Brilliant puzzles that burn bright.
Courtesy of the stressors of the world we live in, I often go to video games for relaxation and escape. In the throes of some amount of anxiety, I started playing Mixolumia, a falling-block puzzle game now on Switch two years after its PC debut. The ethereal, zen-like presentation mixed with the simple yet challenging twist on puzzle games was a salve during a tough time, providing an immensely enjoyable, quick-thinking brain teaser. While it only offers high score chasing and a handful of variant modes and songs, what’s here is very strong and if you’re just seeking a puzzle game to zone out amidst the struggles of the world, Mixolumia is incredible.
The aforementioned twist is an almost literal twist. The board doesn’t end neatly on a flat side, it ends in a diagonal. So when you rotate the four-block square as it falls, you can’t just account for it neatly landing, you have to consider where it falls and how the separate blocks will cascade around the board with gravity. It takes a little while to get used to, but once it clicked for me, I started to reframe my planning and plotting as I went through. The way the blocks fall can sometimes be a little unexpected, especially when you start stumbling upon chains. There is chaos in the play area with how the blocks fall, and the music transforms as you play.
Music factors into the experience of playing Mixolumia in a similar way as it does for Mizuguchi-made games like Lumines and Tetris Effect. As you play, you unlock a few different songs that evolve and build as you clear blocks and speed up the gameplay. While there are only a few songs included (with more on the way according to the publisher), they’re all puzzle game bangers. That ties into my main complaint with Mixolumia; there isn’t a lot to it. You have a handful of modes that range from frictionless relaxation and sped-up brain-bending fury and a variety of color palette customization options. I appreciate the wide variety of accessibility features, both for difficulty and visuals, but aside from fine-tuning my scores across the modes, not much is there to pull me back in. Still, Mixolumia is a dynamite puzzle concept that I’d love to see further expanded on in the future.
