LUMINES REMASTERED

The Lumines series had been devoid of releases, and I suppose that's how Remastered came to be. It remixes various skins from past installments of the series into one definitive package for the first Steam release. If you don't know Lumines, this is a good game to get introduced to it. You drop squares made of pieces of two colors, and you want to create 2x2 squares of the same color. There's a timeline that sweeps through the grid according to the music, and your 2x2 squares get cleared only when the timeline sweeps through it. Which means you can have a lot of them ready before the timeline sweeps, if you're fast enough. Clearing multiple squares in a sweep is how you build up combo and multiplier for high scores. Different skins lead to different visuals and music. The latter in particular does affect gameplay: the BPM dictates the speed of the timeline, so you might be trying to rush to form squares at high speed to catch up with the fast timeline, or you might be trying to hold yourself from topping out while the slow timeline struggles to clear your squares. The game comes with a variety of skins, and the main mode requires you go through all the skins in one sitting. So it's mostly an arcade game where you're trying to rack up a high score. There are other game modes, like puzzles and a score attack mode within a time limit. There is additionally a versus mode, but it seems you can only play against the AI opponent, not other players. This game goes on a deep sale very often, and it's a no-brainer to get it if you're even remotely interested in arcade puzzles like Tetris or Puyo Puyo. Another Lumines entry is Lumines Arise, which has amazing visuals (and somewhat different set of modes), but it's a tad bit more expensive.