On a whim I picked up this game for my dear Vita (it always wants more games). I figured why not -- it's cheap, I like falling block puzzle games, and it's from the same creator as Tetris Effect (which I enjoyed on PS4). And, well, I ended up pretty addicted to it this past week. I suppose if you keep going back to it, that's a sign it's a good game.

Lumines has 4x4 blocks fall down into your playing field, and the four squares can be one of two colors. To clear squares, you have to make 4x4 blocks of the same color (and wait for a timer line to pass over them... it's kind of a rhythm-ish game, but not really). So carefully place and quickly rotate those blocks like your life depends on it. But here's the game's clever trick: you actually don't necessarily want to clear out squares all the time. There are special blocks that will erase all connecting squares of the same color across the board, and that's the cool way to get lots of points. And that's what video games are all about right? The one with the most points, is the winner in life.

This game is bright and colorful and flashy, so it all shines nice and bright on my dear Vita's OLED screen. (Perhaps the visuals are a bit too much, because there's some annoying stuttering at times. Not game-breaking, but still.) Meanwhile weird electronic / trance music plays in the background. There are some lame songs in the bunch, but luckily you can create your own playlists and leave them out.

There aren't very many other modes to play around in. Apparently other releases of Lumines have had things like a puzzle mode, vs CPU mode, and a mission mode -- none of which are in Electronic Symphony. There's a time attack, for when you really just want to play for 30 or 60 seconds... Yeah, slim pickings here. Also, I'm not a big fan of the whole tapping the back touchpad gimmick for charging your special ability (e.g. adding in another clear-out square), and I'm not a fan of the shuffle block that ruins all your best-laid plans. I wouldn't say these ruin the game, but they're not great additions either.

All that said though, it still feels really good to get those big point multipliers going, you know? Lumines is a unique pick-up-and-play title worth having on whatever handheld console you might have, and I recommend picking some version of it up if you like the genre and aren't breaking the bank for it. The original entry was a PSP game, and it looks like that has been re-released for Switch (as well as for PC, Xbox One, and PS4).