PacPix is one of those rare joys - it's a puzzle game that doesn't bear any resemblance, not even vaguely, to anything that's gone before. There are no tiles to match, no words to play with, no shapes to arrange and it's not an OMG STUFF KEEPS FALLING!!!1111 game. The player is presented with a single sheet of ghosts and must draw a PacMan (a 90-degree angle and a 3/4 circle) which then comes to life and starts wakawaka-ing across the screen. Small Pacs are faster than big ones, and by drawing barriers in front of them the player can make them change direction or take a quick soujorne to the looped tunnel on the upper screen. Exceed your Pac-allotment for the level and it's game over.

As the game progresses the player can unlock two more powers. The first is the ability to draw an arrow which rockets off in the direction it's drawn. This can be used to stun monsters, hit switches and burst bubbles in the top screen which causes unreachable ghosts to fall down into your lap to be eaten up. The second is the ability to make bombs - draw a circle then trace a fuse from it which must end at a flame in order to break walls and trip more switches. These are taught via a tutorial mode which demonstrates visually how to form the shapes, thus eliminating any language barrier.

It's difficult to put into words the sense of euphoria that playing this game brings on in you. The game engine is, for the most part, beautifully programmed and can recognise practically anything you draw, no matter how differently abled. The surreal feeling of meglomania evoked by watching your army of Jay Leno-lookalike PacMen march across the screen devouring all and sundry has to be experienced to be believed.

PacPix has a problem, though - there are only twelve sets of five puzzles, and each puzzle has a time limit of a few minutes. This means that, assuming you don't get stuck, the normal game is going to last maybe as long as a bowl of fried rice that someone's forgotten to put in the fridge. Finishing the game unlocks a new difficulty mode, but while fun it's sadly just a case of ghosts getting faster and time limits getting harsher. PacPix's puzzles (ricochet an arrow up here, release this ghost, hit this switch, bomb this wall, double back and grab this key) are original and enjoyable - a hard mode which made them more complex would have been superb.

None of this makes PacPix a bad game; what it does mean, however, is that you're likely to be left awfully quickly with nothing to do but score-attack the thing. This is a shame, because it doesn't stand up to high-level play terribly well. There is a cluster of little niggles with the game which, whilst invisible when playing for fun, suddenly become magnified when your grade is being affected by the outcome of your every move. The slightly hit-and-miss nature of the arrow-shooting; the chaotic AI script which causes the same ghosts to sometimes teleport around the screen whilst other times they just gormlessly wander into your jaws; the way the game will sometimes misinterpret what you are drawing, causing your latest Pac to go gallivanting off sideways... a score attack game needs to have an environment where a bad performance is always your fault and a high score can never be achieved through luck. The PacPix engine isn't quite tight enough to deliver the goods in this area.

The only real extra in the game is the sketchbook. The sketchbook recognises shapes and words that the regular game does not, and you can have hours (well, a few hours, anyway) of fun trying to figure out that drawing a bum will make it fart, or that writing the name of the programmer's ex-girlfriend will make a little bell ring. It's cute, but to be frank it wouldn't have taken too much effort on Namco's part to add some specialist levels, like a shoot-em-up stage where you could only use arrows (they own Galaga for Christ's sake). Or maybe a bombing stage where you had to clear as many blocks as possible, or a ricochet level where you had to bounce an arrow around the top screen to hit an obscure target. There're just a few ideas off the top of our heads that would have doubled the playing time.

The last word to be said about PacPix is "try before you buy": it's a beautiful, magical experience, but at the same time it's one of the shortest console games we've ever seen - if you don't love it enough to play it to destruction, chances are it'll be back in the shop in a week. In closing, we are growing a little concerned with this trend of programmers writing incredible, charming game engines then disappearing off down the pub when it comes to putting a decent amount of actual game there. The DS is already beset by morons snickering like schoolkids and accusing the platform of being a kids' toy and a shallow gimmick - the last thing it needs is the developers themselves proving them right.