When truly original concepts come around, very few people seem to see the full potential of what is available. This is very true with the NintendoDS - although the separate pieces of hardware aren’t original ideas in themselves, the concept of putting them together and selling it as a viable, alternative, gaming platform is completely new. The possibilities available from this platform are immense and many people have attempted to make games fulfilling this need. Unfortunately from the games available at the moment, it seems nobody but a few have realised the potential possible from this system.

Polarium is one of those few games, which screams originality, in fact the only thing unoriginal I can find about it is the fact it’s a puzzle game; which when talking about new ideas is never a bad point as many of the most innovative games from the past 8-10 years have been puzzlers - even the most renowned game of all, the one that launched the entire Game Boy series – Tetris. Just a simple puzzle game, but one that brought the electronic entertainment world to it’s knees.

Now Polarium is very simple, deceptively so. The basic principle is to use the stylus on the Touch Screen to drag over and around a collection of black and white squares, tapping the drawn pattern afterwards to invert the colours, the object being to arrange the squares into one colour horizontal lines in as few moves as possible.

There’s many modes available in this game, there is a Arcade/Normal mode, where the task set is just erase the tiles in the speediest manner humanely possible, as they fall in blocks from the sky… I have never, ever got above an E- grade in this mode - it’s not exactly hard, just way beyond my capabilities. There are also puzzles, the same objective applies it’s just you have to do it in one move/draw, these slowly increase in difficulty and complexity until you look at them and your head hurts… and that was by number twenty. Now they’re all very possible, though sometimes you might need to look at them from a completely different angle, but when there isn’t a time limit to rush you, spending your time poring over it seems like common sense.

There also a create a puzzle option, giving you the choice to configure the board size and tile placements and allowing you total control over how hard it can be and the ability to send your friends your creations - but be warned, you have to complete it first for it to be allowed on the challenge board, but now you will have no problem truly stumping your friends, especially enjoyable when they’ve been whooping you at the two player mode, which is a rather addictive game in it’s own right. The basic structure of the multiplayer is very similar to that of the Arcade Mode, apart from you have power-ups with which you can attack your opponent, allowing for chances to randomise your opponents current black-on-white structure, hide their colour from view or slow-down the exchange for short periods of time, stopping them from erasing the tiles quite as efficiently. My personal favourite of the NintendoDS’s innovative wireless capabilities are used to good effect in this mode, allowing you to have two player battles with only one game card, a brilliant way to introduce other people to the simple addictive logic of this game.

Unfortunately there’s nothing graphically awesome about this game, it is just like a really slick, really high resolution Tetris, and perfect for the job it’s entailed for. The added lighting effects really spark life into the screen, much like the sound, which is perfect for enhancing the game, just not adding to it.

All in all this is a brilliant puzzle game which will entertain and amuse all ages for a long time, because of it’s simplicity I can’t see this game having any kind of short life span, once you master the idea of how to do this game, time becomes a figment of the imagination. Tetris may have a rival…