I’ve played a lot of garbage Picross-like games over the years. Picross maestros Jupiter have cornered the market on nonogram competency for decades at this point as the creators of the best-known game series. Every now and then, I come across a puzzle game that steps ahead of the pack. In this case, it’s a pack of rats going ahead of the pack. Squeakross, from the indie developer Alblune, is an incredible nonogram puzzle game, filled with a good amount of puzzle variety, a lot of smart tweaks, and a bunch of charm.

650 different puzzles are nestled into this game that puts you in control of a rat trying to decorate their house. The puzzles bust out of the rigid formats of 5x5 and multiples of 5. It breaks my brain a bit to math out a 12x15 grid, but it’s not something I see that often in these games. Outside of the puzzles, you also can decorate your little rat fella’s house. I do not crave a light house decoration system in my puzzle game, but it’s cute and, if you’re like me, something you can avoid almost entirely if you just want to solve puzzles. It does add some variety as you can mess around laying out your home or even decorating your rat avatar. You can even customize your rat, tweaking nose shape and whisker color.

But the meat of Squeakross is in the puzzles. These aren’t the most diabolical nonograms I’ve played, but the great hint system allows the difficulty to ramp up a little faster than usual. Everything feels snappy, letting you toggle different types of hints on or off. It also has a lot of usability enhancements. I appreciate the one that auto fills in Xs when you complete a row or column.

Squeakross’ biggest triumph in my eyes is how newcomer friendly it is. The tutorials (that are relatively easy to blow past if you consider yourself a Picross Pro) review foundational nonogram strategies that I’ve previously seen go over the heads of people I explain them to. Squeakross is one of the best Picross games I’ve ever played from a vibes and playability standpoint. It rules.