Format: Advance
Genre: Puzzle
Developer: Mitchell Corporation
Publisher: Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Polarium ADVANCE has a truly mysterious story about it's creation. Apparently this game was released AFTER it's DS counterpart, meaning that this is the second polarium game to be released. Odd that. To start off, this is a puzzle game. It's a sort of mix between pipes and othello. You have 1 chance to draw a line through the puzzle and turn all the squares either black or white in order to solve the puzzle. Sounds daunting at first, but starts off very simple. Published by Atlus and given the stamp of approval by nintendo, this title on the GBA has some very good polish to it. The music is somewhat relaxing, if not a bit repetitive. The gameplay itself ranges from making you feel like a genius to making you hate the idea that you have a intelligence. By the end of the game, you'll be looking up the answers or spending 20+ minutes trying to figure out how to solve the stupid beetle you swear you've seen 5 times already. To get the credits of the game, you need to beat the "Daily Polarium" mode of the game. Daily Polarium has 365 puzzles in it (1 full year). There's also a "Time Attack" mode that I didn't explore too much. The puzzles in time attack seem somewhat randomized. The game is actually pretty fun, but also a bit long. I think my biggest gripe with the game is just how difficult the puzzles get towards the end. It's a puzzle game, so kinda expected, but it's just a bad design in a sense. What I mean in that way is that, most awesome games will increase the pressure and rewards when things get hard near the end. Puzzle games, don't do that. They remain stale and flat in their excitement factor from start to finish, and this one is no exception. The music does change along with the backgrounds throughout the game, and you get a few tile sets and cursor options unlocked at specific intervals as well. You're also FORCED to go through the tutorial to even start the game. Ironically, it's not a bad thing because nobody knows what the heck polarium is in the first place. Pretty decent overall. There are also 16 additional puzzles after you beat the daily polarium mode. It should be noted that the DS counterpart of this game only has 100 puzzles, compared to the 380+ of this game.

Hot Tips: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO GET A GOLD MEDAL ON EVERY PUZZLE TO ADVANCE.

All in All, The score of 8.5 for this thick black&white puzzler is obtained mostly from it's polish. The progression and size are what drag this game down the most, as well as the difficulty past day 300. Could have used a few more cursor options and tilesets and maybe some more music as well.