Puzzle games are easy to conceptualize: you make the player do some (usually fairly simple) repetitive task over and over until some force makes him stop. The goal being to either not stop for as long as possible, or to solve a series of puzzles, and sometimes both. Polarium satisfies all of these criteria, and brings to light one of the bigger failings with puzzle games: although they are easy to conceptualize, they are hard to make engaging.
Polarium seems to be a puzzle game based around the Nintendo DS stylus, you’re given a grid with squares that are either black or white. It’s your job to make all of the tiles in one line are one color (either black or white). You do this by dragging your stylus from one side of the playfield to the other. You can meander all you want within the playfield, but your start and end points must be on the sides (one on each). Complete a path and all the tiles that your stylus passed over will flip and change color.
The game sounds sufficiently generic enough to be a decent puzzler. It’s got the requisite simple task, the endless mode, and the puzzle mode. But for some reason, or possibly a combination of reasons, this game wasn’t that fun. I might have had something to do with the fact that my hand kept obscuring my view of the play area, or maybe I suddenly don’t like games that require manipulation of colored tiles (not likely). I think the single biggest reason that I didn’t like this game is that it just seems barren and lifeless.
A game like Meteos wouldn’t nearly as fun without the modicum of presentation present. Too bad it’s so completely missing from this one.