[duskwuff]

Out of curiosity, are you familiar with Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection [1]? It includes a nonogram puzzle, under the name "Pattern" - I believe it guarantees that the puzzles are solveable without backtracking. It can generate puzzles up to 40x40 or so in a reasonable amount of time.

[1]: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/

[okayestjoel]

Yes, I am familiar! I didn't play his games growing up, but I see it as a great reference for various logic puzzle game implementations and one of the few examples of quality logic puzzle collections.

I think one thing missing from my 5x5 puzzle thing is that good nonograms are not just those that have a unique solution and require no guessing, but also create a compelling image when the puzzle is complete. My game, Pixelogic, features user-submitted puzzles in addition to in-house ones, and I'm often blown away how creative the pixel art creations are given the constraints of solvability under my game's standards and just on and off pixels.

I wrote about what makes a good nonogram puzzle (in my opinion) in my weekly nonogram newsletter, if anyone is interested: https://weekly.pixelogic.app/p/pixelogic-weekly-4