzles, and 15 puzzles which unlock if you have the first three Picross e titles. This may sound like a huge number of puzzles, but the last three Picross e games “cheat” by not actually making new puzzles for Mega Picross mode. Instead, you get 150 puzzles for regular Picross, and those same puzzles in Mega Picross mode, just harder now due to how much tougher that mode is due to more limited information. The puzzles are not in the exact same order so unless you can identify the image and cheat by looking at it in the regular mode you probably will need to do the puzzle again, but it was a clever solution to significantly increase the amount of content in these games without needing to create new puzzles.

Also in 2015, Jupiter also made the free-to-start but pay-to-finish Pokemon Picross. It’s fine I guess, but expensive compared to the rest of the series — playing the whole thing will cost about $30, far more than any of these other titles, for not THAT much more content. It’s wildly overpriced, I think, but the actual gameplay is the same great stuff of course. And no, you cannot play it all for free; after a bit you need to pay in order to get the play points to continue.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Picross e7 – Developed by Jupiter and published by Nintendo in 2016. This game released more than a year after its predecessor, and it shows — the series has had a full graphical overhaul. This time you get 150 regular Picross puzzles in sizes of 5×5 to 20×15, 150 Mega Picross puzzles in sizes up to 20×15 which again are the same puzzles as regular mode just put in a different order, and three Micross puzzles. Additionally, there are 15 puzzles which unlock if you have certain other Picross e titles. The regular, Mega, and unlockable puzzles have three Free mode puzzles per 15-puzzle page, where you are not allowed to use hints and the game will not tell you if you are chipping out the correct spaces or not. In other puzzles the game tells you when you try to do an incorrect move and you get a time penalty. However, this game has the great feature that there is now a medal to earn on each puzzle. If you complete the puzzle with no errors or help, you will get a medal shown on screen. Make even one mistake, though, and you won’t get that medal. As usual if you complete the puzzle with under an hour of time used it appears on screen in color and is considered complete, but if you want to go back for some additional challenge, try to beat puzzles without using hints to get those medals. It’s a great feature which only the later Picross e titles have. This is a fantastic Picross game with nice graphics which are improved over the earlier titles, great touch controls, and lots of puzzles. Highly recommended; this series got better over time.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Picross e8 – Developed by Jupiter and published by Nintendo in 2017. The last main-series Picross e game on the 3DS is very similar to its predecessor. This game again has 150 puzzles for regular and Mega modes, reused in both modes as with the previous two titles but harder in Mega mode of course due to that modes’ rules, with the same sizes as before of sizes up to 20×15; three Micross puzzles; and 15 special puzzles which unlock if you own the first three Picross e titles. All of the features are the same as e7, so it has the medals to earn on each puzzle. The puzzles are a bit harder than e7’s are, though, so this last one is likely the most challenging and probably the best Picross e entry. I highly recommend getting all of them, though, it’s a just fantastic series which will take many, many hours to puzzle your way through. This game would be the last of the numbered Picross e titles, but Jupiter would make one more Picross game on 3DS after this one, 2018’s Sanrio characters Picross. I will get to that one later, but it’s great whether or not you care about Hello Kitty.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Ping Pong Trick Shot – Published by Starsign and developed by SIMS in 2016. This is an action/puzzle game where you need to toss a ball into a little cup. I recall there was a WiiWare game like this which the developers had to rename from “beer pong” to “ping pong” because Nintendo didn’t want a name referencing drinking in their shop. These 3DS games follow that trend by being that concept, but without any references to drink. No, this is a puzzle game where your goal is to throw the ball with the exact right speed and angle in order to get it to go into the cup. The game keeps things interesting by having each stage have a different layout. You will need to deal with walls, moving platforms, angled holes, and more. This game is from the same developer as Collide-A-Ball and such, and has the same style, interface, and simple shaded-polygon visual design as their other games. You control the game with the touch screen, and it controls well. There is a slider for your shot power and you aim with the stylus. I like this game, this kind of precise aiming is quite rewarding when you get it right. This is a short game since there aren’t all that many puzzles, but it’s fun while it lasts and I recommend picking it up. Objectively the game is average, but I enjoy it.  Also available on iOS. Or at least it was at one point.

Ping Pong Trick Shot 2 – Published by Starsign and developed by SIMS in 2017. This game is more of the same. This is a level pack for fans of the first one with basically no changes except some somewhat more challenging puzzles. So yeah, I say pick it up, it’s a good game. More of the same is fine when you’re making more of a good and short game, and the added challenge makes this game slightly better than its predecessor. Pick it up if you like the first one, as I do.  This game may be a NIntendo 3DS exclusive, though it’s probably a phone port.

Pirate Pop Plus – Published by 13AM Games and developed by Dadako Studios in 2016. This game plays exactly like Capcom’s classic game Buster Bros.. The game plays exactly like that game, except with not quite as good controls but some nice Game Boy-ish graphics and filters. Just like the game that inspired it, you move left and right with the d-pad and shoot straight upwards with the fire button. When you shoot, it drops a line down from the top of the screen at that point. The enemies are bouncing balls, and when they run into the line they take a hit and split apart into smaller balls. Sort of like in Asteroids you need to avoid them and keep hitting them until they all are destroyed, at which point you move on to the next level. There’s plenty of content here and I do like the screen filter options. This is an okay take on a classic, but the imprecise, mushy controls are a disappointment; I was hoping this game would be more fun to play than it is. With better controls this game could have been good, but as it is it’s below average, unfortunately. Also available on Wii U, also digital only there. The two versions are basically identical other than screen resolution and such.  Also on PC/Mac (Steam) and Nintendo Switch.

Pocket Card Jockey – Developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo in 2016. This solitaire card game got quite a bit of press when it released, so I picked it up… and was quite disappointed. Pocket Card Jockey is a solitaire card game with a horse racing theme. Basically, you are a jockey, and as you go around the track you will be faced with games of solitaire. If you do well and clear them quickly you will move ahead and maybe win the race, but if you struggle and fall behind things won’t go well for your horse-racing career. The game has nice sprite-art graphics with some use of stereoscopic 3d, but I find the actual card games far too frustratingly random. My main issue is that this game punishes you quite a bit when you end up with a random card layout that is hard to solve quickly. It’s not my fault though, it’s all the luck of the draw… but the game doesn’t care. The game has a whole bunch of systems to learn, so it will take a while to figure out and going through all of the tutorials is highly recommended. I did that, it makes sense eventually. My problem is not the complexity, it’s the randomness. I think this game is way too luck-based and punishes you too much for having bad luck of the draw. I don’t like this game much at all and can’t recommend it, though given that plenty of people do like it maybe you will disagree. For me though this is one of the worst games in this update.   I have no interest in playing it again to describe the details of its gameplay, sorry.  The game was originally 3DS exclusive, but since has had newer versions made on other formats.

Psycho Pigs – Published by Bergsala-Lightweight in 2016. This is based on a Jaleco arcade game from the ’80s. Psycho Pigs is a remake of a classic arcade action game about pigs throwing bombs at eachother to try to blow eachother up. This one is a bit interesting because the game never released before in the US. It was originally a Japanese arcade game, which, like many Japanese arcade games, got a bunch of ’80s home computer releases in Europe that never got released here in America, which is surely why the Swedish company Bergsala-Lightweight ended up publishing this remake of the game. I believe that this version is the first one we got. It’s kind of odd playing a graphically enhanced remake of a game I’ve never played, but that’s what this is. The game has polygonal character models and is played from an overhead perspective with a single screen, on the upper screen, per level. The lower screen shows your status and such. For such a simple game there are an oddly large number of different things displayed around this screen, including your stats, items, and more.

The controls are simple, either the d-pad or analog stick moves, and you do have analog directional control but not movement speed, you either move or you dont, and two buttons throw bombs and use items. You can switch items with L. Still, though, this is a weird game. Rounds are often incredibly short, first. If someone gets blown up with a bomb they’re out, and with a single not-very-obstructed screen to fight in this usually won’t take long. We’re talking ten or twenty seconds per round, often. There are several ways to blow either your or the other pigs up, including by directly hitting them on the front side of their character, getting blown up by an exploding bomb on the ground since each one has a timer on it which will eventually go off, or being caught in a chain explosion as bombs set eachother off. It is important to note though that hitting someone from the rear doesn’t blow them up, in that case the bomb drops to the ground next to them. The result is a probably overly simplistic, but quite chaotic, game as the four or so different pig characters run around, picking up and throwing bombs at eachother, until only one is left. You can pick up powerups, some of which are items to use and others which will boost your stats.

Naturally, this game would be best in multiplayer. Unfortunately, the multiplayer in this game is local only. If you do have several 3DS systems though, give this a try, it’d probably be fun. Against the AI, though, while the concept is initially entertaining, with incredibly short round lengths and very basic gameplay, I find myself losing interest in this game quickly. It has much less strategy than Bomberman, this is mostly just chaos. It’s moderately amusing but shallow and mediocre. Being a classic arcade game there also isn’t a lot of content. There are arcade modes in several lengths, local multiplayer, and one or two player endless modes. The endless modes are a nice addition, but the gameplay here is my main issue, not the amount of content. I just don’t find this game interesting enough to play for more than a few minutes. If you do stick to it though there are different costume pieces to unlock, which is nice, but with very little depth and somewhat forgettable gameplay I’m not entirely sure why this game got a remake. Still, it’s okay. A bit below average, but okay. This game is strange and obscure and you might want to check it out, but I don’t know if you want to buy it or not.  This version of the game is Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Pushmo – Published by Nintendo and developed by Intelligent Systems in 2011.  Pushmo is the first game in a series which would have a decent number of entries on the 3DS and Wii U over several years.  I mentioned Crashmo, a later title in this franchise, in a prior update, but this game is somewhat different from that one.  It is much simpler and easier.  In this game, 2d images have turned into 3d puzzles.  Each image is made of blocks, and you can pull out the blocks up to three spaces in order to find a route up to the top of the image.  This is different from Crashmo in that the image can’t change, you just need to try to figure out the route to climb each otherwise-static picture by pulling out blocks.  You move around with the analog stick, jump with A, and .  There are a few modifier objects, but for the most part this is a pretty simple game.  I like Pushmo, it is good, but I don’t think it has the depth to be great.   The totally flat nature of the original pictures limits the game, making the 3d merely isometric, and the unmovable blocks make this really just a game of ‘can you see where to jump to get up’.  As I said, it’s just barely good, but that’s it.   I’d say I recommend it to genre fans but probably not to everyone.  The game does have a puzzle editor where you can make your own stages though, that’s pretty nice.  Sadly you can’t share them online, only play them locally.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Puzzle Labyrinth – Published by Circle and developed by Intense in 2016. This is a first-person dungeon crawler puzzle game. Yes, it’s a puzzle game, not an RPG, there is no combat to be found here. Instead, you explore small dungeons and solve puzzles in them. You can pick up items from specific spots and try to figure out where to use them while interacting with the various tricky elements of the current stage as you try to figure out what to do to proceed. This game has simple graphics with solid stereoscopic 3d but very basic dungeon graphics and fine button-based controls. The main draw here, though, is the puzzles, and I would say that it delivers there. This game starts out easy enough, but it gets pretty hard after not that long. Once you’re dealing with warp tiles that travel through time as you try to figure out how to make a flower grow in a specific space and such, you will realize that this game is NOT easy. There isn’t really an in-game hint system, but you can find a guide online. Even if the game is hard it is good, though. Puzzle Labyrinth is a simple but challenging game that any adventure or puzzle game fan should definitely check out. I would say that due to the simple design and sometimes high frustration factor the game is good but not great, but it’s certainly worth a play. This game seems to be 3DS-exclusive, too, so pick it up while you can. It can be compelling. This game is quite different from Intense’s Parascientific Escape trilogy, but is just as much worth getting as the later titles in that series.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

PUZZLEBOX setup – Published by Bplus in 2014. This is a sadly simplistic block-filling puzzle game in which you hold your 3DS upside-down. Yes, really. You hold the system with the upper screen facing you as a lower screen, and play with the stylus on the now-upper lower screen. This means that your hand will be partially obscuring the screen, but that is as intended. There are two modes here, both of which involve dropping colored blocks into spaces that are marked with the correct block color that needs to go into that space. In Classic stages, you go through and auto-scrolling level. The lower screen shows the block pattern you need to fill, with the correct color marked, and you touch the space directly above that spot on the upper screen to drop a block of that color into the space. The 3d screen does have stereoscopic visuals, which is nice. You can’t fill something with the wrong color, the game won’t let you. You can fill empty spaces with blocks of any color, though. The game does keep track of how many blocks you needed to use versus the minimum number, though, so if you want a better rating you should avoid this. The game also keeps track of how long each puzzle took you to complete.

In the other stage type, Copycat, you fill in an image on a single screen. The core gameplay is the same, fill in the blocks wit hthe correct colors, but instead of this time you are actually filling in an image, instead of just filling in blocks for no reason other than to do so. Copycat puzzles can be zoomed out so as to fit more rows of blocks onto the screen, and as expected the game keeps track of how long it took you and teh number of dropped blocks required. The two modes are similar, but the Classic levels are often boring, as you need to wait for the blocks to slowly move onto the screen, so I definitely had more fun with Copycat. Either way, though, this is a very basic game probably mostly for children. After all, you can’t actually get anything wrong and the only challenge is just to hit the button(s) for the correct color(s) in each row. It’s a very basic, overly simplistic game that did not hold my interest. A younger audience might like it though, I don’t know. I’d call this quite forgettably basic, though, apart from the way you hold the system.  Nintendo 3DS digital exclusive.

Best games in this update:

Picross 3D Round 2
Parascientific Escape: Cruise in the Distant Seas
Picross e series (all 8 games, but particularly the last two)

Worst games in this update:

Pocket Card Jockey
Phasmophobia: Hall of Specters 3D
Phil’s Epic Fill-a-Pix Adventure