It's rare that games can be criticised for their simplicity. Far more often, complexity is the problem because game designers are too keen to show you new experiences and don't provide enough help to ease you into what can be a confusing situation. With Polarium however, the problem is reversed. It's simple to play but there is very little progression to new levels or ways to play and you quickly end up bored.
Which is a great shame because the core idea behind Polarium is a powerful one. Using the DS' touchscreen and stylus combo, the way you play the game is by drawing lines with the stylus across a grid consisting of black or white blocks. When you touch a box, it changes colour, from white to black or black to white.
It should be a great starting point for loads of different puzzle experiences. Instead Polarium is limited to two types of games.
The main one is the challenge mode, where in a Tetris-stylee you have to touch blocks in order to make horizontals lines into the same colour. These lines are then deleted but with more blocks falling from the top of the screen, it's the usual race against time to delete lines before the screen fills up. Nice idea, but sadly, the timing of the blocks falling is too fast compared the speed at which you can control your stylus, and particularly the slowness with which the blocked-out lines are removed. There's just not the rhythm or compulsion to draw you in to 'just have another go'.
The other main single-player option is the puzzle mode, where you have to draw a single line (without lifting the stylus) to turn the whole grid either black or white. Helpfully there is a grey runout border around the outside of the grid which you can also use, but as you might imagine, this sort of thing can't hold your attention for too long, even with 100 challenges to unlock.
The area where you yourself can make something of Polarium is its DIY options. In terms of the puzzles, you can create your own custom-built ones, which you can then beam over to your friends. There's also a Verses mode of the main Challenge game whereby deleting lines means they get dropped onto your opponent's game. But, apart from the option to draw your own little icons for your save games (neat!), that really is about the limit of Polarium.
Yep, it's a missed opportunity. Where are the options to play other types of black-and-white boardgames such as Othello or even a version of the strategic Japanese version of chess called Go? And why just black and white blocks? Considering the success of other puzzle games such as Meteos, it should have been easy to start with black and white but then move onto adding other coloured blocks. Or how about blocks or screens that move rather than just sit there statically. In fact anything that would move you from simplicity to complexity.
Sadly, unless you are really into very simple puzzle games, Polarium become boring very quickly.
Polarium is on sale now. 
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