Lumines

Developer: Q Entertainment Inc
Steam Release: April 2008
Hours Played: 2.5
Similar To: Flipon / Galact Quest / Safari Venture / Tumblestones
Rating: 4/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY
With squares shifting left and right as they drift down a grid from above, there'll be no prizes for those noting the comparison with Tetris. There are four modes to play but Challenge Mode will be where you'll spend most of your time. Here, a square made up of four quarters of just two colours appears at the top. As it falls you can move it across the whole grid or rotate it as much as you wish in the time allowed. When it reaches the end of its journey down it comes to rest and is locked in place before another 2x2 square appears at the top. A square splits itself down the middle if it hits one side of a stack and is able to continue. Time Attack has you making as many squares as possible in a set time; Puzzle Mode has you constructing shapes on the grid, while Mission Mode makes you clear squares within a set number of moves.
 

BALANCE & PACE
The idea is to make a large square of at least four smaller squares of the same colour when the 2x2 downward-bound square comes to rest. At the end of each drop a line sweeps across the screen from left to right scanning for these large squares and when that line reaches the far right, those larger made squares disappear from the grid as the smaller squares above cascade down. You keep doing this until a 2x2 square becomes stuck at the top and is unable to travel downwards. As a novice, my main focus is on making sure the playing grid doesn't become too chequered and to ensure the same colours connect as much as possible. It's a fairly therapeutic experience and can even be quite relaxing. You can speed up the game by accelerating the downward motion if you wish and it plays better with an Xbox controller.
 

PRESENTATION & DESIGN
Unless your rig is an antique, the game should run on most PCs and laptops. Not much time has been spent on the menus; they're plain, bland and frankly as boring as hell. Lumines uses the tabbed style of menu to organize things much like indexed files. On the first outer level of folders you have six menus: Play Lumines takes you to a choice of modes to play; Database shows the best scores; Options allows basic tweaks and How To Play shows what you need to know to get started. Personally, I found all these various paths confusing and difficult to navigate at first but once you've explored a bit you get to know your way around. The bland music in these menus is atrocious while in the game the strong beats generally link to the overall feel of the game but there was no discernible melody. 
 

PROGRESS SYSTEM
All records for the player's progress and stats can be found under the Database tab in the main menu with relatively primitive software used to program these screens. You'll note that these are not exactly inspiring, consisting as they do of boring artwork and plain bog-standard text of low resolution. The colours used are also of the plain and pale pastel variety which really adds to the lightweight nature of the game. Personally, I think I would have preferred the colours to be more distinctive so they could stand out from each other. Scrolling around said menus can also be confusing as you try to remember which mode you're viewing and which level fits with which score. Nevertheless, despite trying to recall what score matches what amongst all this dull text, praise has to be given for at least keeping a record of the players toil and effort in the first place.
 

CONCLUSION

Although (with the Advanced Pack) Lumines comes packaged with four different modes, I cannot see how anyone but hardcore puzzle-solvers will find anything interesting in the Puzzle and Mission modes. Challenge and Time Attack modes, therefore, are where it's at. With these modes the game is relaxing, yet pedestrian; pleasant yet not earth-shattering - and as there are many slightly better arcade puzzlers out there I'm inclined to lean more towards awarding this one rather than two stars. After a few beers and with the volume cranked up of an evening it can definitely give you a buzz but not quite enough to make it sit with the contenders.