Picross S Climax shows off mouse controls and 1,020 puzzles

Picross S Climax supports right Joy-Con 2 mouse input alongside touchscreen and four-player button controls, bundling 1,020 puzzles across five modes ahead of its December 10 launch on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. Kyoto-based developer Jupiter Corporation first announced the compilation in September 2026 as a best-of package drawing from all nine numbered entries in the Switch series.

Jupiter has been building Nintendo-licensed nonograms since Mario's Picross landed on the Game Boy in 1995. After wrapping up nine Picross e releases on the 3DS (which were later repackaged on Switch as Picross S+ in 2024), the studio kicked off the downloadable Picross S line in September 2017 and kept going through Picross S9 in April 2023. The studio has spent the years since churning out retro arcade crossovers for Sega, Namco, Capcom, SNK, and Konami, so pulling the numbered entries into one curated collection makes plenty of sense.

Nine games trimmed down to 1,020 grids

This isn't a complete archive of every puzzle from S through S9, since individual entries like Picross S9 packed in up to 485 grids apiece. Instead, Picross S Climax pulls 1,020 puzzles from across the nine games and reorganizes them into Easy, Normal, and Hard tiers. That breakdown covers 450 standard Picross puzzles, 450 Mega Picross variants, 90 Color Picross boards, 15 multi-part Clip Picross stages, and 15 oversized Extra grids that stretch up to 40x30 squares.

Series veterans aren't left staring solely at grids they solved five years ago. If your console holds save data from earlier games in the Picross S run, you'll unlock up to 40 brand-new, high-difficulty bonus puzzles drawn specifically for this release, bringing the ceiling to 1,060. Without that old save data on your system, though, those 40 puzzles stay locked away.

That's a tough break if you're jumping straight onto a fresh Switch 2 without transferring old files, and re-solving hundreds of familiar boards sounds tedious if you've already cleared most of the series.

Mouse support and a Switch 2 keycard

Standard button controls allow up to four local players to crowd onto the same puzzle at once with color-coded cursors, which sounds less like cooperative relaxation and more like a fast way to start an argument over who miscounted a column of sevens. Solo players can stick with touchscreen input, or, when playing on Switch 2, use the right Joy-Con 2's mouse function to click through cells. I'm curious whether dragging a Joy-Con across a desk feels as snappy on a cramped 40x30 Extra grid as the old 3DS stylus used to.

Jupiter also tucked in a Sound Player mode. You can listen to music from across the entire nine-game run whenever you want, or swap your favorite background tracks into active puzzle sessions so you aren't stuck hearing the same loop for fifty hours.

Picross S Climax arrives in Japan on December 10, 2026. Digital copies for both Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 cost 2,980 yen (tax included), while the series' first retail box launches exclusively for Switch 2 at 3,480 yen. That physical edition ships on a Game-Key Card rather than a full ROM cartridge, so collectors hoping to keep a thousand nonograms entirely offline won't get their wish here, and Jupiter still hasn't shared Western pricing.