I admit that I was a little discouraged when I learned that Nintendo’s new game, WarioWare-like Pictonico!, is a mobile game. I’ll use photos from my phone gallery. I’m quite selective about giving apps access to my photos, and the idea of a game possibly filled with images of my own face didn’t really appeal to me. But weird little games are kind of my thing here, and if Pictonico! It’s nonsense, it’s weird. So, I gave it a try – and to my surprise, it won me over pretty quickly.
While Pictonico! is free to download, the game itself isn’t free beyond the short demo. Once you’re done, you need to purchase game packs (or volumes, as Nintendo calls them). Flight. 1 contains 20 stages and costs $8, while Vol. 2 contains 12 steps and costs $6. These stages are made up of quick microgames, with each stage requiring you to complete 10 of these games before you can move on. And the games are wild. You may be shown a photo of yourself or a loved one with a nutcracker-shaped jaw, which you then have to use to chew through a bunch of upcoming objects quickly. Or maybe you are a flower whose petals need to be plucked. Or a cranky banana waiting to be peeled.
You’re informed during setup that your photos are neither sent to Nintendo nor shared in any way, which is somewhat reassuring, since you really have to use photos with faces for this to work. Local storage seems particularly important in this case, because Pictonico! This would be a fun game to play with your kids.
The game lets you choose a specific album, ensuring that only images you approve are used. You can create an album just for this purpose and fill it with whatever you want. (This doesn’t work well with animal photos, but it did work with a photo I took of a potato that I thought looked like Strega Nona. You can also choose “Snap & Play” to take photos directly in the application. If it doesn’t find enough usable photos in your album, it will show sample photos of objects like a snowman or a stuffed monkey.
There is a lot that happens in this game; bright colors, arcade sounds, and chaotic, catchy music come at you from every angle. While this is happening, you must try to do everything asked of you on the screen in a few seconds; otherwise, you will fail. There is no time to think, indulge in nonsense. Once you start, it sucks you in. There are several game modes under the Score Attack tab if you want more of a challenge: Normal (difficulty increases as you advance), High Speed(explicit), and Danger Zone, where you finish after a failure.
Pictonico! It’s ridiculous, for sure, but it’s an undeniably joyful experience, and I laughed a lot seeing what it did to my photos. I can’t see myself going back to playing it to pass the time if I’m alone, but in the right social setting, it could be a really silly and really wholesome time. It’s nice to laugh at yourself sometimes!
,
