Review: Polarium (NDS)

Puzzle games have always enjoyed a comfortable home on Nintendo's handhelds - it's that bite-sized nibbles of gameplay that fit just perfectly on the half hour bus ride, or in the lunch hour - and Polarium is no exception. Essentially three games in one, although each game revolves around the same interface and mechanics, Polarium is a neat little puzzle game that should find a nice home with those wanting something a little more cerebral than the rest of the DS line-up. The translation has always been a bit rough, albeit a descriptive one - One Line Puzzle (the early adopted English translation) really does sum up the game quite well, although the Western title of Polarium is a better one. We presume the 'polar' bit refers to the distinct black and white opposites that make up most of the game, and the 'um' bit is probably the, er, greyish bit around the edges.

The touch screen forms the lion's share of the useful screen display - inside the grey border is a variable number of black and white tiles, these can be touched to reverse them, or dragged under a line with the stylus to reverse more than one simultaneously - black tiles flip over to white, and white to black. The basic premise between the game styles is the same - make horizontal lines of either colour to remove that line, remove more than one line at once for more points, or in the case of Checkmate mode, you must remove all the tiles in one continuous line to proceed.

Checkmate, then, throws 100 'puzzles' at the player, although only the first 10 are unlocked at first (another 10 appear after each previous 10 are completed), and each puzzle screen features increasingly tricky combinations of black and white tiles that one must attempt to connect via the single line as mentioned above. It's a little tricky to explain, but the principle behind it is incredibly simple, and even with the Japanese version figuring out what to do takes all of 5 minutes. Checkmate is also bolstered by an infinite number of downloadable extra puzzles (in the form of numeric passwords) and you can even design and distribute your own user created puzzles.

The main portion of your time is likely to be taken up with Challenge mode, though, which is a more arcade-like approach, in which blocks of tiles fall from the top screen and you must keep the well from filling up by removing these blocks. Creating horizontal lines is again the key, but the pace is much quicker and far more stressful as the level increases and the blocks become less familiar. It's a little like Tetris, but the number of potential situations is far greater as the blocks, although only containing two colours, can create all kinds of shapes and combinations and hence practice is most definitely recommended, and rewarded. Clearing the screen entirely brings a huge points bonus too (a la Puyo Puyo), so balancing whether to wait for more blocks (and therefor more points via combining more horizontals) or quickly clearing the two or three at the foot of the well is an acquired skill that only comes after extended play.

The rest of the game is taken up with the multiplayer mode, which cleverly requires the DS to be held at 90 degrees (forming two vertical wells, one yours and one your opponents) as you throw blocks back and forth until one of the wells is full. It's an interesting diversion but one that we felt wasn't fully developed, and as such is more of an aside. Polarium, therefore, relies on it's single player modes, but with one mode offering unlimited score attack possibilities and the other an unlimited number of puzzles as long as the interest of the community holds up, we don't see that as being much of a problem. It's a great game if you like the genre, but it won't probably won't win any new fans to the puzzle style of play. Their loss.

Rating: 6 / 10

Words by Alex Carroll