Lumines Arise review: A Gorgeous audiovisual spectacle

There’s no doubt that Tetris is one of the most influential games of all time, and has even had a movie made about it. Since then, similar games have popped up, some more successful than others. One of them, the Lumines series, has withstood the test of time with its unique mechanics and music-based focus.

Lumines Arise is the latest entry since 2018’s Lumines Remastered, and it combines familiar puzzle-solving gameplay with a hypnotic soundtrack. Lumines Arise is an immersive yet challenging orchestra that is a delight to play, but is sometimes hindered by its distracting visuals.

The Escapist recaps

• Lumines Arise is the latest entry in the Lumines series since 2018’s Lumines Remastered, which was an updated port of the first game, 2004’s Lumines: Puzzle Fusion
• There are robust multiplayer features, including online and local play with Burst Battle, a 1v1 battle mode.
• It has a new gameplay mechanic called Burst, which freezes time to let you build a bigger combo.
• Lumines Arise can also be played via PlayStation VR2 and other Steam-supported headsets

It’s not just a Tetris clone

What makes Lumines different from its competition is the way blocks are cleared. Players create 2×2 blocks of the same color, and the matching colors are only cleared when a sweeping line moves through the level. 

The line goes by the beat of the music, and matching blocks aren’t cleared immediately like in Tetris. This makes gameplay a bit more strategic as you have to think ahead. You could have matching blocks, but trigger a game over if your stack gets too high before the line comes along and sweeps it. It’s a quirk that makes Lumines both challenging and fun.

Lumines Arise introduces a new mechanic called Burst, which allows you to momentarily freeze time and try to match and stack a singular pattern as much as you can before the timer runs out. As you continue to clear lines, you build your Burst meter and can activate it once you hit at least 50%. 

While it won’t last as long as if it were at its maximum, it works as a fantastic desperation move if you feel like you’re about to lose. It doesn’t feel overpowered as you can’t continuously activate it. You have to be tactical and pick the most opportune time, which makes clearing blocks under Burst all the more satisfying when you manage to score a huge combo under it.

Don’t be deceived into thinking Lumines Arise is just a puzzle game. It features a shockingly detailed and long single-player campaign, comprising 35 stages across nine levels. Depending on your level of skill, the campaign can be completed in under 20 hours. There are also three difficulty levels to test your skills, and players will want to try to get as high of a score as they can, making the campaign length time even longer.

Your high-score streak goes on as long as you can clear the levels in a continuous go without triggering a game over. But if you lose, there’s some leniency where the game doesn’t immediately force you to start over from the beginning of the level, but only from the stage, and you’re back at a zero score. I really appreciated this as some of the stages can be quite hard, and if I failed, I didn’t feel like I wasted my time and was able to continue progressing through the campaign.

It’s all connected

The music in Lumines Arise is composed by Hydelic and Takako Ishida, who both actually composed the music for Tetris Effect: Connected, too. As a result, it has an incredibly spacey and dreamy soundtrack that you can easily vibe to and lose yourself in. There’s a big variety of genres, including house, hip hop, electronic, classical, and R&B, which ensures that you won’t get tired of listening to the same kinds of songs over and over again. 

The visuals are gorgeous, too. The colorful backgrounds and shifting colors make you feel like you’re at some sort of rave or EDM festival. Throughout my entire time playing Lumines Arise, I felt like I was in a groovy and psychedelic trance.

However, the visuals are simultaneously its biggest downfall, as they can impact readability. For example, if a stage switches to a jungle backdrop, the blocks will shift to fit the theme. So instead of easily decipherable and simple white and orange blocks, they’ll turn into red and green apples. 

While this is a nice thematic touch, sometimes the blocks become almost unreadable. The red and green apples are translucent, making it difficult to distinguish one from the other by color. In a blazingly fast game like this, where every second literally counts, trying to figure out the colors wastes valuable time and often leads to a game over. 

There are other themes, like Xs and Os, that are much more easily readable, but in certain instances, like with these translucent apples, it’s ultimately distracting. I wish there were an option that just lets me stick with the standard and default white and orange blocks that Lumines typically has.

Lumines Arise has plenty of accessibility settings, including being able to adjust motion blur and colorblind modes, but none of them, unfortunately, fix the readability issue regarding some of the blocks, as far as I can tell.

Arise together

The game’s main multiplayer mode, Burst Battle, is an incredible addition. Here, you can face off against friends, CPUs, and other players across the world. You can participate in Ranked battles to climb the leaderboard and matchmake with similarly skilled opponents to improve your own prowess. It’s the competitive edge that the game needs to extend its longevity.

You can also participate in Time Attack and Quick Burst, the latter of which plays more like an arcade-style format where you want to try to aim for the highest Burst bonus possible. Both come with their own leaderboards. Dig Down is a mode where you fight against a rising tide of blocks from the bottom of the screen. These are fun alternative game modes to Burst Battle that switch things up.

There’s also a community component called Weekend Loomii-Live events. On weekends, if enough multiplayer games are played, then Lumines Arise rewards participants with special avatar customization awards. Despite the cutthroat nature of other multiplayer game modes, it’s refreshing to see a larger goal in sight, which helps foster a growing community.

Lumines Arise is a meticulously crafted musical with a confident, rhythm-driven twist on the classic Tetris puzzle formula. The new Burst mechanic adds an explosive touch and extra layer of tactical depth that feels fresh without being overcentralizing. The campaign length is satisfying, and the multiplayer offerings will keep players coming back for more. 

While the visuals are vibrant and immersive, some themed backgrounds make it difficult to distinguish the blocks, slightly undermining an otherwise engaging and stylish puzzle game. Still, Hydelic and Ishida’s soundtrack delivers a hypnotic experience unlike any other.

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