Borrowing elements of the tabletop classic Reversi (a.k.a. "Othello") and the primordial computer game Snakes, Polarium is played on a board that contains an arrangement of two-dimensional, two-colored squares -- each square has a different color on each of it's two faces. The object in each level is to "flip" some of the squares over so that they all match in color. Squares are flipped by drawing a line through them, but to "win," the player can only draw a single line in each level. Lines are drawn with the D-pad (instead of the stylus, as in the DS version) and a variety of dichromatic schemes are available, in addition to the original's black and white.