Review jared_c 4/5 · May 29, 2026
Everything is a Roguelike!
I love Picross games, I typically love roguelikes. This should be a no brainer, right? Cinicross is a hybrid of the two genres, that mostly works but still has some flaws. Take the map structure of Slay the Spire, or Inscryption (at least in the first area) but instead of a deck building battler, you have to solve nonogram puzzles. …
I love Picross games, I typically love roguelikes. This should be a no brainer, right? Cinicross is a hybrid of the two genres, that mostly works but still has some flaws. Take the map structure of Slay the Spire, or Inscryption (at least in the first area) but instead of a deck building battler, you have to solve nonogram puzzles. The catch here and where the majority of the difficulty then lies is you have a time limit that counts down while you are in puzzles. As someone who loves Picross but typically play them more casually to relax, this took some getting used to having to read them much quicker. The rewards you get after completing each puzzle will have a bunch of modifiers that will help you try to complete these quicker or easier. They can range from adding a few seconds every mistake you make, slowing down the timer, adding time, randomly filling out other squares every few seconds, to many more. This makes solving the first floor being a frantic race against the clock, to on a much later floor just randomly clicking a bunch of squares to complete it as you can create absolutely broken builds that make it near impossible to fail. There are multiple classes you can unlock, but the only difference being different abilities or starting with some of the rewards you normally acquire after solving puzzles. I honestly didn't notice a huge difference between most of these.
As mentioned above, in typical roguelike fashion you can get some really broken builds. I'm decent at nonograms, but far from an expert player. To get the last few achievements it's basically required to set up a broken build. Skill can only get you so far when the timer is counting down at over 4x the rate.
I picked this up on a whim seeing the fusion of genres and figured I'd give it a try. I'm glad I did as I managed to sink 49 hours into this one in a very short amount of time. Unfortunately, once I got all the achievements it didn't feel like there is much more to keep me coming back. It's a great flash in the pan game that's pretty cheap if you're looking for a quick distraction!
