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Screwtapello

I've got this “nonogram”/“picross” puzzle game on my phone, which has a few built-in puzzles, but the bulk of it is solving user-created puzzles. Obviously most of them are terrible, as user-created content often is, although the ranking system helps. However, there's this one user, Tattel, who is absolutely dominating their one specific niche:

- 15x15, black-and-white puzzles
- perfectly following the strict rules of making human-solvable nonograms
- exclusively drawings of birds
- not just “different poses of a generic bird”, but every picture is a different and specific species
- they're so good that even I, relatively bird-ignorant, can recognise some of them by sight
- there are dozens of these things

This is some Susan Kare-tier craft, and it deserves more recognition than being buried among ten-thousand user-generated puzzles in some free-to-play app in the Play Store.

#pixelart

A scrolling list of solved puzzles in a phone game. They are all different species of birds, all visually distinct and recognisable, and all super low-res black-and-white images.
3 October at 8:12 | Open on teh.entar.net
20 comments
fuopy
Screwtapello

@fuopy It's called Nonograms Katana.

3 October at 9:17 | Open on teh.entar.net
informalinsect

@Screwtapello @fuopy Never heard of nonograms before but it looks fun! Might give it a go 😮

3 October at 10:28 | Open on mas.to
TheTenuousOrder
_lila*

@Screwtapello

OMG thanks now I'm gonna look for it in Picross Katana.

3 October at 9:59 | Open on mastodon.opportunis.me
FJ

@Screwtapello my mom uses this same app a lot. didn't know about this user but these are super cool :o

3 October at 10:10 | Open on owo.cafe
MugsysRapSheet 🔩🐑🐘

@Screwtapello
Recalling my 8bit computer programming days, creating ANYTHING recognizable within a 15x15 box requires incredible talent.

3 October at 13:39 | Open on mastodon.social
𝕠𝕓𝕛𝕖𝕥 𝕕𝕚𝕤𝕔𝕣𝕖𝕥

@Screwtapello Thank you so much for sharing this. I immediately got a sense of fellow-feeling for Tattel. Excellent post ❤️

3 October at 16:26 | Open on pocketpixels.club
Shenaneggans

@Screwtapello
That's Nonograms Katana right? I had a brief picross phase last year and I really enjoyed using that app. Maybe I'll have to check out Tattel's puzzles!

4 October at 1:46 | Open on chitter.xyz
Screwtapello

@Shenanigans Yes indeed! Other Picross games are available, of course, but it's a very polished example of the genre.

4 October at 1:50 | Open on teh.entar.net
Nemo Thorx

@Screwtapello birb content is cool! My tangent though is the user-generated Lemmings puzzles in the mobile Lemmings game. It's a recently introduced feature, and whilst most are also crap, they have a ranking system (automatic afaik, based on how many players solve any given puzzle), and the five star puzzles truly live up to the Lemmings Mayhem tradition.

5 October at 1:56 | Open on teh.entar.net
Screwtapello

@nemothorx Lemmings as a mobile game seems a bit scary; my memories of the original involve a lot of clicking in very precise locations at very precise times, and that seems like it would get frustrating on a touch screen. How does it hold up in practice?

5 October at 2:55 | Open on teh.entar.net
Nemo Thorx

@Screwtapello it’s a completely reworked mechanism. Instead of applying a behaviour to a lemmings, it’s set to a location. The game being within an 8x14 grid. If a location has “stairs” then the first lemming there is the builder. Likewise blocker. Floater remains an active modifier so every lemming that falls to the umbrella becomes a floater. It’s very touchscreen friendly but for the official levels gets very repetitive.

I’ve made some great levels but I can’t get to them atm because of a bug in the all. So here’s the one I’m currently working on. It’s rated 5star difficult and “ultra” in terms of energy to spend

@Screwtapello it’s a completely reworked mechanism. Instead of applying a behaviour to a lemmings, it’s set to a location. The game being within an 8x14 grid. If a location has “stairs” then the first lemming there is the builder. Likewise blocker. Floater remains an active modifier so every lemming that falls to the umbrella becomes a floater. It’s very touchscreen friendly but for the official levels gets very repetitive.
5 October at 9:04 | Open on teh.entar.net
Screwtapello

@nemothorx That does indeed look terrifying! I guess it also doesn't have the hand-crafted pixel-art levels of the original either?

As long as it's fun, I suppose. :)

5 October at 9:11 | Open on teh.entar.net
Nemo Thorx

@Screwtapello fun enough that it's been my go-to minigame for a few years - taking over from democracy tetris (I mean, "EmojiTetra" (played on twitter, with one move per 20 minutes, as voted by people watching the game). I was actually about done with it when they introduced the level editor, and that's breathed a bit more life into it for me. The bugs that means I can't see all the levels I've made, is pretty suck though.

visually, it does have themed lemmings for variety, and has included at one point a replica of the original pixel lemmings as the default animation.

This is a good doco (shared by the game studio that did the current mobile game) about the game from a few years ago, covering the history of the game pretty well, and including a look at the way the mobile version works (last 15 min for that bit, but the whole thing is worth watching)

youtube.com/watch?v=RbAVNKdk9g

@Screwtapello fun enough that it's been my go-to minigame for a few years - taking over from democracy tetris (I mean, "EmojiTetra" (played on twitter, with one move per 20 minutes, as voted by people watching the game). I was actually about done with it when they introduced the level editor, and that's breathed a bit more life into it for me. The bugs that means I can't see all the levels I've made, is pretty suck though.

5 October at 9:27 | Open on teh.entar.net
Rob Simmons

@Screwtapello how could I look at more of these? Would I need to get the app and if so what is the app?

5 October at 13:17 | Open on social.wub.site
Screwtapello

@simrob The app is on the Play Store and it's called "Nonograms Katana". There's also a web version at nonograms-katana.com/play/

If you install the app or go to the site and navigate to the "Sent by Users" category of puzzles, you can click the "funnel" icon in the top bar and set the filters as follows to see Tattel's puzzles, then click the "Play" button at the bottom to apply the filters.

However, you'd still need to *solve* the puzzles in order to see the solutions in the list, I don't think there's a way to just browse the pictures.

@simrob The app is on the Play Store and it's called "Nonograms Katana". There's also a web version at nonograms-katana.com/play/

If you install the app or go to the site and navigate to the "Sent by Users" category of puzzles, you can click the "funnel" icon in the top bar and set the filters as follows to see Tattel's puzzles, then click the "Play" button at the bottom to apply the filters.

Filter settings for listing Tattel's puzzles in Nonograms Katana. "Puzzle name" is blank. "Author name" is "Tattel". "Sizes" has minimum 15, maximum 15, and square aspect ratio. Include black-and-white puzzles, no coloured puzzles, no... "sun" puzzles? Include unsolved, partially solved, and completed puzzles. Include regular puzzles, puzzles with trivial lines, puzzles with a lot of trivial lines, puzzles with simple symmetry, puzzles with checkerboard patterns, puzzles requiring trial and error, puzzles requiring recursion, and True Nonograms.
5 October at 13:35 | Open on teh.entar.net
merlin / alex glow

@Screwtapello Ty (and @solderandchaos@mastodon.me.uk for sharing this! I've gotten sucked in over the past couple days. Really fun and cute :3

Feels a bit similar to Sudoku in the fitting-stuff-together mechanic, but it also has the "ooh that's clever!" elements of creativity and surprise, which crosswords have and Sudoku lacks.

6 October at 3:24 | Open on chaos.social
Screwtapello

@alexglow Yeah, Sudoku was always a bit too abstract for me, but I like doing a puzzle and getting to see a cute bird picture (or whatever) at the end of it.

Glad you're enjoying it!

6 October at 4:15 | Open on teh.entar.net
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