The Grotto Index
A cozy nonogram (picross) adventure. Descend a living dungeon and fill a naturalist's journal one picture-logic puzzle at a time. 100 hand-crafted specimens across 10 floors. No fail states, no guessing: every puzzle is solvable by pure logic. Just you, a lantern, and quiet discovery.
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Overview
Summary
A cozy nonogram (picross) adventure. Descend a living dungeon and fill a naturalist's journal one picture-logic puzzle at a time. 100 hand-crafted specimens across 10 floors. No fail states, no guessing: every puzzle is solvable by pure logic. Just you, a lantern, and quiet discovery.
Description
About This Game
A cozy nonogram adventure beneath a living dungeon.
You are a naturalist of the Grotto Guild, roped down into the green dark beneath the city to do one thing: see what lives there, and record it. Every chamber holds a single specimen — a glowing flower, a blind cave fish, a frost-grown fern, a sleeping drowned king — and the only way to record it is to solve the picture-logic puzzle hidden in its shape.
Solve by logic. Reveal by light.
Every puzzle is a nonogram (also known as picross or griddlers): read the number clues, ink the right cells, and the silhouette of a real specimen emerges from the grid. Finish it and your sketch blooms to life in a cascade of flipping cells — the drawing becoming the living thing.
100 specimens. 10 floors. One continuous descent.
From the mossy first hollow down through drowned causeways, glass caverns, ice galleries and lakes of slow fire, to the luminous heart of the world. Each floor opens and closes with a beat of story, and the deeper you go, the stranger the things you find — ending on a finale you'll want to reach for yourself.
Cozy by design — no fail states, no guessing.
There is no game over and no clock you must beat. Every single puzzle is guaranteed solvable by pure logic alone, verified by a solver before it ever ships — so you are never left stuck, guessing. Set it down any time; your progress saves automatically and waits right where you left it.
Hunt, if you want a thrill.
Opt into timed hunts to catch fleeing creatures and earn rare and epic entries for your journal. Entirely optional, never required — the cozy path is always open.
Features
100 hand-crafted nonogram / picross puzzles, each a piece of pixel art you reveal
A continuous, gently-told story across 10 themed floors
Guaranteed-fair puzzles — solvable by logic, never by guessing
A field journal, dungeon map, and guild ranks that fill as you explore
A satisfying two-stage reveal, with sound, on every solve
Optional timed hunts for rare and epic finds
Auto-save, colour-independent puzzles, and a calm, no-pressure pace
A game for a warm drink and a slow evening.
