Roguelike CiniCross turns relaxing nonograms into a deadly dungeon crawler

Nonograms are Sudoku's more relaxed cousin, offering the satisfaction of solving grid-based number puzzles without the risk of encountering combinatorial mathematics. Variations like Picross reward your square-counting skills with charming little pictures. But recently, nonograms have undergone an exciting evolution – now they can kill you.

CiniCross is a new roguelike that launched on Steam last week, transforming nonograms not into pictures, but into a dungeon crawler with collectible artifacts, class progression, and the risk of slowly bleeding out because your brain can't handle numbers fast enough.

A run of CiniCross consists of advancing through a branching dungeon of nonogram encounters, where each floor culminates in a boss battle that complicates your number counting with Balatro-style modifiers. After successfully completing a nonogram, you receive random artifacts that introduce wild mechanics into your puzzle-solving strategy.

You might get an orb that reveals a random empty cell after a certain number of completed cells. A glove that forgives one mistake every 20 moves. A crystal spear that gives you a 3% chance to instantly fill an entire column. Nonograms have never had this kind of buildcrafting potential before.

Unfortunately, you're racing against a timer that ticks down during each nonogram. When time runs out, you start taking constant damage. If you're the type for whom numeric logic puzzles require long staring at a grid until something finally clicks, your run might end well before you reach the boss battle.

The combination of roguelike and nonograms proved powerful, but the most delightful feature of CiniCross is the generous inclusion of an in-game clock. Considering you can spend many hours in these dungeons, it's nice to at least pretend you're keeping track of time.