Review: Squeakross Is a Rewarding Picross-like Game

Typically in a nonogram game like Picross, completing the puzzle and seeing the finished image is all the reward we get for being diligent enough to figure things out. Albune’s Squeakross: Home Squeak Home does that, of course, but there’s a little something else to act as an incentive. Here, every solved situation adds to a catalog of customization elements for a cute little mouse’s home. It really makes the game feel special, as well as provides a reason to get through puzzles as quickly as possible.

In Squeakross: Home Squeak Home, every player is a mouse. We just moved into a new home. It’s empty at the moment. However, it won’t take too long to make that hole in the wall a comfortable place to live. That’s because every puzzle we solve provides us with a new type of furniture or decorative element to enhance our living space. What follows is a nonogram puzzle game like the Jupiter Picross series that gradually gets more difficult and offers more unique furnishings as rewards for challenging ourselves.

The impression I get from Squeakross: Home Squeak Home is that it is designed to encourage completion compared to other nonogram games like Jupiter’s Picross. Now, I always do finish every Jupiter entry I pick up. However, I play them at a more leisurely pace. Two or three puzzles before bed to wind down and relax. Maybe it’ll take me a full month, or even two if its a busy time of year, to gradually beat a game. The nature of Albune’s title makes each puzzle an item in essentially a catalog of items. So if you want more to do, you need to skip around and fill out puzzles.

Said puzzles are, well, standard nonograms, as Squeakross: Home Squeak Home doesn’t reinvent the wheel. A grid is placed before you. Numbers across the top and left side note how many squares need to be filled in to complete the puzzle, as well as how many are in a row. You need to use logic to do so. In a nod to this being a game filled rodents, boxes are filled in with cheese. You can also use notation to mark suspected spots with a “O” and definitively note a space shouldn’t be filled by placing an “X.” The hints at the top will use different colors to note if lines are done, could be filled in, or are almost done save for a missing “X.” 

After finishing a puzzle, you get the piece of furniture in your mouse’s room. In there, you can direct your mouse to go ahead and interact with anything you placed. You can also complete Nini’s Challenge for variants of items that look different and add more options. There’s quite a bit of diversity and even some themes that come up, and you get multiple rooms to decorate. Likewise, you can customize your mouse’s appearance, changing how they look and what they wear. The character’s personality and tendencies can even change. So it can almost feel a bit like a customizable pet you care for.

The thing that gets me is, while the puzzles are fun to complete in Squeakross: Home Squeak Home, when completed they don’t always look like the furniture items or accessories they unlike like ones found in Picross games. They’ll usually be somewhat close! However, right from the very start, I saw completed designs that didn’t make sense. This happens right away with a cardboard box on the first page, as well as with a cabinet. The pile of books? It does not look anything like a stack of novels. The basic nightstand? No clue how that turned into that! So while the game is fun and we are supposed to use logic, I felt like I couldn’t also rely on my knowledge of what, say, a dresser would look like to finish that. This doesn’t apply to every puzzle, of course, but it’s often enough that it irked me.

While I feel like the Jupiter nonograms in Picross feature some better executed puzzles and final designs, Squeakross: Home Squeak Home offers a fresh take on a nonogram game. The character and home customization really provide an incentive to solve puzzles. The quality of life features and controls work well, so you could easily play with a controller. It’s a cute approach to a classic puzzle genre with plentiful play incentives.

Squeakross: Home Squeak Home is available on the Switch and PC, and a demo is available on Steam.