Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons (Nintendo Switch)
1Piczle and Story of Seasons in the same title? What's this, a crossover game?
Yes! Yes it is. This game is a Piczle Cross game (nonogram/picross puzzles) with a heavy coat of Story of Seasons paint laid on top.
The puzzles themselves are all themed around the items, tools, animals, crops, and people from the various games in the post-split Story of Seasons series: it contains references to the OG Story of Seasons (only as almanac entries), Trio of Towns, Friends of Mineral Town, Pioneers of Olive Town, and A Wonderful Life; though the game is heavily themed after Friends of Mineral Town in particular.
While it would've been nice to see references to other pre-split Harvest Moon titles, I suppose they must have had their reasons to limit the scope.
The gameplay is good, and the visuals are nice and colorful (and there's color blindness options) even if they can be a bit fuzzy (which is only an issue in the larger puzzles). If I had to complain about something, then it would be the way the audio cuts out the intros to the songs... Some songs get away with it, and you do get somewhat used to it after a while, but it's very jarring when you already know the music to heart.
As you go solving puzzles, some of them will unlock new additions to the farm background, not all of them do, mostly just the ones related to the farm itself. It's also a little bit confusing at first, because you're likely to have an empty farm for most of your first two seasons: any crops you unlock will only show up in their respective season, and you don't really find many spring or summer crops in the first few pages of puzzles. It gets livelier after a few more pages though.
About the puzzles themselves, they fall on the somewhat easier side of the spectrum, which I think is good for a crossover title. I also really like the way the various systems you have to help solve the puzzle are treated as you using your farming tools, instead of being marked off as penalizations- it makes it look less like a mark of shame, and the game feels relaxed and friendlier as a result.
As usual, the software belongs to its owners, I only record my gameplay for my own enjoyment.