Kyle Labriola

ooh picross s+ is a great choice. the controls and options in picross s games/games by Jupiter are pretty much the best i can think of, to the point where it’s hard for me to recommend other games if your criteria are just “i want to play picross and i want the controls to feel good.” i recommend looking into the options/shortcuts if you haven’t already – in particular, holding R is really handy to count tiles without having to mark the board.

but! if you want “picross but with a twist,” then i do have some suggestions!

if you want a picross game with a narrative, i quite liked Murder By Numbers (it’s more of a “visual novel/point and click with picross in it” than a “picross game," to be clear. goes on sale fairly often!)

for a shorter narrative game, CHARM STUDIES by nomnomnami has fifteen puzzles and a cute story! It’s a charming game that you can play within a few hours.

On Switch there’s also PictoQuest, which has very little story but has some interesting gameplay elements. It’s styled as an “RPG,” so you have to fight monsters by clearing puzzles in order, and making mistakes causes you to take damage. I didn’t finish it, but I’d say it’s worth looking into on sale if it interests you.

To be clear, all of the above have fewer puzzles, less puzzle variety, and less polished controls/options than Jupiter/Picross S games – it’s tough to compete with Jupiter when it comes to “just playing picross and having it feel really good.” But it can be fun to experience picross in a different context!

There’s also a decent number of themed picross games that don’t have any story or special gameplay – I haven’t really played any of them, but I know there’s ones for Hatsune Miku, SEGA games, Kemono Friends, and Story of Seasons, at least. For these I’d really just say “check reviews if the theme suits you.”

Also, as an aside:

if you have nintendo switch online, then Mario Super Picross on the SNES app might be interesting to you (although the puzzles are unfortunately not Mario themed). It’s a Japanese game, but most of the menu is actually in English – the only Japanese menu you have to go through is one at the beginning of every puzzle, which asks if you want a hint or not. (Incidentally, it is... also by Jupiter. Jupiter is too powerful.)

(that's it for picross games I have opinions on that are readily available in the current day -- if you are also interested in "picross games that are a pain to track down because they're old and not for current consoles" then I do have a few more suggestions lol)