Lumines is one of those games that feels timeless to me. I first played it on XBLA in 2008 and ever since then I've booted up some version to play a round or two when I'm in the mood, which is generally a few times a year. Despite how often I play it, I nearly every time I get surprised at how much I enjoy the game, how great it looks, and especially how good the music is. It's an evergreen game to me, and probably my second favorite well-drop puzzle game after Tetris, with the only serious competitor being Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo.

I bought Lumines Remastered on the Switch in 2018 and that's the version I decided to play this time, though I usually play the backwards compatible Xbox version because of nostalgia. Playing the Switch version on my pro controller I noticed just how good the vibration is in this game. It pulses with the music (the game is in part a rhythm game) and the rumble seems to change with the tune. The rumble is strong enough that it makes a noise and almost acts like the controller speaker in the PS4/5 or Wii in terms of creating another element to the music.

HD rumble and the PS5 equivalent were touted as big features for those systems, and while some tech demoes like Astro's Playroom have done cool things with them, as have some of the big budget first party games, this got me thinking about smaller third party or even indie titles that do something interesting with the features. I can't think of many, which is one of the reasons Lumines stood out.

I'd be curious as to whether others have additional examples of smaller games that do cool things with rumble for modern systems.

I think Tetris Effect has the same feature. I did picked up Lumines Remastered sometime ago for old times’ sake and noticed the rumble and thought it was pretty cool.

Huh I think I ended up turning rumble off for Lumines on Switch since I played it mostly in handheld (since that's how I played it originally on PSP, it just felt natural that way), and my joycons rattle a little when attached to my switch. The rattle unfortunately creates really high pitched noise whenever they rumble, so I usually use the Fat Joycons from Hori or turn rumble off if I'm using the base joycons.

But I do remember Golf Story being the first implementation of HD Rumble that really impressed me since the rumble is used to create sound effects in pretty effective ways. Tumbleseed is another small game that had excellent HD Rumble as you could feel the seed tumbling along the stick, and different seeds had different vibration strengths.