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PSP's Puzzle Scape turns Lumines on its head

A Finnish twist on the block rocking concept

PSP's Puzzle Scape turns Lumines on its head
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PSP
| Puzzle Scape

So it's a puzzle game that looks a bit like Lumines and promises 'a senses-shattering thrill ride filled with luscious beats, hypnotic colors and mesmerizing gameplay'.

But Puzzle Scape, which hails from newbie Finnish gamemaker Farmind, does seem to have some of its own variations.

For one thing, in Puzzle Scape you don't rotate falling blocks – rather, like in Lumines creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi's DS puzzler Meteos, you operate on the blocks that make up the playing area directly.

You can move these blocks around, your purpose being to create long chains of the same colour, which you then explode by triggering an adjacent 2x2 block of the same colour. And the longer the chains you create, the more power-ups you gain.

The various modes of Puzzle Scape will get you playing in different ways too. Architect mode asks you to meet various challenges as fast as possible, while Artist mode is a straightforward survival/high score operation. Both modes can both be played co-operatively or head-to-head over the PSP's wi-fi connection, while up to eight-players can attempt the Bomb Run mode, which sees each player playing the same level and trying to be the first to destroy enough blocks to win the game.

As with Lumines, a big part of the Puzzle Scape is its visual atmosphere, with players moving between its four themes – cells, flowers, machines and dreams – as they level up. And if you find a level particularly attractive, you can take a screenshot and use it as your PSP's wallpaper.

Slowly getting into the swing of things in an ultracool nightclub somewhere in Finland, Puzzle Scape should be ready to play sometime in early 2007.

Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.