Two techno heads simply bobbing to the steadily growing beat? Blocks that methodically crawl towards the field before unfolding, as two skeletal hands start generating silk with each clear? I vaguely remember a snake of some sort, and much more in-your-face spider depictions, but you also have people emerging from cleared squares to walk away. Don’t even get me started on the chef stage with its progression from chopped fruits to vegetables, and I swear I saw a lizard at some point.

It’s incredibly trippy and should feel like little more than a gimmick, but each stage throughout Journey Mode and beyond feels unique – both overtly and in all the little ways. Each song feels tuned to your progress, evolving as you stack up the clears and even warping if you build too far up, seemingly portraying that internal pressure. Each little note tied to your cursor movement, the satisfying click when locking blocks in place – it’s so subliminally addictive that you might not even realize it on that 50th attempt at Survival on Hard Mode.

"The framework is less interstellar journey and more Big Bang, each milestone Burst creating more Loomis to join in. Multiple areas await, each divided into different levels that you play through consecutively. "

However, despite these notable visual flourishes, Lumines Arises reinforces one core aspect about the franchise: How gosh darned fun it is to play. How unique of a twist it feels on the Tetris formula, subtly rewiring that line-clearing mentality into something more malleable, and how delightful it feels to master. Which I haven’t, but there’s no denying the joy that comes from subconsciously fitting everything in place. It almost makes you wonder how the franchise fell by the wayside for so long without a new entry, much like with Tetris before Effect came along. Was this all just one big plan to revive Meteos, Mizuguchi’s other puzzle masterpiece? Probably.

Regardless, from the outset, Lumines Arise will feel very familiar in structure to Tetris Effect. As a Loomi, you embark on Journey Mode to set other Loomis free. The framework is less interstellar journey and more Big Bang, each milestone Burst creating more Loomis to join in. Multiple areas await, each divided into different levels that you play through consecutively. Blocks carry over between each; the speed gradually increases; and if you’re good enough to stay alive throughout, a high score is generated before moving on to the next area.

Aside from the final areas, each follows this pattern, unified by a singular theme such as Dissonance. The actual gameplay is where Tetris aficionados will face the biggest shock. A 16×10 square playing field awaits, and every single piece is 2×2, comprising four blocks each. If they’re the same color, they merge into a square, awaiting the periodic timeline to sweep across and wipe them out. If they’re not, you’ll need to match them with other corresponding colors. Things start to get interesting when combining other blocks with already established squares, transforming them into larger 3×3 squares, which grant even more points when cleared.

They also contribute to your Burst meter, which works somewhat differently from the Zone mechanic. The board slows down as usual, but instead of suspending line clears to build up even higher scores, you’re trying to further add on to a single square, amplifying it into one giant Burst of light. The opposing color, meanwhile, is transformed into assorted squares and blocks, which can be further chained for a higher score. As with the Zone, Burst lasts longer when activated at a full meter. Anything above 50 percent may be useful as a “get out of jail free” card, but it won’t last as long and thus provide as much of a benefit.

"Combine this with the satisfying presentation and sheer joy of each action, and you’ll want to improve, if only to keep the rhythm going. Again, it’s a simple formula, yet there are layers of depth beyond it that are nothing if not captivating."

In the middle of all this, special blocks attached to a square can be used to connect all corresponding blocks across the board for an easier clear. So even if you’re not as optimal in building 2x2s or 3x3s, causing opposing colored blocks to stick out like so many sore thumbs, it could be the key to a clean slate. Alternatively, turn it to your favor to set up even more chains and build up that Burst meter even faster.

As unorthodox as it can feel at first, Lumines’s gameplay loop remains as addictive as ever – relatively easy to pick up and grasp but difficult to fully master. Combine this with the satisfying presentation and sheer joy of each action, and you’ll want to improve, if only to keep the rhythm going. Again, it’s a simple formula, yet there are layers of depth beyond it that are nothing if not captivating.

Once you’ve cleared Journey Mode, the real meat of Lumines opens up: Survival. Play through all stages in a row and attempt to complete them. It’s the ultimate test but also the only way to really play. Right? The good news is that there are other modes, like Missions, which offer Tutorials for learning various techniques and challenges to put them into practice. For example, one of them involves clearing squares in the middle to hatch a large egg. It’s a simple lesson that teaches you to properly optimize block placement in the best space on the board, given the low travel distance, and it’s a lot easier said than done. Various tougher missions await, and it’s a great way to learn the game while testing your understanding of its mechanics.

Otherwise, you can venture into playlists and curate your own Survival sequence of stages, or venture into online battles to challenge other players. It’s also home to different durations of Time Attack and the new Dig Down, where instead of pieces dropping from above, the board as a whole periodically raises, and you need to keep clearing to survive. The more squares cleared, the bigger the board and the more leeway available to make mistakes, but things only get more difficult as time goes on.

"As a new entry in the franchise, a successor to everything that came before and really just another great puzzler for those who loved Tetris Effect, this comes highly recommended."

Maybe you’ll want to engage in some Loomi-Pon as well – a gachapon mechanic where you spend in-game currency to unlock new cosmetic items to dress up your character. When compared to the larger suite of features available in Tetris Effect: Connected, Lumines Arise can feel smaller, especially since it doesn’t have the largest swathe of experimental modes. There’s also the issue of visibility in certain places, not to mention one stage where the two block colors look so confusingly similar that it can mess you up during Bursts.

Neither of these is enough to deny the greatness of Lumines Arise as a whole, even if they slightly dampen the excitement. As a new entry in the franchise, a successor to everything that came before and really just another great puzzler for those who loved Tetris Effect, this comes highly recommended. By the end of Journey, there’s this message of ascending beyond and embracing the light of hope. Like Tetris Effect, Lumines Arise appeals to a deeper state of mind – one that appreciates the beauty of its sights and sounds, even after getting crushed for the millionth time in Survival.

This game was reviewed on PC.

A new deep dive video highlights new mechanics like Burst, which essentially freezes any clears made to maximize one’s score. Unlike the Zone from Tetris Effect, however, it also sends adjacent blocks of the other pattern into the air, which then fall back down.

It may seem like a risk, but it allows for more combos if you know what to do. Beyond Journey Mode, which takes players on a wordless narrative, is Survival Mode, where players run through all the stages without any breaks (complete with leaderboards). You can also partake in Training missions, Challenges or make your own custom playlist of stages.

Of course, there’s Burst Battle, which is playable against the AI or others, and the new Dig Down, where blocks must be cleared to traverse downwards.

Lumines Arise is available on November 11th for PS5 and PC (with VR support). A free demo is available now on PC as part of the Steam Next Fest.

In the meantime, a free demo is available, with three stages from Journey Mode and the cross-play online mode, Burst Battle. It’s live until September 3rd, local time, and an extensive trailer is available to explain everything. Check it out below.

The full game features more than 35 stages, and similar to Tetris Effect and Rez Infinite, it promises a synesthesia-like experience with its visuals and music. It also introduces the Burst Mechanic, which effectively pauses time after matching a Square and allows for stacking even more for higher scores. Stay tuned for details in the coming months.

As part of the update, all platforms will now be able to play Classic Score Attack, Zone Marathon, Purify Mode, and Master Mode. The update has a trailer, explaining the new game modes.

Essentially, Classic Score Attack is a single-player version of the Score Attack mode. Available in Effect Modes, it also allows players to switch between NTSC and PAL game speeds. Zone Marathon is a version of the Marathon Mode with the Zone mechanic. Both Master and Purify modes are now able to be played as endless games.

Tetris Effect: Connected was originally released back in November 2020 as an expanded re-release of 2018’s Tetris Effect. Originally launched on Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One, the game eventually made its way on to Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, and Oculus Quest as well. For more details, check out our review of its original release.

During Nintendo’s recent Indie World showcase, it was announced that Tetris Effect: Connected will be releasing for the Nintendo Switch at long last, with its release date confirmed to be October 8. Honestly, it’s a bit surprising that it’s taken this long for a game such as this one to come to Nintendo’s hybrid (as the saying goes, it’s perfect for the Switch)- but hey, better late than never, right?

Tetris Effect: Connected is currently available on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS4, and PC. You can read our review of the game through here.

Experience Tetris like you’ve never seen, heard, or felt before in the innovative Tetris Effect: Connected by @enhance_exp. Play solo and take on your friends in online or local multiplayer! Coming to #NintendoSwitch on Oct. 8! #IndieWorld pic.twitter.com/MaaUQZ7w3Y

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) August 11, 2021

Cross-platform play also goes live on the same day and those on Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One along with PC players with the Microsoft Store version will receive an update along with PS4, Oculus Quest, Steam and Epic Games Store. Along with a skill rating reset for multiplayer, a new Spectator Mode, PAL and Slow speed modes, and new performance options for Oculus Quest 2 headsets.

For more details on Tetris Effect: Connected, check out our review here. This update may mark the end of support for the title especially since creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi confirmed in November 2020 that he was moving on to his next project. Stay tuned for more details in the meantime.

Other new features include Spectator Mode for matches with friends which allows 4-6 players to spectate a match and use emotes to cheer for players. PAL Speed is also being added to local and friendly matches along with Classic Score Attack which looks to replicate the European PAL feel of the original Tetris on the NES. That means a lower frame rate, faster dropping speed in the later levels and faster horizontal movement. Finally, Slow Speed is coming to Zone Battle along with friendly and local matches.

A closed beta will be held for cross-platform play along with all of the new features starting today. It will be available as a separate download from today to June 23rd on PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and Microsoft Store PC. All Tetris Effect owners can try it out from June 23rd to July 5th while Steam users gain access from today till July 5th (but only through closed invite). For more details on the update, check out the video below.

Enhance’s Tetris Effect: Connected released last November for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC via the Windows Store but its colorful journey is far from over. It’s slated to release on Steam this Summer with the publisher announcing the store page to be live. Fans can wishlist the title in the meantime.

As for additional details, Enhance stated that it would have “some more exciting news” on the update soon. Tetris Effect: Connected is essentially an update to the base game that added co-op multiplayer and a new competitive mode. Though currently exclusive to Xbox platforms and Windows Store, it will also be coming to PS4, PlayStation VR, Epic Games and Oculus Quest versions as a free update this Summer.

For more details on Tetris Effect: Connected, check out our official review here. Creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi confirmed last year that he was working on a new project with Enhance being the publisher once more. Stay tuned for more details on that as well in the coming days.

https://twitter.com/enhance_exp/status/1389323340435705861

https://twitter.com/enhance_exp/status/1389323342658686976

An upgraded version of 2018’s release, Connected contains all of the single player modes from the original, mostly unchanged. The primary, and likely first, that you’ll experience is the Journey Mode, which acts as the effective campaign. In this mode, you work your way through more than two dozen stages combined into a handful of four or five stage bundles that you play in sequence. Within each of the sequential stages, you need to clear a certain number of lines, which changes based on the difficulty setting, and between stages, the pieces you’ve already placed stay put, though if you fail, you can restart the stage you were on from scratch. Naturally, stages begin relatively easy and increase in difficulty, usually fairly, but there are a handful of times where the difficulty spikes become too much to handle. The drop speed of tetriminos can increase with almost no warning, especially when you’re focused on the board to figure out your next moves, and getting hit with an unannounced major spike in drop speed feels jarring and unfair. Luckily this only happens in the latter stages on normal difficulty and intermittently on expert, but when it does, it feels like an unavoidable setback.

"2018’s Tetris Effect understood what makes the original so great and built around it to improve the experience but leave the core unchanged, and Tetris Effect: Connected improves the formula even further by implementing new multiplayer modes and enhancing the already beautiful visuals to utilize the Xbox Series X."

The only adjustment to the core Tetris gameplay is the addition of the zone mechanic, through which you can slow down the drop speed of each piece and, if you’ve planned well enough, clear more than the traditional four lines at a time. This mechanic is almost akin to Guitar Hero’s Star Power, working to either help boost your high score or lend a helping hand when you’re about to fail. It’s easy to forget about when you’re in the zone, but if you’ve built up enough of a zone meter, it can be a secret weapon against those spikes in speeds. Plus, the stages react beautifully to going into the zone, and if you clear enough lines, it turns to a satisfying negative filter, making you feel like you’ve utilized it correctly. It’s the type of mechanic that can be completely ignored if you want the pure Tetris experience but only serves to help those who want or need it, and I found it a welcome addition to the formula.

The other modes transferred from the original are the Effect Modes, consisting of a variety of modified ways to play the base game. These include traditional quick play and Chill Marathon modes, more intense high-score and high-speed modes, and others with unique challenges such as clearing infected blocks, dealing with occasional I-tetriminos randomly falling onto the board, and the most fun Mystery mode, which pits you against a surprisingly large number of different factors like turning the board upside down or throwing in a bomb that needs to be defused. These are just more ways to play the game with a few twists, and, while they’re not necessarily breaking any ground, they’re great pieces to have for the longevity of Tetris in this particular package.

The primary addition to Connected is a slew of competitive or cooperative multiplayer modes. The most interesting of these is the Connected mode, which teams three real players up to go against a series of AI-controlled bosses. For the most part, this is a variation on three players playing their own game, but occasionally the three boards are combined and the three players are invited to clear even longer lines that make the boss’s board more difficult, similar to how it’s done in Tetris 99. The calculus for a handful of the mode’s features is never clearly explained, but the ability to combine boards and take down a common enemy, Tetris-style, never gets old. The other multiplayer modes are classic one-on-one modes that are fun in their own right, one of which includes the zone mechanic from Journey Mode. These are more features that don’t try to shake up the formula but are classic elements of the game that should be there for any Tetris experience and are fun to jump into as a shake-up from the single-player.

"What truly differentiates Tetris Effect from any other Tetris game is the unparalleled presentation that turns such a simple game into a transcendental experience."

What truly differentiates Tetris Effect from any other Tetris game is the unparalleled presentation that turns such a simple game into a transcendental experience. Each primary stage has its own unique theme, ranging from the darkness of space to the hustle and bustle of a city skyline and everything in between. Every stage has a gorgeous set of visuals that plays out around and behind the game board, each of which is almost mesmerizing enough to distract you from the game you’re supposed to be playing. Even more impressive is how the visuals react to your progression through the stage. Most stages begin relatively quaint and cold, but as you clear lines and make big moves, the visuals start to open up, getting warmer and more vibrant.

Take the stage that sees you climbing a mountain. Your initial view is cold, looking up at the long path ahead, but as you progress, you move your way up the path until the end, when you’ve cleared enough lines, you reach the summit and see the beautiful orange sunset covering the snow. While some stages are more impactful than others, each is still uniquely gorgeous. Though it might not push the boundaries of the Xbox Series X with character models or draw distance, it’s instantly mesmerizing to see the array of colors that fly around in the form of countless particles that could not have been rendered this beautifully on past consoles.

Complementing the visuals for every theme is the equally mesmerizing music that not only sets an undeniable tone for each stage but also interplays with the gameplay just as much as the visuals themselves. The music, too, starts soft but slowly builds to a triumphant climax as you reach the latter stages of each level, and it even reacts when you clear a line or rotate a piece. The combination of the music and visuals culminates in one of the most satisfying feelings as you progress, with particular moments like reaching the mountain summit or breaching the ocean surface with a pack of dolphins becoming entirely unforgettable and incredibly replayable, even through the Theater Mode that eliminates the Tetris aspect altogether.

"Tetris Effect: Connected is undoubtedly the best complete Tetris package that I’ve played."

Tetris Effect: Connected is undoubtedly the best complete Tetris package that I’ve played. With Connected’s addition of cooperative and competitive multiplayer, it contains virtually every mode you could hope a Tetris game would have, whether it’s relaxed or intense, alone or with others. The true star of this version of Tetris, though, is the presentation, which mixes visuals and sound in a way that uniformly enhances the experience without touching the core gameplay. Tetris is one of gaming’s quintessential pieces, and Tetris Effect: Connected makes that piece ever more unforgettable.

This game was reviewed on the Xbox Series X.

Enhance Games’ Tetris Effect: Connected is now available for Xbox Series X/S, coinciding with the consoles’ launch today. It’s also out for Xbox One and PC for $39.99 on the Microsoft Store. However, Xbox Game Pass subscribers on both platforms can also play it. Check out the launch trailer below.

Along with the base game – which you can read our review here for more details – Tetris Effect: Connected features new modes. There’s the Zone Battle multiplayer mode which changes up the Zone mechanic and Connected co-op mode that sees three players working together. Over 30 stages are available to play along with ranked and unranked play.

Tetris Effect: Connected will also be coming to owners of the original on PS4, PC via the Epic Games Store and Oculus Quest as a free update. However, they’ll need to wait until Summer 2021. For more details on the new features and changes, check out the gameplay overview trailer below.