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Capsule Review: Lumines

A falling-block puzzle game where you must group like-colored blocks into rectangles to clear them away. Every so often you switch to a new song and corresponding visual skin, and the speed of the song determines the speed at which blocks are cleared away. Slower songs make it easier to rack up large combos, but also leave more time for the board to overfill and end the game. The puzzle gameplay is fairly straightforward and can actually be solved deterministically - once you know how to play, you can do so indefinitely until the blocks fall too fast for your reflexes to keep up. At that point, all that’s really left is the atmosphere created by the songs and skins, which vary in different Lumines games and may or may not be to your liking.

I Stopped Playing When: I’d had enough practice to figure out a never-losing strategy. The game stopped being interesting - especially the non-PSP versions which had skins and songs that I found less appealing.

Docprof's Rating:

Three Stars: Good. I liked the game enough to finish it (or just play it a bunch, for games that don't end). I recommend it to most genre fans.

You can get it or learn more here.