What came first: Brain Age or Sudoku? Here in the United States, it’s difficult to tell. The Japanese logic puzzle has quickly endeared itself to western audiences, entering the mainstream almost overnight and appearing side-by-side with crossword puzzles in newspapers across the country. Picross is an equally Japanese game that combines the best elements of both print-friendly puzzles, incorporating the numerical logic of Sudoku with the creative hurdles of a crossword puzzle. Picross DS is the first Picross video game to arrive on US shores in over a decade. It’s hard to fault Nintendo for not publishing any Picross titles since Mario’s Picross for the Game Boy, however, as Picross DS’ tiny cartridge is brimming with so much content, including impressive online features, that it just might keep you occupied for the next ten years (or more realistically: the next several weeks). With literally hundreds of picross puzzles to best, the game is a perfect match for crossword and Sudoku fans alike, offering plenty to keep you busy without getting any newsprint on your fingers.

The word “picross” is short for “picture crossword,” and that’s exactly what a picross puzzle is. The ultimate goal of any given puzzle is to transform a simple grid into a recognizable image by using a set of numerical clues to determine which cells to fill in or leave blank. Each row or column has a corresponding set of numbers in its margin that dictates which cells to fill in. In the example above, the top row’s clue of “2 2 1” means the row has three groups of filled cells each separated by at least one blank cell. The three groups consist of two cells, two cells, and one cell, respectively. By figuring out the relationships between the horizontal and vertical clues, you can reveal the hidden pixel image within the picross puzzle.

In reality, interpreting the numerical clues is just half the fun. Because the hidden images are all recognizable objects – animals, foods, spacecraft – you can often make an educated guess based on the half-formed picture if you find yourself stuck on a particularly difficult puzzle. Should you deduce as much as you possibly can from the clues but still end up lacking, you can ignore logic entirely and let intuition take over, using the image rather than the numbers to dictate your next move. In this way, Picross DS allows you to alternate between mathematical logic and artistic creativity, taxing both usually mutually exclusive skillsets. The puzzles start easy enough as 5×5 grids and expand up to 25×20, and as the puzzles grow in size you’ll find yourself forced to make logicless leaps of instinct more and more frequently. In short, crossword fans turned off by the cold, heartless logic of Sudoku and Sudoku fans bored by the purely creative nature of crossword puzzles will both find something to like in Picross DS.

Because Picross DS works best when the hidden image is an actual real-world object and not an abstract shape, the game doesn’t lend itself well to the endlessly randomized marathons that account for the replayability of other handheld puzzle titles like Tetris or Meteos. Instead, the game comes overflowing with a seemingly bottomless well of content. The game offers hundreds of puzzles subdivided into either “normal” or “free” modes. The former allows you to make random guesses, penalizing you for incorrect leaps of faith, while the latter doesn’t tell you if you’re right or wrong, leaving you to overcome the puzzles using your wits alone. Additionally, a Brain Age-inspired daily picross mode offers bite-sized picross challenges and tracks your improvement over time. While it won’t make you any smarter, it’ll certainly make you better a picross player. Should you actually manage to exhaust all the game’s content, you can use the DS’ Wi-Fi capabilities to download new picross puzzle packs, including puzzles from Mario’s Picross, completely free of charge.

In fact, Picross DS offers a surprisingly robust online mode. Besides downloading puzzles directly from Nintendo, you can also create and exchange custom picross puzzles with friends. The game checks to ensure your puzzles are solvable. The option to download user-made puzzles from sources other than Nintendo would be more than welcome, even if most of the offerings would have quickly degenerated to crude pornography. As it stands, if you don’t have any friends with copies of the game, you’ll find the puzzle editor ignored and gathering dust. There’s also a multiplayer mode in which you compete to solve two picross puzzles before other players. The game freezes your movements should you make an incorrect guess, rewarding slow and steady puzzle solving over quick guesswork. The multiplayer is unexpectedly fun and addicting, offering yet another reason to keep Picross DS in your console.

Picross DS isn’t a flashy game by any standard. The graphics are simple by design, never having to convey anything more complex than blocky pixilated shapes. The soundtrack consists of only four songs, and though the game features several game modes, none of them diverge from the basic picross formula. Rest assured, however, that this overt simplicity hides a great deal of depth. You’ll easily find yourself losing hours solving puzzles, your reward little more than a small animated image and the satisfaction of completion. There’s a lot of game here; Picross DS is one of the most robust puzzle titles on its console. In fact, the game holds its own when measured against the excellent puzzle offerings already available for the DS – Sudoku titles and crossword games included – and with any luck will soon find its rightful place beside the two puzzle heavy hitters in newspapers throughout the country.