While the "campaign" is short-ish at five albums of four to five songs each, every level is crafted so well around very specific concepts that it's hard not to get caught up in them. While I particularly enjoyed the Superbrothers and Jim Guthrie collaboration and Beck's section — a surprise to me, since I'm not generally a huge fan — there's not a bad song in Sound Shapes.

Sound Shapes ' platforming balances the easy successes of simple jumps with more Rube Goldberg-influenced sequences that fall into place like complicated arrangements of dominoes. Each collection of levels — with music composed by one artist and labeled as an "album" — starts with a few basic level design elements which are recombined and rearranged. The learning curve is handled well, and it feels like Sound Shapes wants you to finish it (some sadistic, almost Super Meat Boy- style nightmare sections notwithstanding).

Even the coins are there for a different reason than your average screen-to-screen jumpfest. Since death isn't an issue, coins are present as a means of building up Sound Shapes ' experience. Similar to musically inclined puzzle games like Lumines and Chime , a kind of note bar runs behind each screen to the beat of a basic piece of music. As you grab coins and activate checkpoints, new notes are added and the melody of each song is developed. As levels become more complicated, enemies and pieces of the environment contribute as well.

In fact, every piece of music is good or better, and each level is so well suited to the music — again, particularly in the Beck levels — that Sound Shapes builds into a very particularly engaging musical experience.

I have a hard time imagining someone not enjoying the campaign, but I could understand wanting more. Sound Shapes stops short of the masochistic life-grind that other platformers aspire to, and while that does make for a more consistently pleasant game, it never quite reaches the intersecting nirvana of technique and perfect timing that a Mario or Super Meat Boy does. And, for those who want more from the campaign, the leaderboard integration is the only place you're likely to find it. Finishing the campaign does unlock "Death Mode," a set of challenges for each level. But these depart from the musically motivated main levels and emphasize twitch platforming, which feel at odds with Sound Shapes intent.

For the more creatively minded at least, the included creation suite is one part level editor and one part music sequencer. At the time of this writing, there is already a fair amount of new levels for players to check out, and I expect that the musical nature of Sound Shapes' editor will be the impetus for thousands of new tracks. That said, the initially simple interface of the creation tool quickly gives way to some very complicated concepts of both level design and music theory, and after completing the campaign, there are hundreds of tools and pieces unlocked.