Lumines is one of the more commercially successful games released on the PSP. Its success may have come from the appropriateness of a puzzle game for the handheld gamer. It may be that it was released early after the PSP. But one thing’s for certain: the way in which the game was designed, by developer Q Entertainment, to compliment the hardware makes it an exemplary game from a design perspective.

Arguably the king of puzzlers, Tetris (GB) featured a game environment in which blocks of different shapes fell sequentially from the top of a rectangular, portrait-oriented playing field. This puzzle-in-a-rectangle concept has been replicated throughout many generations of electronic gaming, most noticeably in the console classics Dr. Mario (NES) and Columns (MD); arcade legend Puzzle Bobble; and hugely popular popular Web-based casuals Bejeweled and Hexic.

Lumines plays as if the PSP was designed for the game

Lumines, however, ventured on to fairly new territory. The widescreen display of the PlayStation Portable was not suitable for the traditional look and feel of a puzzle game. What resulted was a game that gave direction to puzzle games on the PSP. As with traditional puzzle games, blocks still fall from the top of screen, but the playing field is in a landscape orientation to suit the gaming platform. Much like in Tetris, playing blocks are comprised of four, smaller blocks, however all of them are arranged in 2×2 squares. Similar to more recent games, the idea is to group blocks of the same colour in order to eliminate them from the field.

This all sounds like a very similar to the simple style of gameplay in any other puzzler. Nevertheless, Lumines looks and feels as if the hardware had been designed for the game. The game interface is laid out as if is supposed to sit exclusively on the PSP’s screen. Brightly coloured blocks and statistics are layered on top of high quality video of music clips and animations. Sound effects and the pop music soundtrack are played back in high quality too; taking full advantage of the handheld’s capabilities.

Nintendo’s DS and Wii consoles are forcing game developers to rethink their methods of player-computer interaction, and this is a great situation for gamers to find themselves in. However, the proactive design and implementation by Q Entertainment is the kind of initiative that should be applauded.