article Related Topics:
Lumines :: Luminescence_Dating
 

Lumines: Puzzle Fusion is a video game created by game designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi. It was released in 2005 for the PlayStation Portable. It is a puzzle game based on sound and light patterns.

As of October 11, 2005, it has been confirmed that Lumines has sold over half a million units since its original release in Japan in December 2004. Europe has contributed 180,000 units since its release in September 2005, and North America has sold around 300,000 since March. In Japan Lumines has sold only around 70,000 units.

In September 2005, mobile gamemaker Gameloft announced that they would be bringing both Meteos and Lumines to cell phones. Lumines Mobile was released on May 31, 2006.

A sequel titled Lumines II has been confirmed for release in the fall of 2006.

Lumines is pronounced "loo min ess," a phonetic translation of the katakana spelling of its name in Japanese (ルミネス, ruminesu).

Gameplay

A block-dropping game, its look and basic gameplay is similar to Meteos and Tetris, although the music and visuals are far more important to this game. A 2 x 2 square made of four smaller block pieces is dropped into the playing field. The small blocks that comprise the larger blocks will be one of two different colors. You make the blocks disappear by rotating their component block orientation and using the D-Pad to form four matching colored blocks into a square. A vertical "timeline" periodically sweeps horizontally across the field and removes such squares. Unmatched blocks pile up, and the game ends when the pile gets too tall. When part of a falling block hits an obstruction, the unobstructed portion of the block will split off and continue to fall.

Lumines is played in different "skins". Like the software interface skins, these change the visual appearance of the board, but they also control the soundtrack. Each skin contains a different song and different sound effects, which are triggered by game events and then integrated into the soundtrack. As in Mizuguchi's earlier game Rez, the separation of soundtrack and sound effects is much less than in most video games. Skins are unlocked by progressing through the different game modes.

There are 4 basic modes in the game, Challenge, Time Attack, Puzzle, Vs., and Vs. CPU Mode. Challenge Mode cycles through skins in a fixed order of generally increasing difficulty, and is played until the blocks pile up to the top of the screen. The maximum score in Challenge Mode is 999,999 points. Time Attack games give the player a limited time to clear as many blocks as possible. Puzzle mode challenges the player to create pictures (such as a cat, dog, cross, etc.) by forming the picture with one color while surrounding it with the opposite color. Vs. CPU mode is a series of battles against A.I. opponents. A line splits the playing field in half, and deleting blocks or combinations of blocks shifts the line towards the opposing player, effectively giving the player doing the deleting more room on their side and the opposing player less. The battle ends when blocks pile up all the way to the top of the screen for one player. Two players with PSPs can use their wireless connection to play in the same way.

It is theoretically possible to beat the single-player Challenge mode of Lumines deterministically [http://www.gamefaqs.com/portable/psp/game/924594.html. By dividing the game board into separate sections, and using each section to clear blocks of only a single type, it is always possible to place a piece so that the game state stays in a loop.

Sequels and Spin-Offs

At the 2006 E3 there have been several announced spin offs and a sequel.

Awards

External links

Other implementations

Because of the popularity of Lumines, developers of shareware, freeware, and free software have made their own game programs either based closely on or inspired by the rules of Lumines.

For Microsoft Windows

For Mac OS X

For multiple platforms

2005 computer and video games | PlayStation Portable games | Mobile phone games | Puzzle computer and video games

Lumines | Lumines | ルミネス

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Lumines".

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