Lumines Arise

Its impossible not to compare this game to the original for me, its probably my favorite psp game. Everything in that game was so clear and felt like such a unique experience. This game feels more like they had something they wanted to show you and overlooked the basics that made the original so good. The biggest issue is the music, each level from the original had a distinct melody, and usually distinct ensemble or pallet of sounds. Each track felt like it was somehow creating music from your inputs with seemingly random sounds. they weren't random but it made you feel so connected to the songs. In Arise, other than a few tracks that just have so little going on that I never want to hear them again, it took me a while to figure out why I wasn't connecting with or enjoying the large majority of them. It mostly comes down to losing the rhythm, the music has so much playing on its own some of the time that you don't even notice the clearing sound of the bar deleting blocks. I'm not sure all the songs even have that as a feature. As the thing that made you feel most connected to the original game's songs along with the bar making different noises at the end if you cleared enough, not having that or at least having it be so underwhelming made me not connect with almost all the tracks. The visuals suffer mostly from the same issue, more is not better. There is so much going on that I don't connect with a lot of it or have the time to care. Along with most of the tracks offering random orbs with particle effects or animations with different shapes in them as the puzzle pieces, kind of gave me a headache at times. You can turn off having the camera slant from side to side, that helped. but even the way it highlights blocks that are going to get cleared can be confusing, if you get 4 it will create a large version of whatever the shape is, but any half sized addons kind of just get lightly highlighted and caused me to mess up many times. I really wanted to have another lumines and i'm sad I dont love this. TLDR: Visuals are very hit or miss same with the overcomplicated music and lack of connection to your inputs

This game is the most recent entry to the Lumines series, at least at the time of writing. It takes Tetris Effect, their previous game, and puts its innovations to Lumines gameplay. If you're [i]only[/i] looking for Lumines gameplay, then something like Lumines Remastered will serve you better. But if you like the choreography of amazing visuals and soundtrack from Tetris Effect, and you want more, this game will do. It has a similar Journey mode. It comes with the Burst mechanic, which is quite similar to Zone from Tetris Effect. Are you asking what is Lumines? It's an action puzzle game series, not as old as Tetris but still like around 20 years by now. Drop square pieces of two colors and try to form 2x2 squares of the same color. A timeline sweeps through the playfield according to the music; your 2x2 squares are only erased as the timeline sweeps past them, so you can use them to build more/larger squares. Introduced in this game is the Burst mechanic, which allows you to freeze one particular square so it doesn't get cleared by the timeline for several sweeps. This allows you to build more on the square, getting a huge, satisfying clear at the end of the burst. The variety in the stages comes from the different timing. Faster music means faster BPM means faster timeline. You might be forced to drop a piece faster than usual, similar to how the gravity might pick up in Tetris. In addition, with completely different visuals and music per stage, sometimes the difficulty comes from reading the board. ...which is unfortunate, but so it is. The game comes with other features too. There's a multiplayer lobby for a 1v1 battle, sending garbage blocks to try to overwhelm your opponent. There's a mode for puzzles for learning, as well as custom game modes such as being confined in a much smaller space than usual. You can personalize your character (mainly for the multiplayer lobby), and you can spend in-game currency to roll a gacha to unlock more customizations. While the inclusion of a gacha element is a bit unfortunate, you're not going to get repeats, so it's just a matter of playing long enough until you get everything. If you're only looking for a Lumines experience, the price tag might be quite steep. But if you're in the intersection of Tetris Effect lover as well as action puzzle enjoyer in general, this game is well worth it.

I am terrible at it, C average across the board... but it's enjoyable, and a mix of relaxing and anxiety inducing at the same time.

Growing up i remember sneaking my brothers psp that had lumines on it. I would play it all the time. When i saw the same developer that did Tetris Connected also developed this lumines i had to check it out. The soundtrack for this game is awesome and the visuals are equally as good. The chameleon level has to be my favorite. The levels are fun and if you played Tetris connected, it has the same style of level transition so that was something that was familiar. Lets not forget that this is NOT Tetris, but rather its own puzzle game and a great one at that.

this game is awesome! wish i could mute the vocals though.

All style, no substance. Half the stages are so dark and noisy that you can't see what color the blocks are and the music is pretty forgettable compared to the original.

[h1] 1. Play. Start. (Arise) [/h1] www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlTOFJboyqQ I was no stranger to the works of Tetsuya Mizuguchi. A game designer who worked at Sega during the 90s, designing arcade machines. Mizuguchi was initially interested in the power of visual media when interacting with the human senses. Earlier in his career, when attending a music festival, he observed how the audience reacted when faced to the music. It wasn’t just a group of people, standing in the same space, listening to the same set of songs. More than that, It was a communal experience, one moment, which could elicit a shared emotion, a sort of invisible connection, communicating with feeling, a sort of “unspoken language”. In this unexpected community, everyone could be anyone, a completely different individual and yet, the same. United by their common understanding of this moment, their shared passion. He was inspired by music and visual arts to make experiences that could evoke that same feeling, that same physical connection through emotions, with image and sound, and music. After his years at Sega, he cofounded Q Entertainment where he continued making video games in a more independent way. One of these games was called Lumines… [h1] 2. Shapes & Colors (O H) [/h1] Lumines is a puzzle action game in which you place falling pieces of different colors into squares or shapes of 2x2. It was created as a musical puzzle game, for the portable PlayStation console, since Mizuguchi saw the portable device as a sort of interactive Walkman or moving music player. He originally wanted to make a Tetris game with music but, due to licensing issues it was not possible at the time and instead, devised a similar concept of falling blocks within Lumines. …. However, that wasn’t all there was to this story… You would often hear the word “Synesthesia” related to these games: “A perceptual experience in which stimulation of one sense could spontaneously trigger sensations of another”. “Seeing sounds as shapes of colors, tasting words, arranging sequences of numbers in space or feeling the touch of someone else being touched.” “A bridge between the five senses that can also include other types of perception…” The concept of Synesthesia has been studied for many years, well before the existence of any modern media and yet, as incredible and implausible as it sounds, the most simplified explanation of it would be that it is the effect of an increased communication between sensory regions or cognitive pathways of the human brain… and, it occurs only on a small percentage of the world population (probably not you or me). Since most players are not “Synesthetes”, Mizuguchi was always looking for a certain visual representation of what Synesthesia could feel like in a game, on how music would move (and be moved) in that visual space and paint our emotions with colors… [h1] 3. Something I can’t explain. (Sky Falls) [/h1] www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5PUldkWxdk When playing Lumines Arise each level has its own visual identity: a musical theme sets the scene between two abstract layers or objects, one in direct contrast with the other, they are opposites and they attract each other. They clash together, and yet they dance around their shapes, united by an untold bond. When playing through these levels of Lumines arise, moving the pieces of the puzzle you feel like moving through the music, you are changing the songs. They react not only to your progress through the stage, but also to how you play it and if you play different the song will reflect that. It’s not just the tempo, but the actual content of the song may shift and change. Your connection with each level will be unique, it depends on how much you connect with the musical theme as well as the visuals. It will come unexpectedly. This close relationship of music and sound with the way you play and move around feels like a representation of Synesthesia. Chromesthesia is a sound to color type of synesthesia (a sound can evoke an experience of color, shape and movement.) I’ve noticed when moving the pieces around that each color was in direct relation with my movements making them feel almost tactile, and they were increasing in size and intensity almost coming out of the screen… And then… suddenly… one day something happened… something I can’t explain. While playing late at night, I was fully immersed in a particular level, in front of me, moving shapes were dancing through the screen, outside of it, a faint light that separated my room from total darkness. The city was darkness. The darkness became infinite. Colors where taking shape as music followed my every move… I could swear my screen was getting brighter than ever before, but also I was getting faster (and for some reason wasn’t failing like before). Colors were becoming brighter, shapes were getting out of control, they seemed to be moving slower, by themselves (or was I moving them still?) I was getting out of control. Shapes were melting into strokes of color, and colors were turning into music, and music was light, light that in one second, filled my entire screen, but then it went beyond that and filled my entire field of vision. All I could see was light, and in that moment all was filled with music and emotion…. And then, everything became dark again. [h1] 4. Only Human (Pulse) [/h1] I tried to understand what happened to me that night. Did I experience Synesthesia? Were my senses failing me that day? Was I getting blind?! Many months have passed since the event and I was never able to replicate it. Always taking care of repeating the same conditions, on the same space with the same lighting, same headphones. Many times. The gameplay was fun, I even replayed it sleepy at late night some days (I do not recommend it!) but it never happened, my room never filled with light again. There is however something that changed after that night. Pieces were moving slower… It is said that Synesthesia could manifest on someone who is not Synesthete. There is the possibility. This could happen by “sense overloading” which could trigger sensations of another kind. Overloading the senses could be forced by causing sleep deprivation (play while being too tired and exhausted) or even by drug stimulation. This can not occur just by overloading your senses alone of course, there needs to be some kind of external stimulation coming at you. And then I realized… all this time, Mizuguchi was not trying to make a “visual representation” of Synesthesia but he was actually trying to make us “experience” Synesthesia through his games. Through the power of visual arts and music and using interactivity as far as it can go, he was trying to stimulate our senses to reach the Zen state of induced Synesthesia. Did he achieve that? Did I experience it? Or was I just too caught up in the moment, being too tired and unprepared by the novelty of the effects happening on screen for the first time? Good news is I am not getting blind any time soon. But… something has changed. After that day, it became easier to move the pieces. I became faster. Before that night, I was always trying to find my way around them, (over)thinking it. Now, I was breezing through them. This time I wasn’t looking at the pieces anymore, I was feeling them. This time, I was moving through the music. www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJjeOIcKUog Arise - Performed by Hydelic & Krysta Youngs [b] ©2026 Krysta Youngs & Noboru Mutoh [/b] Only Human - Performed by Hydelic & Krysta Youngs [b] ©2026 Krysta Youngs & Noboru Mutoh [/b] Sky Falls Down - Hydelic & Luma [b] ©2026 Brittany Cannarozzi & Noboru Mutoh [/b] [b] This review (finally!!!) written ©2026 Aleena. [/b]

this is my autistic game

steam should let me review a game without requiring a comment

Lumines Arise to dowód na to, że nie każda świetna gra VR musi polegać na intensywnym machaniu rękami, strzelaniu czy unikaniu ciosów. Czasami wystarczy genialna, wciągająca mechanika logiczna i muzyka, która pulsuje w rytm twoich działań. Odpalenie tego tytułu w środowisku SteamVR to strzał w dziesiątkę, bo moc peceta pozwala wycisnąć z tej oprawy absolutne maksimum. Zasady są stare jak świat – układamy dwukolorowe bloki, by tworzyć kwadraty, które następnie czyści przesuwająca się po ekranie linia czasu. Różnica polega na tym, że w goglach VR cała ta plansza i otaczający ją świat dosłownie ożywają. Każde combo to eksplozja cząsteczek, a tło zmienia się i ewoluuje wraz ze ścieżką dźwiękową. To czysty, muzyczny trans. Plusy: ➕ Płynność i ostrość obrazu: Dzięki wsparciu SteamVR gra działa obłędnie płynnie. Wysoki klatkaż i podbita rozdzielczość sprawiają, że neonowe efekty są ostre jak brzytwa, co w VR jest kluczowe dla komfortu. ➕ Stan "Flow": Gra fenomenalnie odcina od świata zewnętrznego. Połącz układanie klocków z przestrzennym dźwiękiem i genialną muzyką elektroniczną, a po 5 minutach zapominasz, w jakim pokoju siedzisz. ➕ Kompatybilność: SteamVR radzi sobie z tym tytułem świetnie, niezależnie od tego, czy grasz na Valve Index z najwyższym odświeżaniem, czy streamujesz bezprzewodowo na gogle typu Quest. ➕ Relaks i wyciszenie: To idealna "gra kanapowa" w wirtualnej rzeczywistości. Można wygodnie usiąść, wziąć kontrolery i po prostu dać się ponieść muzyce po stresującym dniu. Minusy: ➖ Wizualne przebodźcowanie: Ostra, neonowa paleta barw i błyskające światła przy dłuższych sesjach potrafią mocno zmęczyć oczy. To gra raczej na intensywne, ale krótsze posiedzenia. ➖ Brak ruchu fizycznego: Dla osób, które traktują VR głównie jako platformę do fitnessu i aktywnych gier (jak Beat Saber), statyczna mechanika Lumines może okazać się zbyt spokojna. ➖ Konserwatywny rdzeń gry: Pod wszystkimi fajerwerkami VR to nadal klasyczne Lumines. Jeśli ten typ łamigłówek (przypominający wariację na temat Tetrisa) nigdy do ciebie nie trafiał, oprawa tego nie zmieni. Podsumowanie: Lumines Arise na SteamVR to genialne, immersyjne doświadczenie, które wykorzystuje moc peceta, by zalać zmysły perfekcyjnym obrazem i dźwiękiem. Nie jest to gra, w której spocisz się od wysiłku fizycznego, ale twój mózg i tak będzie pracował na najwyższych obrotach. Gorąco polecam każdemu fanowi gier rytmicznych i logicznych – w wirtualnej rzeczywistości ten klasyk zyskuje zupełnie nowe, hipnotyzujące oblicze. Ocena: 8.5/10