Squeakross: Home Squeak Home is almost the ideal for a Picross-like game. There are a ton of fun puzzles, the music is good and there’s a great house-decorating side to the game with an quasi-Animal Crossing quality where you unlock new ways to customize your house and have a jolly time doing it. Covering the overall game is a strong rodent aesthetic, and clearly the developers have these critters close to their heart. I had a great time with it!
There really isn’t much else to say, if you know Picross, you know most of what this game has to offer. You get a grid and must figure out the secret image by using numbers assigned to rows and columns, you can mark squares as part of the image, or not, and when you get the whole grid right, it reveals an item (that you can either place in your house, or wear). Sometimes the puzzles do not look at all like the item they’re showing you, which can be a bit jarring, but is no big deal. If you make mistakes, you can use hints to try and get on the right track, and there’s no penalty, this game is pretty chill. There are two difficulties for each puzzle, with the second one unlocking color swaps, which works well for me, because I want to make everything green.
The other aspect of the game is around collecting furniture, decorating your house (made of various rooms that you unlock as you go through more puzzles), and stickers to decorate the various screens of the game. You also get mail about rodent facts, and other storytelling elements such as fake spam and the like. This reminds me a bit of Cook, Serve, Delicious! but I’m certain other games have done this as well. This part is pretty cute and fun but after a while I kinda left it on the wayside, all I wanted was to complete more puzzles, and coming back to look at my ten pieces of space-themed furniture didn’t really speak to me. I know the point is to make a cute house, but I would’ve liked it more if there was a gameplay reason to decorate (Maybe you need to furnish the rooms of your friends to unlock more puzzles? Something of that nature). This is ultimately no big deal, the game does not penalize you for just doing puzzles.
All and all, I really had a good time with Squeakross, it’s cute, it plays well, and there’s a lot to do. Picross (and puzzle) (and rodent) lovers will enjoy this one!
