Tetris Effect set my imagination on fire when it launched back in 2018, and I’ve since been crate-digging in the back catalogue of Tetsuya Mizuguchi, a man whose corpus has been focused on the thin barrier between musical rhythm and human emotions. Before his studio, Enhance, could get its hands on Tetris and change rhythm games for the better, Mizuguchi and company developed their own spin on the block-based puzzler — Lumines. Instead of tetrominoes, you’re supplied with a series of colour-coded 2×2 blocks, which you must align to create squares. As you endeavour to stop the blocks from turning into messy skyscrapers and ending your game, a timeline constantly crosses the board to the beat of the music, wiping clean any successful quadrilaterals.
Lumines Arise is a spiritual successor to Lumines, but one that folds in the research and development from Tetris Effect to, ahem, enhance the flow state-inducing resonance that rhythm games uniquely trade in. Like Tetris Effect, Lumines Arise features a single-player Journey Mode, an odyssey for the senses that presents the aforementioned gameplay against consecutive backdrops of evocative symbolism, scored by Hydelic, the soul-stirring maestro who gave us such hits as World of Colour and Always Been But Never Dreamed from Tetris Effect.
In the demo I played, there were three stages. The first was called Arise, and it began with a man slumped in darkness, either meditating or in some dissociative fugue. 3D letters and words cascaded around him like rain, but after enough square-summoning, he stood up, staggering at first before walking with a confident stride. I couldn’t quite catch the lyrics, but it felt like the vocal in the back was repeating something about “facing your demons or running away.” The second stage, Duo Soul, brought ominous robot heads to the fore as a broody baseline thumped away in the background, before giving way to the spectacular finale, Chameleon Groove — though I’d sooner call it a rave, given they were flanking the screen, knocking their heads in tune to an EDM beat.
Stages in Enhance games are typically dynamic emotional beasts that rise above their puzzling base, and in Lumines Arise, it’s no different. The new Burst mechanic adds an extra consideration to gameplay, too. There’s a meter rising as you twiddle the sticks, and when it hits 100%, you can pull the triggers to slow time and quickly create one big square that envelops the board and bumps your score. Essential in a bind, but also an incredibly cool sensorial experience, similar to the application of a high-pass filter in a DJ set.
Today, we learned that Lumines Arise is landing on November 11, with a digital deluxe edition that lets you use Astro Bot, the player-character from Rez, a Tetromino from Tetris Effect, or the dog from Humanity as your in-game avatar. These little guys are called Loomiis, and they sit to the lower right of your game board, boogying next to your score. If you play well and rack up a bunch of successful squares in Burst mode, little Loomiis from players around the world will shoot out towards the screen before you return to normal gameplay. They’re also used in the game’s multiplayer lobby, where you can run around among other Loomiis, forge connections, and work together to complete community projects that reward the player base with avatar customisation options.
The only issue I noticed was a lack of audio accessibility options. I expected to see the usual toggles like mono mixing, tinnitus relief filters, stronger visual cues, and perhaps even lyric captions that would help deaf and HOH players such as myself enjoy the game that little bit more. Despite losing most of my hearing in the years since Tetris Effect, the haptics and immersive soundscape still allowed me to connect deeply with the play experience, but these small considerations would only help to sustain that feeling of being in the zone.
Regardless, I am buzzing to jump into Journey Mode when the game lands later this year, and I’m sure the immersive glee will only be bolstered by Arise’s VR mode, which wasn’t available in this demo. I’m even keen to give multiplayer a try, if only thanks to the purpose-providing (and extremely adorable) Loomiis. It seems that Enhance has fixed the issue of what to do when you complete the story mode here. In rhythm games such as this, competitive and cooperative play make more sense to me if there’s some metaprogression underpinning it, rather than being just for fun.
