Magnetica

Overview

Magnetica is a puzzle game for the Nintendo DS, published by Nintendo and developed by Mitchell Corporation. The game was known as Shunkan Puzzloop in Japan and Actionloop in Europe. The game is based off of Mitchell Corporation's Puzz Loop game (a 1998 arcade game). The game was released on June 5, 2006 in North America. The game was relatively well-received, with a review average of 71% according to Game Rankings.

Magnetica received a WiiWare sequel titled Magnetica Twist, released on June 30, 2008 in North America. The gameplay was altered to a more Wii-friendly control scheme (as most of the gameplay in Magnetica is controlled via the DS's touch screen), and many new features were added.

Gameplay

The puzzle gameplay of Magnetica is rather simple. A constant stream of colored marbles slowly approach the center of the screen in a circular motion, and must be prevented from doing so by launching other colored marbles to match up three colors of a kind (thus eliminating those marbles). A single colored marble appears in the center at a time, for the player to "launch" using the DS's touch screen.

The marbles do contain magnetic properties (hence the title "Magnetica"), so those can be used to slow down the marbles, or pull them away from the center. In addition, other bonus items can appear on the playing field, including marbles that eliminate all of a single color on the playing field or items that temporarily stop the constant stream from moving.

There are several modes in Magnetica. There is the quest mode, where players are tasked with clearing the playing field of marbles under special conditions. The puzzle mode is where players have a limited amount of marbles at their disposal, and must clear a fixed amount of marbles. The main mode is the survival mode, where players simply must last as long as possible without the marbles reaching the center.