Sony Kicks Off State of Play June 2025 With Lumines Arise Announcement

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 PC via Steam, PlayStation 5 and PS VR2, with a demo due out in the summer. The debut trailer is below:

Lumines has a brand-new feature for the Lumines’ core gameplay: Burst. As you play, you charge up a gauge, shown at the top of the Timeline. When ready, tap a trigger button to activate Burst and lock a formed square to the playfield. Build it as large as you can before time runs out. Watch screen-clearing combos rack up massive points when Burst is complete and the Timeline starts clearing that color again. Clear enough squares to meet the stage’s quota, and you’ll zoom to the next environment.

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.”

Arise also features brand-new music composed by Hydelic, who was also responsible for Tetris Effect: Connected’s award-winning score. And just as with Connected, everything you do in-game impacts the soundscape.

In case you missed it, here’s everything announced at Sony’s State of Play June 2025 showcase.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.