Sony kicked off State of Play June 2025 with the surprise announcement of Lumines Arise, from Tetris Effect developer Tetsuya Mizuguchi.
It’s due out fall 2025 for PlayStation 5 and PS VR2, with a demo arriving this summer. The debut trailer is below:
In a post on PlayStation Blog, Takashi Ishihara, Director, Enhance, said Lumines Arise is built from the ground up as a successor to the classic Lumines puzzle series that began on the PlayStation Portable 20 years ago, and includes optional PS VR2 compatibility."Lumines Arise on PlayStation 5 with optional PS VR2 compatibility is more than just an ordinary puzzle game — our aim is to hit you right in the feels," Ishihara said.
"You emerge from the darkness in the first stage (a glimpse of which you saw in today’s announcement trailer), and every stop on the over 30-stage journey evokes a different and complex emotional response. From lush jungles, oceans teeming with life, and snakes preparing to strike, to more electronic frontiers like the bustling streets of Tokyo and the endless expanse of outer space. All with visual flourishes to incite synesthesia.
"It all starts with a seemingly simple puzzle mechanic. If you’ve never played a Lumines game before, here’s how it works: rotate and place a variety of 2×2 blocks made up of one or two colors, forming squares of a single color/pattern. The Timeline sweeps across the playfield to the beat of the thumping soundtrack, erasing completed squares in its path. That gives you a light time pressure to form squares and build on them, making bigger and bigger squares to clear combos and score even more points.
"You race to create combos, ever mindful of the constant movement of the Timeline, feeling the vibration of the DualSense controller while the music radiates between your ears and the vibrant, lively background draws you in. That’s when you enter a flow state, and the world around you vanishes. Your pulse quickens as your breath holds still."
In case you missed it, here's everything announced at Sony's State of Play June 2025 showcase.
