For reasons that don't need explaining, puzzle games and handheld devices have established a fruitful relationship over the years, and the portable puzzle fad annually grows in scope and popularity. New portable puzzlers rapidly come around on what seems like a monthly, if not fortnightly, basis these days, and the latest puzzler flavor of the month comes from Namco Bandai in the cute, cuddly but ultimately flawed Trioncube for the DS.

Offering a unique take on the Tetris brand of block-based puzzlers, Trioncube puts you in control of a dopey-looking, blond-haired space captain piloting his ship known as the Penko, which looks like a fat bluebird, on a mission to rescue the Princess who's been captured by the evil Hellmetal. To achieve this goal, it is up to you to navigate the Penko through 45 story-based puzzle missions by chaining together various shapes of falling block pieces into 3x3 blocks called trioncubes. By creating trioncubes and continuously chaining them together, fuel is produced to power Penko along to the finish line. If you fail to continue a chain reaction once you've started one, the created trioncubes turn into coins and clear from the field of play, and if you don't reach the goal before time runs out or the blocks fill up the screen, you fail the mission.

This interesting puzzle premise is a breath of fresh air at first, but it all runs out of steam a little too quickly. For one thing, the shape variety in falling blocks is incredibly limited, so after completing only a few puzzles, each one from then on seems to play out essentially the exact same way as the one before it. Making matters worse, the puzzles are exceptionally easy to finish overall, with any sense of urgency or challenge being a rarity. Throughout the entire collection of 45 missions, I only failed on a single puzzle and never even really came close to failure on any of the others - that's how easy this game is.

In spite of these flaws, the gameplay can still be quite addictive in short bursts, but unfortunately there isn't enough depth of content to draw you in for any extended period of time. The story mode only takes an hour or two to beat, the similar arcade mode and its whopping eight stages can be finished off in ten minutes, and the 99-dimension endless mode is the same thing as the others, just with levels that seamlessly continue one after the next until you complete them all, which again doesn't take very long to accomplish. If you have some DS-owning pals to play with however, the wireless multiplayer mode does make up for some these lifespan issues, as the race-like method of puzzle completion works much better when competing with an opponent rather than solo. The multiplayer is available in both multi-card and single-card download play as well, so as long as you or a buddy has a copy of the game you can puzzle it out against one another.

Deep gameplay or not, Trioncube at least deserves attention for its bizarre sense of humor and quirky presentation, which are both easily on par with the wackiness of the Katamari Damacy series. The block and background designs won't wow you for a second, but the colorful art style and charming wordless cut scenes are pleasing to gawk at, and the catchy soundtrack will assuredly have you bobbing your head to the beat while you play. As you progress through each game mode, new background skins and goofy trioncube effects become unlocked as well, so there is quite a bit of visual variety to appreciate. It's hard not to laugh at chickens, kittens, sushi rolls and various other strange objects popping up on the screen as you chain blocks together - Trioncube scores some serious points on the goofy meter, that's for damn sure!

I'll give Trioncube mucho credit for its originality and quirkiness, but on a handheld with so many great puzzle games already available, the shallow gameplay and limited challenge are tough to accept with any overwhelming enthusiasm. Trioncube isn't a bad game by any means, so if you enjoy puzzlers then its unique style certainly makes it worth a look, but don't expect it to challenge you much or hold your attention for very long.

Reviewed by Matt Litten for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).