Pictonico!

Pictonico! is one of those odd Nintendo projects you don't really see coming. It's a mobile game where your own photos are transformed into little, fast-paced mini-games. Faces from your camera roll end up in bananas, flowers, mouths, strange bodies and other colourful nonsense, and you then have to drag, tap, poke, feed, shave, peel or rescue them in a matter of seconds. It's very much like WarioWare, but without Wario. Which, unfortunately, also means that much of what usually gives this type of game its personality and energy is missing.

The basic idea isn't bad - quite the opposite - the first time Pictonico! digs up an old photo from your mobile and turns someone you know into a hungry, gaping, grotesque little game object, it's hard not to crack a smile. There's something genuinely Nintendo-cosy about the sheer quirkiness of it all, in the desire to turn something as mundane as your photo library into something tactile and silly. The game is also beautifully presented, colourful, easy to grasp and built with that typical Nintendo sense of directness. It takes about three seconds to understand what it's all about and four seconds to figure out what to do.

The problem is that it also takes about ten minutes to start getting a sense of where the limits lie.

Pictonico! is actually fun in the same way that a pretty good party trick is fun. The first time, you laugh. The second time, you nod appreciatively. The third time, you've already got the hang of it. The mini-games themselves are often so simple that they function more as animated gags than as actual gameplay. Pull a mouth. Press something. Peel something. Move something. React quickly. Fail. Try again. It's by no means rubbish, and in short bursts it can be quite enjoyable, but it lacks that restless inventiveness that makes WarioWare more than just a fireworks display of nonsense. WarioWare works because every second feels like an internal Nintendo brain that's been dropped on the floor and has just carried on thinking anyway. Pictonico! feels more like a good idea that's been stretched into a whole game without anyone really asking how long the joke will last.

The mini-games themselves are of the classic reaction-test variety, where you have to quickly figure out what the screen wants you to do before time runs out. Sometimes it's about feeding a mouth, sometimes about pulling hair away, tapping the right thing, peeling a banana, avoiding something, pressing something at just the right moment, or simply interpreting an absurd visual situation quickly enough not to fail. So these aren't mini-games with much mechanical depth, but rather small, lightning-fast gestures based on surprise, pace, and the fact that your own images make the situations sillier than they actually are. When it works, it's quite fun. When it doesn't, it mostly feels like you're swiping your way through an interactive joke app.

This is particularly noticeable in the variety. Yes, there are plenty of mini-games on paper, but the sense of repetition creeps in much sooner than it should. Many segments are based on the same formula: a face plus an absurd situation plus a simple touch gesture. And sure, it's cute when the game uses a photo from your camera roll in an unexpected way, but when the surprise itself is the core mechanic, it also becomes very reliant on you providing the humour yourself. If you have funny photos of friends, family or odd things on your phone, Pictonico! can definitely be a hoot. If, on the other hand, you have a fairly ordinary camera roll with screenshots, food photos, blurry dogs and receipts from Ica, it quickly becomes more of a struggle. Then it becomes quite clear just how much of the entertainment actually comes from your own photos rather than from the games themselves.

It doesn't help either that Pictonico! feels rather expensive considering what you actually get. The app is free to download, but the free version is, in practice, mostly a taster, and if you want the full package, you need to buy the two game volumes. The price isn't outrageous in itself, but feels steep for a mobile game that so clearly relies on short bursts, a limited number of ideas and a gimmick that loses its appeal rather quickly. For the same money, you can find considerably more substantial games, both on mobile and on Switch, and this leaves Pictonico! in a slightly odd middle ground where it feels too expensive to be a simple fun app and too thin to feel like a truly worthwhile game purchase.

When the content also feels limited, it becomes difficult to avoid the comparison that's constantly lurking in the background. Because you can't talk about Pictonico! without talking about WarioWare. It's so obviously related that any attempt to see it as something entirely separate almost feels borderline illegal. But the comparison does Pictonico! no favours. WarioWare has Wario, Mona, Jimmy T, Ashley, the micro-stories, the menus, the music, the silliness and that special Wario energy. Pictonico! has your photos. It's fun, but it's also thin on the ground. I found myself thinking several times that this would have been far more fun as a new WarioWare mode, where Wario and the gang had hijacked my camera roll and turned it into something truly, disgustingly Nintendo-fun.

As a standalone mobile game, however, it ends up feeling a bit lacking in identity. The name Pictonico! doesn't say much, the mascot doesn't stick, and the whole package takes on a strangely anonymous feel despite the concept being so personal. It's almost impressive: a game that literally uses photos of people you know still manages to feel less distinctive than a standard WarioWare game.

There are, however, moments when Pictonico! gets it right. In social settings, with the right photos and the right people in the room, it can be great fun. It's easy to see why, especially when an unexpected person pops up in a completely absurd situation and everyone around the screen reacts at the same time. Then it works like a little digital prank machine, a mobile equivalent of sticking eyes on fruit and pretending it's art. It's low-threshold, low-resistance and quick to reward. For children, family games or five minutes on the sofa, it can certainly be worthwhile.

But as a game, there isn't really much to hold onto. It lacks depth, lacks surprises after the first wave, and lacks that feeling of wanting to play another round to see what happens next. I played it, smiled a bit, gave it a few more goes, and then realised I didn't really have any reason to carry on. Not because it was broken. Not because it was poorly made. But because it never really grew into anything more than its pitch.

So Pictonico! is a perfectly decent little mobile game, but it's also very clear what it is: a fun idea, a quick laugh, a moment of image-based light-hearted entertainment, and then not much else. It's Nintendo at its weirdest, which I basically love, but it's not Nintendo at its most brilliant. Had this had a clearer WarioWare connection, more personality, more unexpected layers and a greater degree of crazy gameplay variety, it could have been something truly memorable. As it stands, it feels more like something you try out, show to a friend and then rarely open again.