In Collection
#282

Way back when the Game Boy first came out, long before Pokemon, Advance Wars and the rest, the format?s killer app--the game which people would buy the console to play-- was Tetris. Polarium is clearly Nintendo?s attempt to offer a similar simple-but-addictive arcade puzzler for the DS, and although it?s nowhere near the classic that Tetris was, it?s still a fun little game.

The basic gist is that you have to draw a continuous line on the touch screen to make a grid of blocks swap colour from either black or white. Like all the best puzzle games it sounds simple till you try it and although the idea of inverting the colour of the blocks so that a whole horizontal line disappears sounds easy it soon becomes apparent that it is anything but. The game can only be played with the stylus and at first it seems overly simple. You soon learn some basic strategies though, such as using the block-less border of the screen to take shortcuts, and the whole thing quickly becomes addictive.

There are two basic single player modes, with Challenge constantly introducing new blocks at the top of the screen and Checkmate offering some more complex puzzles without a time limit. There?s also a multiplayer mode and even the chance to beam a ten puzzle version of the game to a friend for them to try out and practise on. It may not look like much but this is yet another high quality puzzler to add to the DS?s already burgeoning ranks. -- David Jenkins