Hands-on with Zenses: Ocean

The only original game on display at Nintendo's Media Summit in San Francisco, Zenses: Ocean, aims to put a day spa in your pocket. Given the frantic, on-the-go play style of most handheld games, it's a little puzzling how it manages to bring the spa-like experience to your portable — literally in this case because this is a collection of puzzle game too. Zenses: Ocean packs in a slate of six mini-games in total, and we played three of these; Pearl Diver, Turtle Turn, and Hotspot.

All are controlled exclusively via the touchscreen. Pearl Diver, for instance, has you eliminating coloured pearls from the touchscreen by connecting them with stylus-drawn lines. At the start of the game, tiny pearls fill the screen. Using the stylus, you need to connect three like-coloured pearls into a triangle. Any extra pearls caught within the area of a triangle are cleared from the screen along with those comprising the triangle's corners.

You can't just randomly trace triangles on the screen, though. A turn limit caps the number of lines you can draw. Earning more turns/lines means clearing pearls from the screen by catching them inside a triangle. The goal is to clear as many pearls in this way versus drawing a bunch of triangles to eliminate pearls. If you're stuck you can tap a pearl to clear it, but it costs you a turn. It's a clever little game and one that's quite challenging.

The second mini-game we played, Turtle Turn, has you flipping turtle shells to match a pattern displayed on the top screen. At the beginning of the game you're shown a pattern of right-side up and flipped shells that you need to mirror on the touchscreen. By tapping the shells, you can flip them over; however, tapping a shell inversely flips the shells surrounding it. In other words, tap a right-side up shell surrounded by other right-side up shells and they all get flipped over.

Since you are, once again, working within a limited number of turns, figuring out how to match the pattern can be pretty tough. Instead of feeling relaxed, as if we were in a spa enjoying a nice facial and cup of green tea, it was as though we had been forced to sit down to a geometry quiz to which the solutions to the problems evaded us. Simply put, the turtle shells aren't the only rock hard thing in Turtle Turn.

From incredibly difficult to soothingly easy, the third mini-game we played involved piecing together miniature puzzles. Hotspot depicts a sea creature on the top display which you create using puzzle pieces on the touchscreen. Stylus in hand, all you need to do is drag the correct pieces into place and rotate them with a tap until they settle. Beginning with a scaly fish, the creatures grew increasingly more complex. A few puzzles in and we were piecing together multi-legged crustaceans with ease.

The assortment of mini-games Zenses: Ocean offers ought to provide plenty of gameplay, even if some like Turtle Turn are a little too difficult to be relaxing. Soothing music and pleasing visuals definitely set the game apart from most over-the-top puzzlers packing neon-bright colours and funky music. Expect Zenses: Ocean (and its companion Zenses: Rainforest) to hit shops during October 2008.