Legendary game designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi – the man responsible for the likes of Rez, Space Channel 5, and Tetris Effect – is reviving his much-loved musical block-dropper series Lumines and it’s coming to PS5 and PSVR2 later this year.
Lumines, for those unfamiliar, originally released for Sony’s PlayStation Portable handheld back in 2004. It delivered a distinctive twist on the classic falling block puzzle genre, firstly by challenging players to align 2×2 blocks of alternating colours to form single colour squares which would then disappear whenever the timeline passed over them. The speed of that, meanwhile, was dictated by the game’s shimmering, pulsating soundtrack which blended seamlessly with its shifting visuals.
Since then, several more Lumines games have released, building on that intial outing, with the most recent entry being 2018’s well-received Lumines Remastered. And now, a new instalment – Lumines Arise – is on the way. It’s being developed by Mizuguchi’s Enhance studio, and while details are limited, there’s talk of “compelling gameplay, [an] eclictic soundtrack, and lavish visuals”, all forming a “synesthetic sensory wonderland”.
There’s a free single-player and multiplayer demo coming this summer, and the full version of Lumines Arise is scheduled to launch for PlayStation 5 and PSVR2 this autumn. Expect more details closer to release.