A mind-blowing, fiendishly addictive reinvention of the puzzle classic Lumines from the creators of Tetris® Effect: Connected, where sound pulses through your body, mind, and every block you place, triggering dazzling visuals synched to the driving beat of an infectious, eclectic soundtrack.
RELEASE DATE: 11 Nov, 2025
DEVELOPER: Enhance, Monstars Inc.
PUBLISHER: Enhance
Audio Transcript
Lumines is a puzzle game that no one knows how to say it properly, but it’s a puzzle game that’s been around for a number of years since the PSP days, and Enhance who are behind the likes of Rez and Tetris Effect have added their certain technique to the game
and brought you Lumines Arise. Now for anyone who doesn’t know, this is a puzzle game, it’s a folding block puzzle game whereby instead of individual pieces such as lines like you would in Tetris, Hedgeominoes or anything like that, or just single coloured blocks that you’ve got to match three to and get in a line, this is different. What you have with Lumines is you have blocks of four come down of one or two colours and they will be either, you know, four of the same colour, half and half in a one direction or in a cross or three and a one, they’re all different combinations and what you need to do is make basically two by two squares ge, you clear the space and you can drop more into the spaces etc.
You start off with two by two and then you might have a two by three, a three by three, four by three and you end up just building these huge clearances as this timeline bar goes across and basically you get combos and points and all things. But what Lumines had was something quite special about it because it wasn’t the most immediately obvious game to play like Tetris is, because it takes a lot of figuring out the mechanics as you’re going but what Lumines had was a soundtrack to back it up that I think for me brought me back to times of going out to the clubs and hearing sort of like electro dance music or house music and all kinds of things like that. And it had some absolute bangers in there such as, you know, the all-time classic Shake Your Body which was just, oh, I could listen to that all day, every day and that would often be my go-to skin and track to play when I played on the other versions. So it’s been a while since we’ve had a new version, it’s had a few remasters, it came out on the PSP, Lumines 1 and 2 there was the PS Vita version, there was an XBLA version, we’ve currently had a Lumines remastered version that came out a few years ago on PC and consoles.
And it is a fantastic game.The only problem with the original was that you maybe had to spend 40 minutes to an hour to play through the main mode and there were other modes, but for me, it’s going through all the different skins and trying to get a high score there. I guess you could pause and you could put to sleep and go back to it, but you lose your momentum, you had to stick through it for 40 minutes plus really, if you got good at the game. What you get with Lumines Ariseis basically, the Tetris effect of the Lumines series they’ve kept the same core gameplay. So you get the timeline, you get the blocks, you clear the blocks, you get the points, you get the combos, you get more points, you get more combos etc, etc. So they’ve added all that to the game and it’s all coming perfectly and then you’ve got all the amazing visuals that come with it, all the amazing soundtracks that come with it and they’ve added in the journey mode.
So Tetris effect had this, it had the journey mode where it takes you through segments in a way so maybe four levels at a time which is really good because you can play those four levels, save, go back you can go through it all in one but it’s split up into these segments which is really, really good. And what you also get because it’s got that Effect or Arise thing where you play and then it comes off the screen, goes back as it transitions into the new the new skin of the new soundtrack. You get that pause, that moment, that break in play which works really, really well.
And they’ve added more and more things to the game, as I say the soundtrack’s different and it’s a really refreshing new soundtrack which I’m really pleased to see and it comes together really well. The different visual styles are good ,like the original Lumine some of them are really easy to see and it changes the pace of the game positively for you, others are a bit more difficult to see and you’re almost flying by the seat of your pants to get through which is absolutely fine. Plus the bar going across might be faster so you’re not worrying as much about combos you’re just worrying about surviving and that’s fine, that’s part and parcel of what the game does and has always done. You have all different bits in there, a new burst mode similar to the mode that was in Tetris, the name of that bit escapes me at the moment as I’m on this where you build up a meter, you press a button and you kind of go into this trance-like effect this trance-like state where you can build up this massive combo of squares. You just build up this massive combo and it’ll fly other bits like junk off off the screen so it helps you clear up the screen and get you massive score bonuses and then it goes, once that’s done, you’ve reached your potential with that, it goes back to the normal game or the normal journey mode and it just comes together really really well. You will find yourself losing hours upon hours to the game just because being in that moment and in that trance-like state throughout is just exceptional.
The game does have challenge modes which is really good to break things up, there’s timed modes again to break things up which is all in the previous game and it’s now got not a tutorial or such, it doesn’t have a tutorial but it has little mini modes where you can learn different pattern recognition or how to build up better combos and it says like go and do these, complete these, you do them and it’s just repeats of the same thing really but in a way that embeds the different patterns that you need to learn. You know how do you use a cross piece, how can you use like a half and half or a whole thing, how do you get them all together to get the best combos possible. Can you make a four four different squares using just two blocks and all different kinds of things like that, how to clear up junk. But they’re not just there wastefully because there are so many unlocks within Arise, so different skins you get different like body parts, for your head and that and then little symbols that have little animated bits in your head and everything. All bits that go into this like being in a club kind of thing and this trance like effect so you can unlock those and everything you do in a game earns you loomies where you use those buy different things and there’s feels like hundreds to unlock, no microtransactions or anything like that, none of that hidden, it’s just all in-game unlocks that you will get just by playing.
But it’s it’s absolutely wonderful, the visuals, the animations, everything is just absolutely sublime. It’s for me dare I say it’s as good as Tetris, no because Tetris is my favourite of all time and Tetris effect is my favourite of Tetris, so yeah, for me it’s not at that level but it’s just, it’s hanging in just below that. It is really really good and it’s improved on the original Lumines which is something I never thought could happen. The remasters and some of the other variants they did never were a patch on that original PSP version for me because that seemed to nail it. This, as much as it made it redundant there’s still something about that especially the soundtrack on that original game but it’s not that it’s not here, this is still an amazing soundtrack but there’s, I think that’s so embedded in my, psyche that I don’t think anything can come, close to that, even though this is exceptional in itself.
I cannot recommend this enough. It’s got some really good accessibility settings in it so I’m talking about a lot of visual issues and I’m playing this on Steam Deck, headphones on oh it’s a delight, and whilst there are still some levels I struggle with visually you can turn off some of the backgrounds and the animations and things like that and try and make it that bit clearer for yourself. So there’s a bit more they could do, I would like maybe an option to have your favourite skin set throughout the entire journey, just with the different music maybe I know that might take away but for some people that might be beneficial. It’s a bit of nitpicking though as I said. What you will get with this is when you finish playing or you finish the journey round you’re so heightened throughout that play session, but as it finishes you just feel yourself relax as you just come to the end of your life, done it, finished, and it’s not a relief that you’ve done but all your sentences are going as you’re trying to get the scores and make sure you don’t mess up. And just the music and everything that’s coming in, you just finish it’s just like, oh yeah, and then you want to go again.
Yeah really really good. It’s like having one of the best DJs there just knowing how to get the crowd going how to play that music and I say visually it’s trippy in all the right ways, the effects are brilliant. If you love Tetris effect because of the effects side of it, if you love Rez or anything else that’s done by Enhance then this really is a must own, an absolute must own game for fans of any of those games. Yeah I just cannot recommend this enough, really cannot recommend this enough. They’ve outdone themselves again and I don’t know where they go from here, I don’t know what’s next for Enhance because it’s two of the best puzzle games of all time for me, the original and then you know maybe the more modern classic puzzle game, and they’ve just done the perfect versions of them.
And that is what Lumines Arise is, it is another perfect title from Enhance. So yeahabsolutely pick this one up, play it, lose yourself and just have the best time Thank you.
