In Polarium there are white tiles and black tiles. The object of the game is to make horizontal lines that are one single color. Simply touching the screen will flip the tile to the opposite color. The goal is to take away as many lines as possible by drawing over the tiles in a single stroke. After selecting a series of tiles (by drawing a line across them) they will be flipped by tapping the last tile in the series. Kind of like the first time a player sees Tetris, the game is a bit confusing until actually played first-hand.

There are several modes of play, each one fun and time consuming. The challenge mode is similar to Tetris in that tiles fall from the top screen to the bottom screen. The tiles keep building and if they hit the red bar at the top of the screen it’s game over. The tiles fall pretty quick so it’s a mad rush to flip tiles and create as many lines as possible in a single stroke. My favorite mode of play is puzzle. There are no time limits to beat the puzzles. In this mode eliminating all the tiles on the screen with a single stroke completes the puzzles. Keep in mind that you can’t draw diagonal and you can’t overwrite any tiles already selected. There is a border around the entire puzzle that you can safely draw in to avoid turning over wrong tiles. At first the puzzles are easy, but they quickly ramp up in difficulty. If one puzzle is particularly frustrating there is a hint option that can help identify where to start and end your line. The puzzle mode is less stressful and a great place to learn the basic play mechanics of Polarium.

Players can also create their own puzzles with the edit option. Custom puzzles can be traded via wireless link or the game can create a password that can be given to friends to try out the puzzle. I imagine we’ll see some new puzzles via passwords in magazines like Nintendo Power and perhaps across web sites. The game does support a versus mode, but it requires each player to own the game. In this mode the Nintendo DS will need to be turned sideways so the play screen is vertical. The touch screen is your play screen and the other screen shows your opponent. Tiles that are eliminated are sent to your opponent’s screen. The first player to eliminate all of the tiles wins. To make the rounds even more intense there are special tiles that will hurt your opponent for a bit. If you have friends interested in trying Polarium you’ll be able to send them a demo of the puzzle aspect of the game to try out via the download software feature. However, once the DS is turned off the data will be lost.

Polarium is a fun puzzle game. It makes extensive use of the touch screen and offers up new ideas in a crowded puzzle game field. The multiplayer could have been a bit more robust and single card play would have been easy to implement given the simplicity of the graphics. Graphics and music are fairly basic, but that’s to be expected in a game like this. If you love puzzle games then I highly recommend giving Polarium a try.