Meteos

Meteos is a fast-paced puzzle action game from Q Entertainment, the studio also behind games like Lumines, carrying a light story framework about a star system threatened by falling meteors. On each of dozens of planets, the player shifts columns of colored blocks falling from bottom to top, and by connecting at least three blocks of the same color, blasts them away off the screen — the bigger the chain the player manages to build, the higher and faster the blocks fly back into space. The goal is to keep the level of blocks under control before they fill the entire display, while the pace steadily accelerates, forcing the player to react almost instinctively.

The game makes full use of the DS touchscreen — blocks are moved with a finger or stylus, giving the game a fluidity that a traditional D-pad could hardly replicate. Each planet has its own visual theme, a distinct gravity affecting the speed at which blocks fall, and an electronic, dance-style musical accompaniment, making the game feel like an audiovisual experience as much as a logical challenge. Single-player modes as well as two-player battles over local wireless connection extended its lifespan beyond simply chasing a high score and encouraged repeated play of individual planets, each of which changes not just the appearance but also the pace and tactics the player needs to adopt.

At the time of release, Meteos earned a reputation as one of the most original puzzle titles on DS and was often placed alongside Tetris as an example of how well a new genre could suit a handheld's touch controls. Critics particularly praised how simple rules could be developed into a surprisingly deep and tense system that rewards anticipation and quick decision-making. Today it stands as a great showcase of the early DS era, when developers were still exploring what the touchscreen and microphone could do, and even years later the game retains a brisk, adrenaline-fueled pace that in many ways was ahead of its time.