PSP homebrew developer Judas recently stopped by the QJ.NET forums to ring us up regarding his latest release, Pixelizer v1, a puzzle game that involves some old-fashioned color-by-grid mechanics to get the player's noodle baking. Interested? Then read on and find out more about what makes Pixelizer v1 just so addicting.

According to Judas, Pixelizer is based on Pencil Puzzles, a section at the back of the magazine Tips & Tricks that has a reader filling in squares on a grid to form a picture. That simple gameplay, combined with Animal Crossing's grid-style palette and board, makes up the core of Pixelizer. Of course, Judas acknowledges that this concept was already tackled by a developer with the name Access_Denied, but he cites it as more of an inspiration rather than anything else.

So how do you play Pixelizer? Just like Pencil Puzzles, you fill in squares on a giant grid to form a picture. You'll be moving across the grid in increments of blocks, and on that block you have to fill in certain pixels of certain colors - which pixels and which color to fill in is dictated by the 'current block' display. Filling in the correct pixels with the correct colors forms a part of a bigger picture, and it's definitely rewarding to see it slowly emerge from just a blank slate.

Let's check over the controls via the relevant text in the game's release thread:

Controls

* R-Trigger + L-Trigger -- Change Current Block.
* Triangle -- Change from giant grid to color select menu.
* Cross -- Assign the highlighted square the current color.
* Start -- Take a screenshot. (Saved in ~/Pixelizer/ScreenShots/xxxxx.png)
* Select + Circle -- Return to menu to select puzzle.