There's a Lot of Shapes in the World

I'm not entirely sure how to describe Shape of the World. You begin in a grey space. Gradually, the land varies and undulates as you move towards a red triangle. Pass through the triangle, you're on a shoreline, with trees, and strange, brightly colored creatures. From there, you'll make your way across and up the land, through forests and caves and canyons, always heading for the top of the mountain.

There's typically at least one, if not more of the triangles in the area. Passing through one changes the colors of your surroundings, and usually causes faintly glowing monuments, spires or just big, round rocks, to appear in front of you. You interact with the monuments (hit the right trigger), and they swell and glow brighter. Once you hit them all, a staircase appears, either to carry you to another part of that area, or on to the next.

That's really about it, as far as gameplay. You can wander within an area as much as you like before moving on. There's no limit, no defined objectives other than occasionally walking through one of the triangles and interacting with the monuments. Take the long route along the trails and across downed logs, or sometimes the monuments are giant doughnut shaped things and interacting with them will either launch you in the air or jerk you towards them. Except the terrain tends to merge back into a formless state if you get too far away, then diversify when you return, which can get a little confusing. I found myself getting turned around sometimes. In theory you can always see the triangles, so they can act as a landmark.

The interact function also lets you alter your surroundings, in that you can make trees and other vegetation vanish when the tiny black triangle that's basically your targeting reticle is visible over them. Doing this also, for reasons I don't understand, causes you to surge forward, as though you destroyed the tree by occupying its physical space. You can't do this with land formations, so it's not like you create the mountains and valleys. At least not consciously or actively. What exactly my character is, or how it functions, I'm not clear, so perhaps your mere presence creates them. The object observed is altered by being observed, or something.

Most of the animals are small, shaped like the jellyfishes that you encounter in underwater levels in NES Mario games, or worms that poke straight up from the ground like grass. Or the occasional turtle. But there are also seahorses the size of real horses drifting about in the air, and whales high overhead. To the notion of not understanding what my character is, most animals run when you approach, but default to benign. The interact button doesn't do much to most of them, though there is an urchin in the cave area that looks a bit like a dandelion puffball that bursts (and launches you) if you touch it. There's another blobby thing that turns transparent, so you can see its skeleton.

One exception: The early stages have something the size of elephant, but shaped like a half-jelly bean stood on its flat end. It moves with dozens of tiny legs, and if you "interact" with it, will ram you and send you flying. (You aren't hurt; or, at least, there's no visible difference in how your character moves. As there's no time limit, there's also no heath meter.)

Sometimes glowing seeds appear, always in clusters of five. You pick them up and a little silver triangle appears in the bottom center of your screen. Then you throw the seeds where you like, and stuff will sprout. The little triangle turns red as your seed bank runs low. Also, the color scheme of the area will change again. (Really, the game feels a lot like just sightseeing on a world under a black light.)

There are usually multiple seed clusters to find within an area, but even if the seeds look different, what grows is typically the same as whatever else is appearing on its own. Which is a little disappointing, but does give you the opportunity to go around making trees burst apart, only to throw down a new one in its place. And it gives you a way to annoy the giant half-jelly beans from a safe distance. Just chuck a seed at them! It may even sprout where it lands after bouncing off them.

It's a game that moves at the pace you choose. You could blow through it quickly, zipping from one triangle gateway to the next as fast as possible. Or you could find a spot with a view you liked and just sit there and stare. I tended to play until I got bored, which was probably about 45 minutes at a pop. But it was a very relaxing 45 minutes.