Sound Shapes has been out (in North America, at least) a little under a month now, and we continue to be blown away by the response the game has been getting. If you’ve been following our official Sound Shapes twitter (and we hope you have!) you’ve probably been kept up-to-date with our news, but just last week we hit over ten thousand levels in our community (if you’re interested, our ten-thousandth level was Out of the Rain by sunpsyche.)

With so many levels, we’ve been working very hard behind the scenes to make sure that players are able to best find the cream of the crop. For example, not only have we been iterating our search algorithms to ensure the star tab (“Greatest Hits” on the website) is kept up-to-date with the best levels, we also try to make sure if you search you get useful results—oh, and if you missed it, you can search on the website now too! However, we would like to ensure we’re interacting with our community and not just setting up SOULESS SEARCH ROBOTS to do that job for us—so we’re going to try and regularly share with you the community levels that pique our interest. Starting… now.

And I to Fire by jordanbuster

“This level sort of blew my mind a bit” said Jon [Mak], at which point I probably mumbled something like “oh, that’s nice” and went back to doing something else entirely. However, when I finally played this level it was worthy of his praise. To be honest, if you follow the Sound Shapes community you are probably already familiar with this level, so we’re not telling you anything new, but we had to spotlight it because it was the first level we saw that did things that surprised us — and, you know, we made the game. You’d think we’d know it inside out, eh?

Arcade Fireworks by Daftbomb

Here’s a darn tough level with some lovely visual stylings. If you played through our D-cade album you’ll kind of get the theme here—twists on some classic arcade games—but what really sells this one for us is the consistent art (even using a selection of different assets), clever challenges, and general fun times.

Intermission by Zoetroupe

This is a nice short level—an intermission, if we will—that mixes things up by not twisting video games but cinema! It’s musically lovely and genuinely artistic visually, and will leave you wanting more (always a good thing.)

Metamorphose by Tabulator_AT

This level is beautiful but also deserves praise for using one of our creatures in a way that we didn’t expect. It would say too much to pick out which one, but levels which challenge our established view of the game are always winners.

Quick, Dinosaurs! by TheAvengedMarin

Strong themes are always good! This level is an adventure across a dinosaur-filled landscape with a cute ending, with well thought out challenges and lots of cute dinosaurs to spot (we remain impressed at to what you’re all able to squeeze out of our ground shapes!) — it’s well worth a play.

That’s only a very small selection of the levels we’ve been playing—we really do try and play as many as we can manage—and so we do hope to be back soon to share more levels with you (the quality only gets better and better, so we’re sure that there are already new levels that you think we’re foolish to not have included.)

Don’t forget that you can queue up any of these levels to play in Sound Shapes from the website. Simply log in to the site with your PSN ID, hit queue on the level that takes your fancy, and when you load up the community (on PS3 or PS Vita) you can find them in your “favorites” on your profile (once you’ve played through them once, if you don’t choose to favorite them, they’ll be removed from that list.)

Oh! And don’t think we’re just spending all our time playing your levels (as much as we want to.) We’re working hard on getting the first DLC out to you as soon as possible (giving you more to work with!) — we’ll be able to talk about that soon. Happy creating!

Sound Shapes is out on PSN today! It’s the culmination of a long journey for our boss-men Jonathan Mak and Shaw-Han Liem, who worked on the concept for… more years than they probably want me to say before the reveal at E3 2011, and having worked on the game for a year myself now I think I can speak for the whole team when I say we just want you to play it. Like… we don’t want you to finish reading this blog post, or even probably watch the launch trailer we made. We made Sound Shapes for you to play! So when today’s update goes live, get yourself over to the PlayStation Store on your PS3 or PS Vita and pick it up!

The title is $14.99 ($11.99 for PlayStation Plus members this week only) and part of the PSN Play promotion, so if you buy one or more other of the games in the promotion you’ll get an increasing amount of money back. Most importantly, however — Sound Shapes is a cross-play title. Whether you buy it on PS3 or PS Vita, you receive both versions for one price. We cannot stress this enough. We’ve definitely tried to stress this enough. Both versions are yours when you buy it, and all trophies and community levels are shared between them, whether you own a PS3 or a PS Vita, or both.

If you’re looking for more of a general overview of what Sound Shapes is, why not watch our brand-spanking new launch trailer?

If you’re still here, I guess I should recap the information you really need to know, to be sure you’re making the right purchase when you finally dawdle over to the PlayStation Store. So: Sound Shapes is a 2D musical platformer in which every level is a song. You pick up the notes placed in the level to construct the music, but at the same time the creatures (friend or foe) and interactive objects are instruments too. We’ve worked with different graphic and musical artists on each album of level-songs, with the likes of Shaw-Han in his I am Robot and Proud guise, Deadmau5, Jim Guthrie and Beck working with graphic artists like Vic Ngyuen of Capy, Pyramid Attack, PixelJam and Superbrothers. If the game stopped there that would probably have been more than enough work for us but we also decided that players should be able to use these notes, creatures and so on to make their own songs and levels. Therefore we’ve included a full level editor and online community which will allow you to share your creations across the entire world, reaching players on both PS3 and PS Vita no matter which version you’re using.

Oh, and on top of that we’ve also included Trophies (yes, there’s a Platinum). They’re unlocked by conquering Death Mode, which consists of intense platforming challenges based on our main campaign, and Beat School, which hopes to inspire players in the fine art of beat-making by challenging them to recreate a piece of music in our level editor.

So, we hope that’s rather a worthy offering for your $14.99, if you’re still dilly-dallying. One of the nicest things for us is that although we’re super excited to have you play Sound Shapes, we’re even more excited to play the levels you create in the community. To be honest, this could be a total win-win. We get to make the game we wanted to make, share it with PlayStation’s community of gamers, and then have them make levels that we get to play? Amazing! (And don’t worry, we do plan to support the community beyond launch with DLC. Not that we’re going to say any more than that for now!)

If you do find you want to know even more about Sound Shapes, check out our website here! But we wish you’d just pick up the game and get to making levels. Come on, it’s your turn, we’ve been making them for ages!

Fellows! We’ve are absolutely gagging here to get Sound Shapes into your hands. Gagging! We wish it could be in your hands right now! But unfortunately that can’t be, as this week saw the release of The Expendables 2 as part of the PSN Play promotion, not us. However! If you’re popping into PlayStation Store to pick it up at any point this week you can also pre-order Sound Shapes and get an exclusive PS3 theme. That’s not to forget PSN Play’s money-saving promotion: the more games you pick up, the more money you save. So if you’ve already picked up The Expendables 2, you’ll get a cool three bucks back if you pick up Sound Shapes.

But enough of that waffle. Because we’re excited to get Sound Shapes into your hands, we wanted to kick start your imaginations by having one of our founders, Jonathan Mak, walk you through level creation using our level tools. And if you’re the kind of player who is more excited to *play* than create (and that’s fine, too) we’re revealing our Trophy mode. And yes, there is a Platinum.

So, until this point we’ve been showing you lots of different parts of our campaign mode. Just to recap: we’re providing five different albums with several tracks each, with each album including art and music from a different pair of artists, such as deadmau5 and Pixeljam or Pyramid Attack and Beck. Beating these levels will unlock their components, and then you’ll be able to mix and match them in your own levels!

In the following video, for example, Jon quickly puts together a level that (among other things) includes deadmau5 loops paired with Jim Guthrie/Superbrothers hazards, and he throws in some vocals that you might remember from our recent reveal of the Beck album Cities. He even shows off the player’s ability to record timings and change beats per minute… and it all sounds (and plays!) pretty good:

We’ve tried to make creating a song and level as fun as possible, but also effortless to upload and share. We’ve said this before, but seeing what players do with our tools is one of the things we’re *most* looking forward to. We’re certain that, after a couple of days, you’re going to blow away what Jon did here.

Something that we think (hope?) is going to take you more than a matter of days, however, is claiming our Platinum Trophy. If you’re a Trophy hunter, you’re probably well aware of the pain and glory of trying to conquer the intense Trophy levels in our pal Shawn McGrath’s new PSN exclusive Dyad. Here at Queasy Games, we didn’t want players to be distracted by playing albums in a certain way for Trophies, or trying to “game” our community. Instead we created two things: Death Mode and Beat School.

Death Mode is an unusual twist in our campaign mode. Once you’ve beaten our albums, you can flip each album over to a b-side and experience intense, single-screen timed challenges to collect notes without dying based on signature moments from each of the album’s tracks. Each win unlocks a Trophy, and it’s our hope that these will test the skills players have learned in our levels, making each Trophy win hard fought but deeply rewarding. Beat School is a different sort of challenge: here we challenge all players, even (if not especially) those who consider themselves “non musical,” to create beats on a single screen by listening and matching to a beat we have created. With luck, these levels will challenge and inspire you to go into the editor and make your own beats—if Jon’s video above hasn’t already convinced you.

Don’t forget: Sound Shapes hits PS3 and PS Vita as a cross-play title August 7th, but you can pre-order it now, receiving a lovely Cory Schmitz-designed PS3 theme and the ability to play the game on PS3 or PS Vita no matter which system you buy it on. You get both versions for one price! It’s $14.99 (20% off for a limited time for PS Plus members). And oh yeah, the Trophies are shared between both versions, too. Did we mention there’s a Platinum?

There’s just under three weeks until the release of Sound Shapes on PS Vita and PS3 on August 7th, and it’s time we sat down and had a serious chat with you. You see, we’ve been keeping a secret from you. Yes, here in Queasy Towers, our glittering skyscraper in downtown Toronto, so beloved by the city that they’re building us a moat (they claim they’re upgrading streetcar lines, but we know what they’re really doing), we have been hiding someone from you.

Although to this point we’ve revealed stars that shine as brightly as Deadmau5, Jim Guthrie, and I Am Robot and Proud, it wasn’t until Wednesday that we were able to sneak out the news that Grammy Award-winning musician Beck—mastermind behind Mellow Gold, Odelay and most recently 2008′s Modern Guilt—has been working with us on three brand new tracks for the game.

Beck’s more than just familiar with the world of video games. In fact, with his 2005 album Guero he actually snuck out a wee EP, Hell Yes, which remixed tracks from that album as chiptunes—and we’re thrilled to have him on board. That’s not to say, however, that Beck sent us “video game music.” One of the powerful things about Beck’s music is the variety of styles he’s comfortable working in. Sure, if you’re looking to have a really good cry that lasts about 52 minutes and 24 seconds, you probably want to cue up his (brilliant) album Sea Change, but in the middle of your weeping you decide you want to get “funky” with a capital “KY”, you just have to skip back to Midnight Vultures. It’s cool, Beck’s like that.

As a result, Beck gave us three very different songs that form an album: Cities, Touch the People, and Spiral Staircase. Each song shows off a different aspect of Beck’s creativity, and therefore we had to make sure that we did each of those songs justice. Thanks to Sound Shapes’ level creation tools—the same tools players will be able to use with the in-game editor—this album shows just how well you can build fun levels around song structures.

With each song requiring its own visual identity to match Beck’s musical style, we knew we needed the best artists in the business. Luckily, just around the corner from Queasy Towers, we found Pyramid Attack. They’re an animation, art and design studio that can (and does) bring the goods.

In the following video you’ll hear and see the first track from the Beck album, Cities, and you’ll see the game played on PS3. We’ll also talk to Steve Wilson of Pyramid Attack about the process of turning Beck’s music not only into art but play.

Want more? Say, to hear the other two Beck tracks maybe? Well, then be sure to pick up Sound Shapes. Remember: it’s a cross-play title so whether you pick it up on PS3 or PS Vita, you’ll be able to download it gratis on the other system too. The title launches on August 7th for $14.99, and you can pre-order it starting July 31st as part of the PSN Play promotion and get yourself a bonus exclusive PS3 theme designed by the amazing Cory Schmitz. Oh, and if you’re a PlayStation Plus member, you’ll pick up the title for 20% off ($11.99) for a limited time, including the pre-order period. Bargain!

Look, E3 is here, and we know there’s all kinds of hot news coming at you from everywhere. So over here at Queasy HQ, we’ve decided to kick things off a little early with pretty much the biggest announcement we’re allowed to give you right now: Sound Shapes is coming to PSN on August 7th. That’s… like… a few weeks away! Are you breathing into a paper bag right now to avoid hyperventilating? We are, which is making it kind of hard to type. And if you’re not, you should be, because we’re also taking this opportunity to sneak out the fact that Sound Shapes is, day-and-date, also coming to PS3.

Yes. That thing you have under your TV, or maybe beside it (or possibly on top, but that sounds kind of dangerous, man!). And no, we haven’t been looking in your windows; we’ve been too busy making Sound Shapes and pricing it at $14.99 for BOTH VERSIONS. Buy it on PS Vita or PS3, and enjoy it on either system! We know. We’re freaking out too!

Through the magic of crossplay, you’ll be able to share content between the two systems without even having to really think about it. It’s all thanks to the “cloud” which floats above us like a benevolent data god. Save your campaign data up in the cloud, and download and resume on either platform. Maybe you’ll start creating a song at home on the PS3, but then decide that it’s not really the place to compose your latest masterpiece! Just download it to your PS Vita and make some beats on the bus. Then get off the bus several stops late, in a part of town you don’t know that well, and make some beats there! Then get another bus home, probably.

Oh, and the community is completely shared, so if a friend only has a PS3, or you only have a PS Vita (or any permutation of that) they can still see the levels you’ve made on the other system. And you can therefore see ALL the levels everyone has made and uploaded. Which will hopefully be a ton of levels. We’re really looking forward to what you guys do.

In fact, let’s talk about this a bit: You might be aware that we’ve been collaborating with visual artists and musicians for our campaign levels, and most recently revealed that our pals Superbrothers and Jim Guthrie provided the art and music for Corporeal, a four-song concept album that explores the way in which music can free us from the corporate machine… if it doesn’t crush us first.

It’s been a lot of fun working with those guys and we’re really happy with the way the levels have turned out. They mix up the gameplay and offer a classic Jim Guthrie soundscape that’s a fun contrast to other campaigns. And while the levels themselves are cool, it’s super fun to play with all of the music and graphics in the editor–everything, and we mean everything, from the campaign records can be mixed and mashed up with other records to create your own tunes and levels.

Anyway, here’s a video we made in Jim’s basement where he attempts to clear the levels in his own album (spoiler: he dies). There is also a demo of how the loop-based music system works for remixing campaign tracks in the editor mode. Also featured: One of Jim’s, like, 18 cats. He likes cats.

Is it too late to change the album title to “Chicken Dinner?” The answer is yes. Yes, it is too late.

If you’re coming to E3, we hope you come by and check out Sound Shapes. We’ll have both PS Vita and PS3 on the floor with content from four of our campaign records and we’ll be showing the cross functionality between the two versions. If you can’t make it to E3, that’s okay because if you didn’t notice the game is out on August 7th. Just spend that time regulating your breathing with a paper bag and you’ll be fine.

Alright, back to it. ALMOST DONE! (Seriously, we are almost done making the game.)

Want to see the PS3 version of Sound Shapes in action? Be sure to tune into our E3 2012 livestream — we’ll be showing it off live at 5:30pm Pacific Time during the countdown to PlayStation’s E3 press conference!