As many video game studios continue to leverage technology in the pursuit of photorealism, developers Enhance and Monstars Inc. understand that technology can also be used in the pursuit of emotional impact. Their new game, Lumines Arise, exposes you to a display of perpetual creativity, where every inch of the screen is bathed in a cascade of visual effects that mesmerize you. It takes the foundation of a series that started back in 2004 and turns it on its head by giving it the Tetris Effect treatment, presenting a sensorial experience that’s equally enchanting and confident.
Lumines has been largely dormant for the past decade. But while Arise is a synesthesia-fueled sequel, the core conceit of this popular series is largely unchanged. You’re still presented with a playfield divided into a grid, in which 2×2 blocks descend from above. Each of those blocks is composed of four squares, and each of those squares is painted with one of two colors or patterns. The goal is to drop the blocks so that squares of the same pattern touch each other, combining them into larger squares of the same type–the bigger the combined square, the more points you earn.
All the while, a timeline–which is represented by a vertical line that moves from left to right with the tempo of the music–will sweep away the combined squares when it comes into contact with them. Therefore, the key is to make squares of a single type so the timeline will remove them and prevent the playfield from becoming full, which is an instant game over, while also attempting to make as many square combos as possible, either by enlarging existing ones or creating several at once. Your squares only score when the timeline sweeps through, so it’s a race against the clock to make the biggest combos you can for each pass.
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The series always embodied an arcade spirit, but the prominent Tetris Effect influence impacts the ambiance. Think of each stage as its own little visual show, at times resembling the experience of watching fireworks, exploring an aquarium, or attending a concert, with lightning, particle effects, music, and background animations creating setpieces. As such, Lumines Arise is centered around its Journey mode. This is composed of over 30 levels, all with a distinct theme, song, and visual motif. It’s still all very arcade-y, with levels granting you scores and a grading at the end. Yet, each stage is its own sensorial capsule. You jump from a dimly lit club-style level with frantic electronic music keeping a fast pace, to more tranquil stages with swimming koi fish, and despite being totally different, they all coexist with each other–after all, you’re still playing Lumines.
Even more impressive is how Arise captures the tantalizing rush to get to the final level while also maintaining the curiosity of discovering what each stage has to offer. There’s no way of knowing what’s going to come next, aside from a small thumbnail on the stage selection menu. That tells you next to nothing, considering each level has its own visual gimmick, as well as at least one breaking point in which it changes, affecting the speed, music, visuals, or all of these elements in tandem.
Getting to the final level, however, is no easy feat. Even for someone who has played Lumines before, I kept reaching roadblocks throughout. You can pick between three difficulty options, with higher options requiring more 2×2 squares to clear a stage and often increasing the speed at which blocks fall. Regardless, chances are, you won’t get through the entirety of Journey mode without restarting levels multiple times. But I never felt frustrated. Rather, I was pushed to try again, seeing if I could beat my previous score. After spending quite a few days playing, the satisfaction of noticing my skills improve hasn’t waned.
This satisfaction is partly due to the Burst mechanic. A percentage increases primarily as you build squares, and when you have at least 50%, activating Burst will pick a square on the playfield that hasn’t been touched by the timeline, and will retain it in place for a few waves. During that time, the goal is to pile up adjacent blocks of the same color to make that square bigger. As you do, blocks of the opposite color will be pushed upwards and, once you get to the final wave and the timeline does its sweep to take away the square you’ve been building, those blocks will all fall at once to fill in the newly empty space made during the Burst, creating yet another opportunity to clear the playfield. It took me a while to learn when to make the best use of this mechanic, but once it clicked, creating squares with over 200 blocks never fails to make me smile.
Backgrounds accompany the experience with creative imagery–from a dance choreography of silhouettes under the rain to a group of people having a party at sunset on a beach–but I was consistently surprised to see how the blocks and squares themselves also change. Some appear with a completely different look altogether, including a level with apples and limes that later turn into peppers and broccoli. Other times, you may be building squares with small eggs, and once the timeline passes by, they break and release birds that start walking on top of the blocks.
The soundtrack, while fitting for each level, isn’t quite as memorable. There are plenty of songs with vocal tracks, but they sometimes feel like a case of unnecessarily wanting to do more while sacrificing pace–especially when the lyrics aren’t very strong. That being said, I appreciate that Arise strives to forge its own identity. Some levels are more zen-like, but a ton of them want you to move. There are hip-hop and quite intense techno levels that stand out, and the intent to provide variety is clear.
As gorgeous as Arise is, the visual effects can impact how easily you can read the action. At times, there’s simply too much happening on screen–one level in particular has the bottom of the playfield begin to fill with water, which looks great in motion but obscures legibility. Thankfully, there’s a myriad of accessibility options that let you tweak the playfield’s background opacity, zoom levels, and other visual elements. (There are also options to make the game much easier, too.)
However, most of my gripes with visibility disappeared when playing in virtual reality, as your perspective is much closer to the playfield by default. As much as I enjoy playing on PC at 144fps, Arise truly shines in VR. There’s a substantial difference in seeing the visual animations and effects from afar on a flat screen, which accompany the game as a cool background, than having those same effects happen closer to your eyes, while also amplifying the size of everything. The action of having to move your head around to see the entire background completes the synergy of all present elements–playing on PlayStation 5 with PSVR2, the experience is engrossing.
The DualSense controller adds another layer, making heavy use of the haptics to emphasize the beat and provide weight to your block-dropping, and activating Burst mode shakes the headset, all the while the music fades in and out. The stage itself zooms in and out depending on your actions, which feels great inside the headset and also keeps that VR effect dynamic, frequently toying with depth. (You can tweak how the zoom works for both VR and non-VR if you want, too.)
Some levels use 3D effects, like objects flying toward the screen, to create intensity and immersion, but they never feel heavy-handed. My favorite moments in VR, however, were the ones in which a stage gained a different sense of scale. One stage traverses a long road with a plane flying by. The plane can appear from either side of your field of view, but I was shocked when it flew by directly above me toward the center, completely engulfing the upper portion of my vision. One of the later levels, which I don’t want to spoil, balances every visual and musical element just right, building a crescendo that never fails to make me teary-eyed.
The main event of Arise is Journey mode, but it’s far from the only mode available. There’s also Burst Battle, the multiplayer aspect, which can be played online in both casual and ranked matches, locally on the same platform, or against a bot. It has you competing in one-on-one, best-of-three rounds, where creating squares adds garbage to the sides of your opponent’s playfield, similarly to Tetris 99.
There are also time attack leaderboards, weekly events, and some missions and challenges meant to teach you advanced mechanics or that remix existing levels. Upon finishing Journey mode at least once, you unlock Survival, in which you play through the entirety of Journey mode in one go, and there’s also an option to create your own playlist by hand-picking stages and playing them in any order.
The missions and challenges aren’t as strong as the rest of the modes available, but I enjoyed the Burst Battle matches I got to play before the game’s launch. They’re far more intense than the regular experience, and I can see myself dipping in and out often. What I’m most interested in are the limited-time events. During one particular weekend of the review period, I entered the multiplayer hub and saw that it had transformed because of an event. Players were tasked with completing certain shared goals, and everyone’s scores all contributed to a total that ultimately rewarded everyone with cosmetics.
All of this also serves to emphasize the game’s central theme: connection. Whenever you perform a Burst, a handful of in-game avatars known as Loomii break out from the square, each displaying the platform username of a corresponding player. Loomii are everywhere–they stand next to the playfield when you’re playing and you can control them in the multiplayer hub.
Every Loomii you “set free” with each Burst tags along with you from that moment on. The stage selection screen gets increasingly populated with them, ultimately gaining more importance in the final stage of Journey mode by crowding the level itself. They are first presented as a mere customizable avatar to distinguish your online profile, but there’s a layer that can be further explored with multiplayer events that I’m excited to see unfold. When I entered the multiplayer lobby during the weekend event, leaving your Loomii idle made them dance to the beat of the celebratory music in the background. These small iterations to the presentation of the multiplayer hub, as well as new common goals to contribute to, have the potential to become a recurring reason to return to the game.
Regardless of the context in which I experience each stage in Lumines Arise–whether that is competing against another player on a stage they selected, or curating a playlist and taking my time with it at my own pace–revisiting them is never arduous. Sure, it’s a testament to the conceit of the series and how well-designed Lumines is. But it also speaks to the main attraction, which is simply to experience–and then re-experience–each setpiece, with its visual gimmicks and stimulating sounds coming together to create a singular ambiance. It doesn’t matter that the apples will always turn into peppers, or that the dancers will always be caught in the rain–Arise puts on a show with each stage, revitalizing the series by grabbing a familiar foundation and playing a dozen different concerts with it.
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