Sound Shapes

Queasy Games revitalises the platforming genre with its melodical masterpiece

Connection problems and online funkiness aside, Sound Shapes absolutely floored me. Just about everything it does – and with its grand aesthetic taken as a whole – will blow you away. Sound Shapes isn’t only a totally novel game that melds unlikely components together. It’s also successful at trying something new and different. It’s bold, daring and unlike anything you can play on PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, or PlayStation 4.

Much more than a game or a musical platform, Sound Shapes is a unique experience and delivers great fun. Despite its short main campaign, the extra modes Death Mode and Beat School offer enough challenge to keep you busy for some time. The amazing level editor provides the necessary tools for anyone to be able to create new levels and share them with other players. Definitely, this is a mandatory title for anyone who owns a PlayStation Vita and more than recommended for those who can also enjoy it on PlayStation 3.

Sound Shapes wastes no time introducing you to its mechanics. As soon as you boot up the game, you’re greeted to a minimalistic environment, a turntable, and an adorable, sticky blob that you control. As you are prompted to jump to the next section of this tutorial stage, you see a coin-like object. Once you make contact with it, it emits a single note, and then you discover something: the more of these tokens that you obtain, the more a song is formed. Eventually, enemies and various environmental objects will contribute to the slowly developing chorus of catchy music. But with a campaign of ...

For all the game's ambition, and for all the whimsy and mirth it is so capable of providing, it falls into the same trap as LittleBigPlanet - excruciating platforming.