Video Gamer is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Prices subject to change. Learn more
Polarium, or ‘one line puzzle’ as it’s also known as, is a very simplistic little monochrome puzzle game. Of course, being simplistic is the most important thing for a puzzle game, and it makes the game no less tricky to master or addictive to play.
The first thing that strikes you about Polarium is how colourless it is. It really is just pure monochrome. No fancy graphical effects, just an orange sparkle when you complete a line and the coloured cube that you draw your lines with. This will no doubt put some gamers off, but for those who look past this, it’s easy to see why such a dull colour scheme was chosen. Monochrome means that you won’t make any mistakes that aren’t entirely your fault. Thanks to the clarity of what is going on, you are left to focus on the gameplay; you won’t lose focus due to an onscreen barrage of colour, unlike in a certain PSP puzzler.
Having spent a few hours on the main puzzling mode, – of which I think there are three. Playing Japanese games when you don’t know a word of the language can make things difficult, – it becomes apparent very early on that this game is difficult. It forces you to learn and learn quickly, rather than easing you in to the game like most other puzzle games. This is somewhat disappointing as Polarium is unlike any other puzzle game. You have to change the colours of tiles to form horizontal lines by drawing over them with the stylus. You’ll get many more points for creating multiple lines, but you’ll have to develop some lightning skills with the stylus before you can pull off some of the bigger combos. Unfortunately it would appear that the developers, Mitchell, forgot that most people aren’t used to playing games with a stylus and the game starts hard and fast. Perhaps there is a mode in the options to make it easier, but even after around 5 hours play I can’t get above an E- rank. Or maybe I’m just rubbish…
The other mode that caught my attention is the static puzzle mode. The game gives you an image that you must transform into lines with one continuous stroke of the stylus. This mode seems to be exceedingly enjoyable, starting easy and getting progressively more difficult as the little pictures and patterns become more complex. With around 100 little puzzles it’s not a mode that can be breezed through either. We believe that there is also the ability to create and share your own puzzles, but due to the language barrier we have been unable to work that out.
Even with Polarium’s frustrating difficulty in its main mode it’s still very hard to put down and seems to be a fun little game. I’m just worried that it’ll isolate the casual gamer market that puzzlers usually thrive on, thanks to the criminal difficulty level. Still, for the rest of us it should certainly be one to watch when it hopefully gets a European release near the launch of the DS.
