If you are looking for a lasting musical adventure, that will have you playing for hours, I am sorry to say, that this is not the game for you. When the DS was created it opened a floodgate for innovative new games that would allow people on the go to play games with a bit more control, i.e. the stylus. Electroplankton is definitely about innovation, and sports it on every curve of its ten modes, from remixing some old songs, to trying to create some new ones. One thing is for sure, this game... is not really a game. There are no modes for you to run through to score points, nor are there levels with increasing difficulty. There is no storyline at all, and you cannot gain experience to unlock new spells to use against enemies. Rather the game is about making music in a way, but not full-blown songs.

Electroplankton certainly stretches the imagination of a way to pass time. There are several interesting modes that you can try out, that will keep you busy for a short while. Then again it is not about trying to accomplish something, rather it is about accomplishing a lot of nothing. Since there is no ways to save any of your creations, once you are done for the day then return at a later time, you will need to recreate everything again, from your simple beats, to your complex ones. Mainly each mode is completely different from the last, which does add some nice verity, and as such I will tell you about each different mode, because each is a new experience.

The first mode that you can play in is Tracy. There is six little plankton that interacts with you, each with their own unique style of sound, and each coloured as such. These Tracy plankton make sounds as they swim over your traced lines that are linked up by triangles, which are attributed to how quickly you drew the line. All of the plankton also produces different tones depending on the length and path of the route you draw for them. The produce high picture sounds when they swim to the right, then while swimming to the left they become deeper and more mature. The plankton will also continue playing their music, until you order them to do otherwise.

The second, and my personal favourite mode is the Hanenbow. Hanenbow -- or what I consider little tadpole creatures -- swim up from the bottom of the screen, and shoot up into the air trying to land on leaves. When it lands on a leave, it emits a unique tone, and will continue to bounce to other leaves. What heavily matters in this mode, is positioning the leaves so the tadpoles do not bounce away from them, but rather allowing them to continue bouncing off the leaves like sticks on a xylophone. You can choose the trajectory of how they shoot onto the leaves as well. If you continually connect with a leaf, it will change colours from green to red. If you can get all the leaves to change colours, a flower will appear on the screen. If you press the select button, you will also be treated to several different levels.

The third mode is Luminaria. These Luminaria plankton follow arrow shaped formations, set up on a grid on the screen. The plankton spin as they move, changing direction as per how the grid is lined up. The pitch of each plankton changes from the direction of the arrow, as well as the height. There are four colours of them, each again with their own unique tone, and are red, yellow, green and blue. Each move at a different speed, and it is quite easy to make a neat sounding melody. If you use the d-pad you can mass change the entire grid, to have them all flow in one direction.

Now we move onto my least favourite mode, Sun Animalcule. The plankton begin as eggs, which grow over time on the screen, where there will then hatch. As they are growing they will make noise in rhythm to when you put them on the screen, by tapping the stylus. As they grow, their sound will also ripen, until they pop. The plankton on the left side of the screen will be lower pitched, which is opposite for the right.

The most difficult mode to get a handle on is the Rec-Rec mode. They are little fish like plankton that consume sound waves. They feed on sound waves transmitted into the water, and store it as nutrition. The sound waves they consume are stored inside of them, until the digest it, and when they do that they warp their bodies playing back the sound for four seconds. When the sound is played, the wave patterns will pulsate on their bodies. You will also be the one supplying the sound they will absorb. There are four fish lined up on top of each other, and the are again red, yellow, blue, and green.

The cutest mode is the Nanocarp mode. Nanocarp have sensitive hearing that sense vibrations coming through the water. Once they are activated, they will emit a tone unique to each one, and you may activate them by disturbing the water with your stylus. They will also activate when they swim into the walls around the DS. What is quite neat is that when you clap your hands, they will arrange themselves in different patterns on the screen before swimming off again. This one you can also clap, breath into the microphone, or sing, and the creatures will line up as objects, like horses, snowmen, trees, or a whole gang of other things.

Then there is the Lumiloop mode. They look like doughnuts/records. You have the ability of manually spinning them, which will affect the colours on the screen, but also what sound they will make. There are five of these records, that you can spin forwards or backwards, each emitting a different sound that way. Pitches are adjusted by other Lumiloop that are spinning together.

There is the Marine-Snow mode that has a bunch of snowflake shaped plankton on the screen. There are four levels of them, each with their own pitch, and overall you can manoeuvre 35 of them on the screen. When you stimulate them with your stylus, they will move around the map, interacting with other snowflakes. I did not like the fact that they move around, because it was difficult to try and create a tune with them. You can use the Select button to have them change into a different pattern, or if you cycle through them, and return to the original one.