Lumines Arise combines that addictive puzzling flow with a killer soundtrack
After a symphony, online multiplayer and a remaster, the well-regarded (and often handheld) puzzler Lumines is getting Enhance's full synesthetic, Tetris-flowing, treatment. Lumines Arise is almost here.
If you haven't played the game before, Lumines' premise centers on rotating and dropping four-square blocks made of one or two colors, building up larger squares of a single color. The game's timeline sweeps across the playfield – to the beat of the soundtrack – erasing completed squares in its path, while also giving you the brief opportunity to quickly drop more squares, add multiplier combos and score even more points. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so.
Lumines Arise adds a new mechanic to the addictive yet simple puzzle. 'Burst' is a refillable bar that you can trigger with L2/R2, which locks a square on the playing field, allowing you to pile on subsequent blocks. You can initiate Burst once the counter has rolled above 50, although it maxes out at 100. As you might expect for a synesthesia-tickling game like Arise , Burst mode has its own low-key musical accompaniment.
Lumines has never looked better. But that's not just due to 2025 hardware power, but also design choices for Lumines' skins – the unhinged wallpaper design and block themes that bubble up as you advance through puzzle stages. They're delightfully mad and, at times, distracting. (As you play, the view of your Lumines blocks will occasionally 'zoom' closer – this is intentional. Game Director Takashi Ishihara said this was to both add some dynamism to what are typically static blocks, but also to pull the players' attention back to the game at hand. Lumines Arise wants you to focus on the now, not the score, your Burst meter, or your customizable avatar.)
My favorite part of the demo was the final stage, which featured two chameleons simply raving along to the dance music. The soundtrack is, naturally, a banger, too. Lumines Arise features new music from Hydelic, also responsible for the award-winning soundtrack of Tetris Effect: Connected . (The band has already launched one track, "Only Human," on Bandcamp – it's coming to other streaming services, too.)
On another stage, two skeletal hands, seemingly strung up like puppets, twitch and wriggle as you shift and rotate your blocks. If anything, I think Enhance missed a trick not mapping the finger movements to a DualSense controller. I said that in front of Ishihara because I have zero sense of decorum — apparently, he'd had the same idea. I now consider myself a game designer.
I got to briefly see Lumines Arise running on a Steam Deck, too. The time of the handheld console and PC is now, so it's nice to see a typically made-for-consoles game ready for this new gaming PC form factor.
Ishihara teased that there's more to reveal ahead of Arise 's launch. The game will launch on both PS5 and Steam, and it will also feature VR compatibility on both platforms. While Enhance wasn't yet willing to reveal the details, there will also be some form of multiplayer, but it seems like it'll be in a different form compared to the more adversarial nature of Tetris Effect's multiplayer modes.
Additionally, Ishihara wanted to highlight that the avatars, which dance and emote in sync with your in-game actions, now feature legs. That is important, apparently. Enhance is promising more answers in due time. Lumines Arise is set to launch in fall 2025.
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Engadget
17 hours ago
- Engadget
Lumines Arise combines that addictive puzzling flow with a killer soundtrack
After a symphony, online multiplayer and a remaster, the well-regarded (and often handheld) puzzler Lumines is getting Enhance's full synesthetic, Tetris-flowing, treatment. Lumines Arise is almost here. If you haven't played the game before, Lumines' premise centers on rotating and dropping four-square blocks made of one or two colors, building up larger squares of a single color. The game's timeline sweeps across the playfield – to the beat of the soundtrack – erasing completed squares in its path, while also giving you the brief opportunity to quickly drop more squares, add multiplier combos and score even more points. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Lumines Arise adds a new mechanic to the addictive yet simple puzzle. 'Burst' is a refillable bar that you can trigger with L2/R2, which locks a square on the playing field, allowing you to pile on subsequent blocks. You can initiate Burst once the counter has rolled above 50, although it maxes out at 100. As you might expect for a synesthesia-tickling game like Arise , Burst mode has its own low-key musical accompaniment. Lumines has never looked better. But that's not just due to 2025 hardware power, but also design choices for Lumines' skins – the unhinged wallpaper design and block themes that bubble up as you advance through puzzle stages. They're delightfully mad and, at times, distracting. (As you play, the view of your Lumines blocks will occasionally 'zoom' closer – this is intentional. Game Director Takashi Ishihara said this was to both add some dynamism to what are typically static blocks, but also to pull the players' attention back to the game at hand. Lumines Arise wants you to focus on the now, not the score, your Burst meter, or your customizable avatar.) My favorite part of the demo was the final stage, which featured two chameleons simply raving along to the dance music. The soundtrack is, naturally, a banger, too. Lumines Arise features new music from Hydelic, also responsible for the award-winning soundtrack of Tetris Effect: Connected . (The band has already launched one track, "Only Human," on Bandcamp – it's coming to other streaming services, too.) On another stage, two skeletal hands, seemingly strung up like puppets, twitch and wriggle as you shift and rotate your blocks. If anything, I think Enhance missed a trick not mapping the finger movements to a DualSense controller. I said that in front of Ishihara because I have zero sense of decorum — apparently, he'd had the same idea. I now consider myself a game designer. I got to briefly see Lumines Arise running on a Steam Deck, too. The time of the handheld console and PC is now, so it's nice to see a typically made-for-consoles game ready for this new gaming PC form factor. Ishihara teased that there's more to reveal ahead of Arise 's launch. The game will launch on both PS5 and Steam, and it will also feature VR compatibility on both platforms. While Enhance wasn't yet willing to reveal the details, there will also be some form of multiplayer, but it seems like it'll be in a different form compared to the more adversarial nature of Tetris Effect's multiplayer modes. Additionally, Ishihara wanted to highlight that the avatars, which dance and emote in sync with your in-game actions, now feature legs. That is important, apparently. Enhance is promising more answers in due time. Lumines Arise is set to launch in fall 2025.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
PlayStation State of Play June 2025: Everything Announced
Days before Summer Game Fest, PlayStation held its latest State of Play presentation, giving PS5 owners a glimpse of what they can expect for the rest of the year and into 2026. Aside from a wealth of new looks at games we already knew about, the State of Play had quite a few nice surprises as well. Below, we've compiled a full list of every single trailer and announcement that was at the June 2025 State of Play, in the order they were shown. The very first announcement of State of Play was a bombshell, the comeback of PlayStation's experimental music franchise Lumines. But the big twist is that it's being made by Enhance, the acclaimed studio behind the likes of Rez: Infinite and Tetris Effect. Another major surprise of the State of Play was the long-awaited return of Capcom's Pragmata, a brand-new property that looks as charming as it does bizarre. The sci-fi shooter starts some kind of astronaut accompanied by a small girl, as they blow away a wealth of gruesome-looking aliens. 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Engadget
5 days ago
- Engadget
The Tetris Effect team is back with Lumines Arise
To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. The summer State of Play presentation form PlayStation kicked off with the announcement of Lumines Arise . It's a gorgeous puzzle game being made by the same team as Tetris Effect , Enhance, so for the many of us who fell in love that game, this is a banger development from Sony. The trailer shows the same dynamic blend between block drops, music and visuals that were the hallmarks of Tetris Effect . However, Lumines Arise is ditching the tetriminos for the slightly different box-dropping mechanics of Lumines . Bringing a new take on the core puzzle mechanics should make this feel like a nice blend of fresh and familiar. And considering how well their first go at reimagining a spatial puzzle game went, I have high hopes for this project. The game is slated for release in fall 2025, but we may get a chance for a sneak peak with both single and multiplayer demos later this summer. It's coming to the PlayStation 5 with optional PlayStation VR2 support for those who want the ultimate immersion experience. (And yes, you really do want that.)