Video: Hatena Satena’s stylish, thoughtful puzzling

Like Picross? How about Minesweeper? Hudson Soft’s obscure Japan-only GBA release, Hatena Satena, combines the two into one colorful, addictive puzzler. Watch!

In Hatena Satena, you build out pictures from grids of various colors, cross-referencing columns and rows like a Picross puzzle. You’ll also know how many neighbors share a square’s color, bringing something of a Minesweeper twist to the puzzle-solving. It’s all coated in an aesthetic that fits right in with the turn-of-the-millennium era in which it was released. It’s a shame this one didn’t make it to the West!

Topics include: Cool aliens, priorities, elimination, real?, adorable characters.