Sound Shapes – Entertaining Platforming, Fun Soundtrack

Sound Shapes is an excellent combination of a colorful simple art style with platforming and dynamic music with great value.

Sound Shapes
Developer: Queasy Games
Price: $14.99 ($11.99 for PS+ Subscribers)
Platform: PS Vita (reviewed) & PS3

The core of the gameplay is moving a ball, traversing obstacles while trying to make it to the end. But what makes Sound Shapes unique is how collecting the coins in the level changes what music notes are heard.

The ball players control is able to stick to light colored surfaces, but players can hold square to move quicker and not stick. While new gameplay modes are introduced throughout the game, they aren’t enough to keep the platforming feeling fresh.

Everything red in the game is bad, and will cause instant death upon contact. Death is not a serious problem because respawning is near instant at one of the levels frequent checkpoints. The only thing that dying will do is increase the players time, and cause them a less favorable spot on the leaderboards.

The music in Sound Shapes is original and dynamic. In moments where the gameplay starts to feel stale, the different styles of ever changing  music from different artists in each of the albums makes the game difficult to put down.

Each album is a different world, with a different pair of musician and artist. The combinations are each fantastic and differ greatly in both look and sound.I Am Robot and Proud with Capybara Games & Colin Mancer,  Jim Guthri with Superbrothers, deadmau5 with Pixeljam and Beck with Pyramid Attack all make each album world a unique and engaging experience.

Going in a similar route to the PSN game Dyad, Sound Shapes has the majority of its trophies in modes outside of the main game. Once all of the albums have been completed, the game unlocks new gameplay choices: Death Mode and Beat School.

Death Mode flips the world’s album over, exposing these b-side challenge levels. The levels are single frames and force players to race against the clock to collect a set number of coins which appear in predetermined locations in a random order. The levels put players into a frantic, twitch gameplay style which is very different from the main game.

Death is much more frequent and carries more weight in these levels; if the player dies they have to start over. Players are going to die a lot in this mode. Even though most levels have a timer that’s less than 60 seconds, it’s going to take lots of attempts and feeling the rhythm of the obstacles to successfully complete the challenge and unlock the trophy.

The other trophy mode is Beat School. This helps familiarize players with the level creation mode, by having them recreate a beat by listening to it. This is a fun challenge which helps familiarize players with how to create their own musical melodies for the level creation tool.

The Final Word: Sound Shapes is a great example of the future of music games. The dynamic original music is great, especially the songs created by Beck. The solid, and interesting platforming mechanics are easy to master, and wont give players much trouble beating the main game. Death mode is an awesome way to challenge platforming veterans while Beat School is a great learning tool for players to create their own levels and share with the community. The touch input and bright OLED screen on the  vita version give it a slight edge over the PS3 version.  When the game is purchased for either platform,  both versions are unlocked for the one price.

MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 – Great