Home > Reviews > DS > #621

Polarium Review - DS

The simplest games are often the ones that you can play over and over again, and still get lots of fun out of it. Tetris is still as fun (and popular) today as it was all those years ago. The DS is perfect for puzzlers, and Nintendo has delivered a game based around the simple concept of colours. How does Polarium rate? Well, it's not all black and white.

Polarium is a minimalist tile puzzler. You have to flip over tiles, creating horizontal (don't try and do vertical) lines of the same colour, which removes them from the screen. Once you pass the initial tutorial the first time you start the game, you'll enter the main menu. Each corner has a different mode - Challenge, Puzzle, Versus and Lounge. Okay, so Lounge only contains settings and the tutorial.

In Challenge, you play Tetris-style - complete lines fall from the top in blocks, and you work feverishly on the bottom screen to wipe them away so you don't pass the red line at the top. You could just tap every odd-coloured square until you have a horizontal line of the same colour, but it takes much too long. The Japanese name for the title was 'One Line Puzzle', which better describes the proper way to play. You'll see patterns form in the blocks that fall. If you draw a line along the odd-coloured squares across several rows, you can create a combo where you remove up to lots of lines simultaneously.

Also thrown into the mix are neutral grey tiles, which can be incorporated into the links to lengthen the combos. These are in a column on either side, you can skirt around the coloured ones and rejoin the line. You get bonus points for clearing the screen, and doing special lines around blocks. If you're super awesome, like me (kidding), you can even carefully look up on the top screen and draw your line before it's got to the bottom, and then finish it with a tap when the blocks are in place.

Puzzle mode is the meat of the title - a title that is, metaphorically, the runt of the puzzle lite. Challenge mode will only entertain you for so long - I don't mean it isn't fun, but you tend to get the same stacks of blocks falling all the time, and it gets a bit repetitive. So, introducing the 100 puzzles. Each puzzle is a game unto itself - there are no falling blocks to distract you - just a one-off design. The first ten or so are simple. You'll wonder whether you're just going to breeze through it. You then stumble on number 16, and number 18. By 25 you're taking four or five shots at each.

The 'hint' system that shows you what you did last time is a great help. You can just flip tiles of all the same colour in big clumps - there are lots of instances when you get one singular white tile in the middle (continued next page)