I guess when companies choose to release a game, a great deal of thought is given to properly naming their product. I say this because many will remember that Polarium was once known as "One Line Puzzle". Maybe they thought this title made it sound too simple, or not engaging enough. For whatever reason it is now known as Polarium, and the new name seems to invoke the simple game mechanic found therein.

Polarium as you may have guessed is a puzzle game. You use the stylus to change the "polarity" of tiles; from white to black, or viceversa. To play this game you draw a single line over the tiles you want to change color. After the player has drawn the line, they simply tap the end of the said line, and the tiles that were tagged flip. The way you make tiles disappear is by lining similar tiles up horizontally. This is the basic game play mechanic, and the basis of its design.

There are two distinct game play modes available in Polarium:

Challenge: The gameplay mode is more akin to Tetris. Blocks fall into a pit, and you must draw lines to eliminate them.

Puzzle: This mode has players solving preset puzzles with 3 different tile types. These include black, white, and gray. Gray being a free space that doesn’t change polarity.

Challenge mode is by far the least enjoyable of the available modes. I hate to start this review off on a negative, but in this case is it completely deserved. I thought that -- in theory -- drawing lines to eliminate tiles as more fall into a pit sounded very interesting to me. But in practice it is a different story. Blocks of tiles fall far to fast to be eliminated, and instead of a gradual difficulty curve, it becomes more like a right angle. The only redeeming part in this mode is the high score entry. Instead of simply putting your initials or name in a high score chart, you actually get to draw your own design onto a block- laden grid. This one little aspect actually made me want to give the challenge mode another chance, but after numerous attempts this little feature wasn't enough to keep me interested.

The real charm of this game is its puzzle mode. Its simple implication is just a treat to play. You will find no time limit, or any type of intended restrictions. Just a puzzle to solve, but trust me, the challenge is there. The first couple of puzzles thrown your way are easy, and don’t require much work. But towards the halfway mark, it can become almost too cumbersome. I think the design team realized this, and that is why they added a little hint feature that shows you the beginning, and stopping points of each puzzle. This really keeps the game from becoming too tedious.

Something that keeps bugging me is the odd choice of giving only horizontal groupings of tiles the ability to be removed from the playfield. Maybe the problem lies with me, or perhaps it is the amount of time I have spent playing other games in this genre that didn’t seem to adapt such an odd play mechanic. I remember a few puzzles where I would remove all the tiles except for the vertical ones, thinking I had solved the puzzle but of course, I hadn’t. Whichever is the case I really had to take a different approach to the puzzle solving found in Polarium.

There is also a nice puzzle editor that is included with Polarium. The straightforward design and simple interface make creating your own puzzles an easy task. After creating your puzzle masterpiece, you can either send it directly to another DS user, or share it with friends via a password system. Just in case you are wondering, you cannot create a puzzle that is unsolvable. The final step in the editing process requires that you solve your own puzzle.

The multiplayer aspect of Polarium also falls on the positive side of the equation. Basically you and a friend race to clear as many tiles as possible from your respective play areas. Once the tiles are cleared from one play field, they appear on the other player’s game board. This can result in crazy sporadic duels that are as much fun to play as they are to watch. Not only that, but there are random tiles that once eliminated, attack your opponent in a myriad of ways, from changing the speed of their game, to actually reversing their tiles. My only complaint is: Why didn’t the designers include a single player version? Seems that Polarium would have benefited greatly from this added feature.

The game also boasts a built-in tutorial, which is a nice feature and goes through the various game play situations. When done, the player has a good understanding of how to play the game. All and all, it is a really nice addition but the strange thing is that every time you start to boot up the game, you are always asked if you would like to review the tutorial. A slight annoyance, but not a terrible one.

Closing Comments
This is where it comes down to sink or swim. Thankfully Polarium can keep its head above water. Even though the design has its problems, it is still a very entertaining game. The unique gameplay that this title invokes is definitely enjoyable, and the puzzle mode is a nice showpiece for this. All things considered Polarium is an engaging puzzle game, and a very unique experience.