Picross DS is a puzzle video game developed by Jupiter and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS handheld video game console. It is the second Picross game to be released by Nintendo in Europe and North America after Mario's Picross suffered a commercial failure in regions outside Japan, where many Picross games have been released for several Nintendo consoles. Like other Picross games, it presents the player with a series of nonogram logic puzzles to solve. It was first released in Japan, and was later released in Europe and North America.
Gameplay follows traditional Picross rules, where players use logic to mark each square as full or empty, eventually revealing an unknown picture. Additional modes allow players to create their own puzzles and send them to friends, download classic puzzles and compete in speed competitions with friends or random rivals via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, download classic Picross puzzles from previous titles and complete up to five timed daily challenges.
Initially, the player can choose from an "easy mode" of 5×5 and 10×10 puzzles, and Levels 1–4 of 10×10 and 15×15 puzzles. As the player completes puzzles in the standard levels, levels 5–10 and an extra level can be unlocked, with puzzles up to 25×20 in size. To unlock the extra level, the puzzles in all ten levels must be completed with a time of less than one hour for each, including penalties.
The three types of music available in Normal mode are jazz, reggae and bossa nova.
The Free mode minigames are the same as in Normal Mode but are generally more difficult.
My Picross contains Original and Classic puzzles. Original puzzles are those that are created by the player or downloaded from friends in local or online wireless modes. Original puzzles can be classified as Normal or Free mode, and are given an automatically generated one to four star rating based on the puzzle's difficulty as assessed by the game. When these puzzles are played, the music selections are the same as in the regular Normal and Free modes depending on how the Original puzzle is classified.
Daily Picross contains up to five challenges, all on a 7×7 board with Normal mode rules. Mistakes in this mode incur a five-second penalty. Once a challenge is completed, the game time is recorded, graphed and assigned a letter grade, with A being an average time under 30 seconds. When other modes are unlocked, the grades are averaged together to obtain an overall grade, with five A grades resulting in the highest overall grade of S.
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