Polarium Advance Review

Originally released in the middle of 2005, Polarium was one of the first original puzzle games developed for the Nintendo DS. The tile-flipping gameplay was a good fit for the DS's touch-screen controls, so a Game Boy Advance translation of the concept doesn't seem like an obvious choice. Then again, the simple elegance of Polarium's design carries over to Nintendo's older portable platform quite well. The result is Polarium Advance, an understated puzzle game without much personality but with plenty of brainteasers to keep you busy for a while.

A training mode is available to help you learn the ropes of all this, and you can also create and save your own puzzles, too, thanks to an easy-to-use puzzle editor. It's possible to share these created puzzles with other Polarium Advance players due to a password system, which is a nice feature. Passwords from the Nintendo DS version of the game are also compatible.

Polarium Advance doesn't look or sound like much. You can choose from a few alternatives to the stock black-and-white tiles, and the music that plays in the background is fitting but easy to tune out. So this really is a puzzle game in the purest sense. That it's able to get by on the strength of its gameplay, without using any fancy bells and whistles to try to impress you, goes to show that Polarium Advance is worth considering if you like thinking while playing your games.

Gamespot