Simplicity, Perhaps To A Fault
Sound Shapes is many things. It's simple, it's beautiful, it's musical, and it's Fifteen US dollars. Now it only needed to be two of those things but the others are along for the ride as well.
Sound Shapes is a 2D platformer with a nice twist in that you actually help create the music. Yes, you heard me right. Scattered throughout levels you will constantly find little circles that represent music notes. The more you hit, the more complete the soundtrack to your platforming adventure.
The game does alot of things right. Each world, or "album" has its own distinct artstyle as well as music. The game's difficulty curves nice and gradually and playing it for extended periods of time did seem to have a trance-like effect. However, the problem is a question of value.
There isn't a lot of content here. There are five albums to explore but each only contains 3-5 tracks each, and each track is around 3-5 minutes long, which makes sense, considering they are supposed to be songs. This means you'll be done with the campaign in 4 hours or less. And for a 15$ game, I find that to be not enough. Thankfully, it does have a nice level creator and already a healthy level-making community has formed. That's all well and good but it would've been nice to see more content in the base game.
Perhaps additional albums will find their way to PSN, but I would've liked more in the base package. Whether its worth 15$ is up to you.
I also want to mention that it's simplicity, and by that I mean the game only uses two buttons, is also a weakness. I would've liked to see more gameplay concepts and different ways to interact with the environment. It's an enjoyable, but ultimately simplistic platformer with just the right amount of charm.
7/10.