Block-A-Pix Deluxe is a new puzzle game from Lightwood Games on the Nintendo Switch that is a lot of fun, offering a ton of content. Learn more in our Block-A-Pix Deluxe review!
The Nintendo Switch is a great place for a good puzzler since you can play on the big screen while in Docked more, or you can take it on the go and play in Tabletop or Portable mode. Puzzle games are the perfect time killer, and Lightwood Games have given us several puzzlers for Nintendo’s hybrid console. This time around they’re back with 120 new brain-teasing puzzles to solve, and as you work on them one block at a time, you will start to reveal the bigger picturing hiding behind the numbers.
If you’re not familiar with the Pix line of releases from Lightwood Games and need a game to compare this one too, it is similar to Nintendo’s Picross series or the recent Pizcle puzzle games available digitally from the Nintendo Eshop. In Block-A-Pix Deluxe you can use the touchscreen when playing in Portable or Tabletop mode, or the buttons when playing in any of the three possible configurations for the console. I personally ended up using the touchscreen more since, for me, the game is more enjoyable as an on the go experience. It’s very easy to understand and a relaxing game that players of all ages can pick up and play.
Gameplay is easy to learn for this one. You have a grid with colored numbers on it, and hiding behind this grid is a picture which will be revealed once you solve the puzzle. The numbers around the grid represent the number of squares to fill with each block of pixels, hence the name of the game! You will need to figure out the direction in which the block of pixels need to be stretched out, as well as the length and width of said block. You could, for example, have a blue number nine as a clue, and this means you could have a 3×3 blue block, or a 9×1 blue block, or a 1×9 blue block!
Once you have got through the tough parts, the rest of the puzzle starts falling into place. You’ll be able to check a small version of the image you’re completing on the right side of the screen, and this will help you as a guide so that you can stay on the right track. And if you’re stuck and think you have made a mistake, you can easily and quickly check the puzzle for any errors by pressing the Y button. The number of errors will show up and giving you the option to fix the errors by automatically removing the incorrect sections.
The fix errors option is particularly helpful for younger players, or for those without enough experience with puzzle games. Using this will keep you from getting a medal for the puzzle, so if you want to 100% the game, you will need to complete all puzzles without the fix tool. Each puzzle also has a timer, so that you can know how long it took you to solve the puzzle. That way if you want to replay a puzzle you can aim to beat your previous time, which shouldn’t be that hard to do since you’ll already know what the final image looks like!
Block-A-Pix Deluxe is available on Nintendo Switch at a very affordable $7.99, offering 120 puzzles right from the start. Going from what Lightwood Games has done for its previous Nintendo Switch releases, we should be getting some extra puzzles as DLC, which is definitely something I look forward to seeing! This is a great game to wind down and relax while in bed after a tough day at work or in school. As expected, the art style is clean and minimalist, so that you can focus on the puzzle solving.
Disclaimer
This Block-A-Pix Deluxe review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Lightwood Games.
