When Hatsune Miku Logic Paint—or “MikuLogi” for short—landed on mobile last year, it made its mark as one of the better picross (or nonogram) games on the platform. A couple of bucks gets you a few hundred high-quality puzzles, beautifully presented, with a slick, user-friendly interface. Hatsune Miku Logic Paint S brings that same approach to Switch, but it’s far more than a simple port; it’s a massive expansion, with every aspect of its design and control tailored to this new home. The result? One of the best picross games on Switch, rivalling even Jupiter’s own Picross S games.
For those unfamiliar, nonograms are logic puzzles that revolve around uncovering an image hidden within a grid. Numerical clues at the end of each row and column tell you how many squares need to be filled in, but figuring out exactly which ones comes down to logical deduction and process of elimination as you work through all the clues. They’re simple in concept, but with plenty of scope for depth and satisfying challenge in the hands of a good puzzle designer; a well-made picross can be a whole lot of fun.
What first jumps out in Logic Paint S the sheer number of puzzles: 545 in total, across both regular, self-contained ones and multi-part “special” puzzles. Sizes range from 5×5 to 20×20, ensuring a good range of different levels of challenge. There’s nothing that will stump a picross veteran, but the bigger puzzles are still plenty satisfying to solve (and make up the majority of what’s on offer). Most importantly, every puzzle is solvable—which seems an odd thing to highlight, but in my experience, it’s surprisingly common for more amateur nonograms to have the odd square or two that can only be cleared by guessing. There’s no such problem here.
While we’re on the topic of bare minimum functionality that a lot of picross games still struggle with, the controls for Logic Paint S are responsive and reliable. Filling in squares en masse is quick and painless, with little risk of accidentally going a space too far and getting hit with an error that you weren’t actually trying to make. Again, I know we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel when “controls work well” is a noteworthy point of praise, but I’ve played a lot of games that drop the ball here. The lack of a touchscreen option is a little bit of a shame for people who prefer that, but the button controls are about as good as you could hope for.
The thing that makes Logic Paint S stand out, obviously, is the Hatsune Miku element. Each puzzle is themed around a different piece of Crypton vocaloid artwork—not necessarily an image of Miku or one of her friends, but of some object that’s thematically linked, like the fox mask from the Summer Festival costume. Completing each puzzle unlocks the corresponding artwork in a gallery, for your viewing pleasure. There’s also an assortment of different music tracks to unlock as you complete different challenges within each puzzle—no hints, no misses, that sort of thing—which you can then freely listen to, and set as the standard music for different menus and puzzle screens.
The vibrant energy that comes with Crypton’s vocaloids feeds into the general presentation of Logic Paint S, with every aspect of the visual design being full of colour, with a pristine sense of style. A chibi version of whoever you pick as your favourite vocaloid brings an element of personality to the menus and display area surrounding each puzzle.
All the Miku-ness in Logic Paint S is obviously going to appeal most to Hatsune Miku fans, but even if you don’t count yourself among them, there’s plenty to enjoy. The unlockable artworks are impressive and worth a look, and they ensure a wide variety of interesting puzzles. The vocaloid-inspired visual design and unlockable music bring so much personality and a sense of cheerful energy to the whole game.
That’s one of the strongest things about Hatsune Miku Logic Paint S: it’s a game ostensibly made primarily for an existing Miku fanbase, but the sheer quality of the whole package makes it something that can transcend that. Miku fan or not, if you like picross, this is one of the best puzzle collections you’ll find on Switch.
Hatsune Miku: Logic Paint S is developed and published by Crypton. It’s available now for Nintendo Switch.
