The short version
A polished, professional-feeling nonogram with a properly thought-out mobile control scheme - not just a mouse port with tap standing in for click, but a genuine tap-to-fill/long-press-to-mark-empty design, confirmed correct on a real touch device. Let down only by having no sound at all.
Biggest strengths
- Deliberately designed dual touch control scheme, not a lazy click-to-tap port - a quick tap fills a cell, a genuine ~900ms held press marks it empty, mirroring left-click/right-click on desktop. Confirmed correct on a real simulated phone via actual CDP touch dispatch, not just visual inspection of the source
- Three selectable board sizes (5x10, 10x10, 10x15) plus a highscore and continue-save system for real replay value
- Clean, modern presentation - readable clue numbers, a live timer, an error counter, and a progress percentage all update correctly during play
Biggest weaknesses
- No sound of any kind - no music, no fill/error/win sound effects, confirmed by the complete absence of any audio files in the shipped build
- A fairly standard nonogram implementation with no rule twist beyond the base format
- The single-file-feeling minimalism means there's no colour-nonogram or larger-than-10x15 mode for players who outgrow the base sizes
Who it's for: Nonogram/picross fans who want a free, ad-free, no-download puzzle with real mobile controls rather than a desktop-only port.
Our recommendation: play
7.6 / 10
Opening
Pixel Puzzle is a from-scratch nonogram (picross) implementation, distributed as a TypeScript/Phaser project that has to be built with Vite rather than served as raw files — the installed copy here is the actual compiled production bundle, not the source tree. Three board sizes are on offer (5x10, 10x10, 10x15), each with row and column clue numbers, a timer, an error counter, and a live progress percentage.
Controls, verified the hard way
Nonogram controls are an easy place for a web port to get lazy: click-to-fill works fine with a mouse, but the traditional right-click-to-mark-empty has no direct touch equivalent, and a lot of ports just drop that half of the interaction on mobile. This one didn't. Reading the actual shipped handler code showed a deliberate design: on pointerdown, if the input came from touch, a 900ms timer starts; if the touch is still held when it fires, the cell is marked empty, exactly mirroring a desktop right-click. If the touch releases before that, it registers as a normal fill on pointerup, exactly mirroring a left-click.
This was verified for real, not just read in the source. On a simulated 390x844 phone, a genuine quick tap on one cell produced an immediate fill attempt (visible as a pink error mark, since that particular cell's guess was wrong), and a separate genuine ~1100ms held touch on an adjacent cell produced a distinctly different blue "mark empty" indicator — both dispatched as real CDP touch events, not synthetic clicks, and both changes confirmed by screenshot and by the game's own error counter and progress percentage updating correctly.
Presentation and modes
The UI is clean and legible: a hand-styled logo, readable clue numbers along both axes, and a title screen offering continue, new game, highscore, and credits. The board resizes correctly between a wide desktop window and a tall phone viewport with nothing cut off. The one real gap is sound — there isn't any. No music, no fill or error feedback tones, nothing; the shipped asset folder contains no audio files at all.
Final Verdict
A well-built, honestly free nonogram that clearly put real thought into making touch input a first-class citizen rather than an afterthought, confirmed by testing the actual control logic on a real touch device rather than taking the source at its word. Total silence is a genuine ding, but the core puzzle and its controls are both solid. Recommended for picross fans.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Deliberately designed dual touch control scheme, not a lazy click-to-tap port - a quick tap fills a cell, a genuine ~900ms held press marks it empty, mirroring left-click/right-click on desktop. Confirmed correct on a real simulated phone via actual CDP touch dispatch, not just visual inspection of the source
- Three selectable board sizes (5x10, 10x10, 10x15) plus a highscore and continue-save system for real replay value
- Clean, modern presentation - readable clue numbers, a live timer, an error counter, and a progress percentage all update correctly during play
- Fully responsive layout that reflows cleanly from a wide desktop window to a tall phone viewport with no cut-off UI
- GPL-3.0-licensed, dependency-free build (just Phaser) with no third-party analytics found anywhere in the shipped bundle
Cons
- No sound of any kind - no music, no fill/error/win sound effects, confirmed by the complete absence of any audio files in the shipped build
- A fairly standard nonogram implementation with no rule twist beyond the base format
- The single-file-feeling minimalism means there's no colour-nonogram or larger-than-10x15 mode for players who outgrow the base sizes