I can now say I've been killed by a nonogram thanks to this roguelike that turns Picross into a dungeon crawler

A player triggers a cascade of artifact effects in CiniCross. — (Image credit: Hydrobates)

Nonograms are like Sudoku's chiller cousin: They offer all the satisfaction of doing grid-based number puzzles, but without as much of a risk of encountering combinatorial mathematics. They've evolved in all sorts of delightful directions with permutations like Picross, which rewards you for your square-counting skills with a lovely little picture.

More recently, they've undergone an exciting new evolution: Now nonograms can kill you! CiniCross is a new roguelike that hit Steam this week, and it turns nonograms not into pictures, but into a dungeon crawler—complete with collectible artifacts, class progression, and the thrill of slowly bleeding out because your brain doesn't handle numbers particularly quickly.

A partially-completed nonogram encounter in CiniCross. — (Image credit: Hydrobates)

I've been doing a healthy amount of that last bit.

A run of CiniCross consists of advancing through a branching dungeon of nonogram encounters with each floor culminating in a boss battle where your number counting is complicated by a Balatro-style modifier. After each successful nonogram completion, you're awarded with randomly-selected artifacts that—and this is a statement I'm excited to finally be able to say—can introduce some wild mechanics into your nonogram strategy.

You might get an orb that reveals a random dud cell after a number of cell completions. You might get a glove that spares you a mistake every 20 moves. You could find a crystal spear that gives you a 3% chance to fill an entire column at once. I don't want to sound like a sensationalist here, but I don't think nonograms have ever had this kind of buildcrafting potential.

The class progression screen for the Archer class in CiniCross. — (Image credit: Hydrobates)

Unfortunately, you're also racing against a timer that ticks down during every nonogram. And once your timer runs out, you'll start steadily taking damage. If, hypothetically, you're the kind of person for whom numeric logic puzzles entail a lot of staring at a grid until something finally clicks, you might find your run ending well before you battle your way to a boss showdown. But I wouldn't know that, of course. I can count squares, like, really good.

Roguelike nonogrammetry is a potent combination, but the most exciting feature of CiniCross is its generous inclusion of an in-game clock. I suspect I'm going to be burning a lot of hours in these dungeons, so it's nice to pretend I'll be keeping track of time along the way.

I suppose this does mean the nonograms isn't the cool-headed, laid-back member of the extended number puzzle family anymore, though. On account of all the killing and dying, I mean.

CiniCross is available on Steam now.

Lincoln has been writing about games for 12 years—unless you include the essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress he convinced his college professors to accept. Leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte, Lincoln spent three years freelancing for PC Gamer before joining on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter.

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