Luminosus vs Sword Sonata
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both games, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Luminosus
A unique puzzle game blending Tetris-style gameplay with color-matching mechanics. Plan your moves ahead to create white blocks for higher scores. Offers classic and marathon modes, leaderboards, and achievements for endless fun.
- Color-matching puzzle mechanics
- Strategic planning ahead
- Classic and Marathon modes
- Global leaderboards
- Achievements
- Controller support
- Color blind and night modes
Read full descriptionHide full description
**Editors pick for “New games we love” in 135+ countries** **Editors pick for “New and noteworthy games” in 150+ countries** **Editors pick for “What we are playing this week”** **Editors choice "Indie corner"** Luminosus is a unique and challenging puzzle game that combines the fun of matching colors on a Tetris-esque board. Puzzle pieces can be changed back and forth as many times as you want, so a red block will change a yellow piece orange but another red piece will change it back to red. If a piece is influenced by all three colors it is turned white and scores significantly more when cleared. In this way the game requires planning more steps ahead than your standard piece-dropping puzzle game. With its simple but addictive gameplay, Luminosus offers hours of entertainment and a twist on the classic Tetris and Puyo experience. Features: • Classic mode for a relaxing experience • Marathon game mode for the ultimate challenge • Compete against the world on the leaderboard • Achievements • Controller support • Color blind and night modes • Unique and challenging gameplay that combines Tetris with color matching
Sword Sonata
Engage in fast-paced, turn-based roguelike combat by strategically planning skill actions. Collect new abilities, upgrade existing ones, and gather items to overcome dungeon challenges and defeat bosses. Experience high replayability with diverse actions, characters, and randomized rewards.
- Turn-based combat
- Action planning and arrangement
- Roguelike dungeon crawling
- Skill acquisition and upgrades
- Item collection
- Multiple characters and actions
Read full descriptionHide full description
This is a fast-paced roguelike dungeon-crawling turn-based game where you plan your battles by arranging skill actions and defeating enemies. Throughout your adventure, you'll acquire new actions, upgrade skills, and collect items. The gameplay is simple and easy to understand. It involves controlling a character on a horizontally scrolling one-dimensional axis, maneuvering to defeat enemies. Actions include movement, turning, and arranging actions such as sword attacks, which deal damage to enemies within one square ahead, or dashes that allow you to dash towards enemies. By arranging actions in this rhythmic order, for example, scheduling a dash followed by a sword attack when your character is at a distance from the enemy, executing this sequence will make your character dash to the enemy and then use a sword attack to defeat it. I genuinely hope you'll try out this game and experience what I've described. Currently, I've designed a total of 37 different types of actions with unique characteristics, as well as 4 different characters, each with their own unique skills and equipped with 2 specific actions. In the process of roguelike dungeon-crawling, you'll also acquire more actions and upgrades for these actions. Now, let's talk about the roguelike gameplay. The game features over 50 levels, and the goal is to clear through to the final boss and defeat them. Each time you complete a level, you'll randomly receive a reward, which could be an action or an upgrade to an action. As you continuously challenge yourself, you'll discover actions that better suit you or the character you're using, as well as upgrade options that are more suitable for each action, until your experience is enough to help you clear the game. This is what makes the game so replayable. In terms of content richness, the game also includes 10 types of items that can be used in combat, including health potions, and a "Frostbolt" that freezes all enemies. These items provide additional assistance in completing the game challenges. Additionally, the game features 27 passive skills, which will have an impact on you during each challenge. Well, that's a brief introduction to my game. I hope you'll give it a try and enjoy playing it.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Luminosus at 4.9 against Sword Sonata's 4.3. Luminosus also leads on update cadence (fortnightly vs every 3 months) and price ($0.29 vs $1.99). Sword Sonata's advantage is iOS requirement (11.0 vs 14.0). On review sentiment, ratings volume, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Luminosus costs $0.29 and Sword Sonata $1.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Luminosus holds the better App Store score, 4.9 against 4.3. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 17 and 15 respectively. Written reviews complicate that: 71% of Luminosus's written reviews are positive against 75% of Sword Sonata's, so the app with the better star average is not the one people write more warmly about.
Luminosus ships an update fortnightly, Sword Sonata every 3 months. The most recent releases landed on September 17, 2026 and September 21, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Luminosus | Sword Sonata |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.29 — better | $1.99 |
| Rating | 4.9 (17 ratings) — better | 4.3 (15 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 71.4% of reviews | 75.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 17 — better | 15 |
| Update frequency | Fortnightly — better | Every 3 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac — better | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 14.0 | 11.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 114 MB | 35 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 9+ |
| Developer | Short Circuit Studio | Jampot Software co., ltd |
Customer experience
Luminosus
Sword Sonata
In-app purchases
Luminosus
No in-app purchases
Sword Sonata
No in-app purchases









