Polyform Review

Polyform, from DeNA, is a basic 3D line-matching game with few frills. And that's perfectly OK.

Polyform hands players a cube that's reminiscent of a Rubik's Cube, though the game's concept has little to do with the popular '80s toy. Polyform's cube is composed of smaller colored squares, and the whole mess needs to be cleared away. It's better than agonizing over organization, right? Sometimes it's better to slice through the knot.

Players spin the cube around by swiping the screen. Then they tap wherever they wish to place the piece previewed in the upper right-hand side of the screen. When four or more pieces of the same color are matched up, they disappear. The process repeats over and over until nothing is left.

Each stage is timed, and the amount of time allotted to get the job done depends on the chosen difficulty. Lower difficulty means more time. The faster the stage is completed, the more stars the player earns for that puzzle. However, taking too long means failure, which means starting over again.

Polyform is a neat puzzle app that goes well with a relaxing evening and a familiar movie running on the TV. Watching blocks clear away in big chains is primitively satisfying. Later stages do throw some roadblocks into the mix, like individual pieces that can't be cleared away until the player makes a match next to them, but the general premise is a lot of hunting, turning, and pecking.

There is one problem, however: without a way to zoom in on the action, players may wind up thinking they've tapped a spot correctly only to have the piece actually fall far away from the intended target. This can be a frustrating event for anyone expecting to ignite a ten-piece chain with a single block that's now on the other side of the cube.

It doesn't happen nearly often enough to ruin the experience, though. For the most part, Polyform is a soothing puzzle title that projects just enough urgency to keep players on their toes.