Tsuukin Hitofude is a puzzle game based on the gameplay of the Nintendo DS™ version. The GBA™ version features a total of 365 stages (around three times the number compared to the DS one), and a removal of the original's Challenge Mode in favour of an enhanced Puzzle mode. Further to those, Stage Mode and Time Attack Mode will partner the Edit Mode seen in the Dual Screen iteration.
Improvements include the ability to set the colour of the in-game tiles, which also now feature extra special panels from the normal black and white ones used. These new tiles take three forms, Kotei (fixed) Panels, Hurdle Panels and Multi Panels. The latter are adaptable to both black and white tiles, disappearing when other panels in the same row match and Hurdle Panels act as obstacles. The Kotei versions, once erased, allow panels above them to fall through them.
A fun game, but only for the puzzle mode. The puzzle mode in this game is fantastic. Basically, you have to turn one set of tiles over to match the colour of the other tiles. Sounds simple, but the catch is that you can only turn the tiles over in one turn, so you must drag your stylus around, trying to figure out how to touch all the right tiles while avoiding the other ones, like a maze but... different.
The developers managed to create a hundred puzzles based on this concept, each getting more tricky, challenging and entertaining.
It's just a shame that the rest of the modes are terrible. The other main mode is a Tetris variant, where tiles fall down and you try to turn tiles over to clear lines of the same colour. It just doesn't work and the developers time would have been better spent creating more puzzles for the puzzle mode, or more varients of that mode.
Still, puzzle mode really is entertaining and worth the (rather cheap at the time) price of entry alone, making this a nice portable puzzler. I just wish more puzzles were included.
K.K.(49) on 18, Jan. 2007 19:24 (HKT)
Infinite replayability Polarium Advance (Tsuukin Hitofude) for GBA is a very successfull sequel to Polarium for Nintendo DS. Why?
Polarium not only looks and works even better on GBA (especially on Micro), but has a lot more of puzzles! There were 100 stock puzzles in DS version, here there are 365 stock puzzles!
But there's more! You can create and save your own puzzles, so you can redraw all the puzzles from DS version and have 465 (!) puzzles from both Polarium games!
