Picross dev's puzzler Logiart Grimoire hits Steam early access next month

Jupiter Corporation – the studio behind Nintendo’s long-running Picross series – has unveiled a new Picross-style puzzler, Logiart Grimoire, which launches into Steam early access on 11th September and Switch sometime next year.

The Logiart Grimoire of the title is a magical book formerly used to solve Logiart mysteries before its power waned, and it comes into players’ possession along with its custodian, a helpful wizard-y companion called Emil. That whole fanciful framing device is, of course, secondary to the real business at hand: solving ‘picture logic puzzles’ that feature horizontal and vertical rows of numbers used as hints to place dots on a grid and form illustrations.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because Logiart Grimoire is essentially Picross in all but name (Nintendo owns the ‘Picross’ title, while Jupiter owns its systems), albeit with an added magic twist hooking into a new “fusion” system that challenges players to figure out how to combine materials gained through solving puzzles to unlock new ones.

When Logiart Grimoire launches into Steam early access on 11th September, it’ll feature all its planned puzzles – 280 in total, split into grid sizes of 5×5, 10×10, 15×15, 20×15, 30×30, and 40×30 – but Jupiter says it’ll be using feedback from players to “actively work on improving the difficult and lacking parts of the game”. In particular, it wants to ensure Fusions – which involve deducing combinations of materials from sentences – are not “unsolvable” problems, while making other “enhancements to create a better experience”.