One of the great things about puzzle games is that they are typically an accessible genre. The base concepts tend to very simple. The control schemes tend to be very easy to learn, and the difficulty curves slope up easily. For these reasons, puzzle games make an excellent fit into Nintendo’s new Touch Generations line of games. Touch Generations games are specifically branded so that casual and older game players can easily find games that suit their tastes. Unfortunately, Magnetica doesn’t quite fit into this branding scheme.

Magnetica follows the first axiom of puzzle games quite well. Its concept revolves around marbles. In all of the various game modes (except “Puzzle"), a string of marbles moves on a path towards a “black hole" at the end of the line. The player has the ability to shoot marbles at the chain from a centrally located launcher. Lining up three marbles of the same color will cause them to burst, removing them from the play field. If two marbles of the same color are ever separated by an open space they will be magnetically attracted to each other and snap back away from the black hole, pulling along with them any marbles attached to the front end and pushing back all the marbles behind the back end. Using these two mechanics, it is the player’s job to complete various tasks in each mode.

Challenge mode presents you with a never-ending string of marbles. Clearing enough marbles will advance the game to the next level of difficulty. This mode is won by clearing level 99. Quest mode is a series of different playing fields, each with its own shaped track for the marbles to follow. Many have multiple tracks, and multiple marble launchers. In Quest mode there is an end to the marble chain, and getting rid of all the marbles clears the level and unlocks the next. The Puzzle mode offers a slightly different type of play. In Puzzle mode the marbles do not constantly move towards the black hole. Each Puzzle presents the player with a pre-determined string of marbles in the playing area and a pre-determined set of marbles in the launcher. The goal is to use all the marbles in the launcher to clear all the marbles in the play area. Leaving excess in either will cause you to fail the puzzle.

Magnetica also follows the second axiom of puzzle games. Its control scheme is very easy to learn, because there is just one mechanic in Magnetica’s controls. Players grab a marble from the launcher and draw a line on the touch screen to launch it at the marbles in the playing area. These controls take less than five minutes to learn, and can easily be mastered within half an hour.

Where Magnetica fails as a puzzle game is in the third axiom. Magnetica’s difficulty in no way slopes up easily. The game goes from easy to soul-crushingly hard very quickly. Challenge mode starts with two levels, Tutorial and Easy. Tutorial lets you get the hang of the game, but ends too quickly. Easy is anything but. The only way to unlock the next difficulty level is to make it to level 99 on Easy. However, because the game starts out at such a challenging level, it is very hard to develop the skills required to conquer the beginning stage of the game. The same is true of the Quest mode, though not to the extreme degree of the Challenge mode. Some Quest levels seem to be a good deal easier than others, but others will take upwards of thirty tries to complete. Puzzle mode is a good deal more relaxing, mostly due to the fact that the constant pressure of marbles moving towards the black hole is not there.

Magnetica is so difficult that I find it hard to recommend not only to the people Nintendo is targeting with their Touch Generations line, but also to anybody else. I’m sure there must be a few very hardcore puzzle gamers out there who will relish the extreme difficulty of this game. Everybody else will become frustrated to the point where they will almost certainly want to toss their DS against the wall.