Review: Sound Shapes

At its heart, the platformer is one of the simplest genres in video gaming. Though even as simple as it is, there are many platformers out there that simply get the formula wrong. If the original Super Mario Bros. didn’t have the right momentum in Mario’s movement or if the jumping didn’t feel as perfect as it does, the game would feel terrible. It’s those basic mechanics, with level design being a close second, that separate a fantastic platformer from a clunker.

Sound Shapes for the PS Vita and Playstation 3 falls into the former category, where it feels like they spent a lot of time making the game feel right before filling it with the rest of its mechanics.

Sound Shapes at its core is an extremely simple 2D platformer. You play as a little blob, or eyeball, or egg yolk (I’m really not sure) and your goal is to traverse the level, collect as many coins as you can, and reach the exit. The interesting mechanic with the controls is that your blob will automatically stick to like-colored objects, and you can press the Right Trigger or Square to give up the ability to stick in lieu of being able to move faster and make longer jumps. It sounds simple in written word, but it makes for some extremely interesting levels, such as when you’re sticking to a moving object having to move to the top or bottom of it to avoid obstacles or collect coins.

The only other gameplay mechanic of Sound Shapes is simple yet important: red things are dangerous. That’s literally everything you need to know to play: collect coins and avoid the red things.

At first, I wanted to label Sound Shapes as a puzzle platformer, but as I progressed through the main game, I realized that it wasn’t so much about puzzles as it was about timing. There are a few levels here and there where you do some actual puzzling, such as moving boxes to the right place or figuring out when to hit what to progress to the next screen, but most of it is good old-fashioned platforming. This is actually a good thing, because the platforming controls feel nearly perfect. There were only one or two instances of missing a jump or dying where I felt the game itself was at fault. More often than not, it was my poor timing or taking a bad jump that was the issue.

Overall, the difficulty of the main campaign is pretty low, but I think in the end it will prove as a good level-building tutorial as it showcases some really neat uses of the game’s mechanics. The game’s levels are split into 5 different albums, each with wildly different music, visuals, and enemies. You’ll get a total of 20 levels over the 5 albums, with music from deadmau5 and Beck to name two, and one album with the graphical stylings of the Superbrothers.

Besides the single player campaign, there is a fantastic level editor included that lets you use (from what I can tell) every single object you’ll see in the main game. You do have to finish the albums to gain access to these objects, but I think that’s a smart conceit, so that players can see neat ways they are used before going whole hog in the editor with them. Sadly, the community section of the game is a little lackluster at the moment, but considering the game has been out for just a week now, I’m sure the smarter players among us will make some truly amazing levels in the time to come.

The other aspect of Sound Shapes, the “Sound” half of the title, is probably the most interesting part of the game. Every coin in a level corresponds to a sound, be it a particular note, a drum hit, or even a small loop. For the instruments, the coins are placed on a grid that matches with a musical scale, and level creators are given the options of having a Major, Minor, Chromatic, or Pentatonic scale, as well as the ability to transpose and set the tempo, giving them all the tools they need to make some neat music. While this offers people a good amount of freedom when creating a level’s soundtrack, it doesn’t lend itself very well to the old user-generated content trope of creating famous works.

This is because the coins are locked to the beat (4 beats per measure, 4 measures per screen) and most music doesn’t follow that rigid of a structure. There’s also no option to place a note outside of the chosen scale. To be fair, I don’t personally hold this against the game or the level creator at all. You can still make some really cool beats and nice melodies in the editor, but as you can see from the screenshot of the community’s featured page above, everyone wants to create famous music, which simply doesn’t sound very good and doesn’t make for a fun level.

The potential is there, though, and if you look hard enough in the featured list, you can find some actual fun levels that also create cool music. I have a feeling this is a game I’m going to really enjoy coming back to in a month or so and finding out what the really creative members of the community come up with, once they get the intention of making copyrighted music out of their system. Also, I’m sure there are some songs out there that would lend themselves to the editor, I just can’t think of any off the top of my head, and I know for sure the classic Mario theme isn’t one of them.

Sound Shapes is one of those games that both benefits from and is hampered by its simplicity. It’s a fantastic-controlling and fun to play platformer, but besides knowing that red things are dangerous, there isn’t much depth to be found here. For $15, though, and with the potential of the level creator, I simply cannot recommend this game enough – especially to Vita owners. There’s also the added bonus of receiving both versions of the game with just a single purchase, so folks with a PS3 and a Vita will get both versions when they buy it, with a cloud save system in place to be able to pick it up on the go from where you left off on your console. From what I’ve seen of the PS3 version, it’s the exact same game with some minor UI tweaks, and without touch controls for the editor.