After a glance over the back of the box, the first thing you might think is Tetris. Polarium is derived by the notion of the game- that which is to change the monochromatic colors to their opposite, and by doing so, clear out the entire square. The game relies solely on the DS stylus, which you use to trace over squares to reverse their polarity.

Sometimes the object is not to change the entire board the same color. The key is to make the rows the same color so that they'll cancel out. However, the trick is to pull it off with one line. Thankfully, you have a little leeway to get around the main game space, that provided by a one-block width border around the puzzle itself.

There are several modes of gameplay- one being the Tetris-like block dropping evil in which instead of lining up rows of blocks to clear them, you have to change either black to white or white to black in order to match the rest of their neighboring blocks in order to make them disappear. As you do so, the puzzles keep coming, and when you hear that annoying *bingbingbing* from the blinking red bar at the top, that means you're close to game over!

You're supposed to link and be able to do some mad combos, but it takes practice and an eye for picking out patterns pretty quick.

Another mode is the puzzle mode, in which you can solve the random stock puzzles at your leisure. These you need to solve with a single line- and unlike the previous mode (challenge mode), you can't do bits to cancel out things little by little. You can also create your own puzzle patterns and trade them with others through the nifty built-in wireless link on the DS.

Which leads to the last mode, the versus mode, in which you can play versus another person via the wireless link. Sounds like battle Tetris- Ooh, I loved that game! Unfortunately, I haven't been able to try out this mode yet.

It's an addicting game, even though the concept and gameplay might not strike people as very interesting at first. Once you give it a shot though, you're like to keep on playing for a good while until you figure out how to clear that one annoying stage-- until you hit another one. Or dinnertime calls. ^_^