Shaped Touches

Shaped Touches

Fruits of Yggdrasil · July 16, 2021 · Simulation, City Builder, Life Sim, Visual Novel, Exploration

Shaped Touches is free to play — no purchase needed. We track it so you know if that ever changes.

PC
Mixed50% · 12
This game is free to play. Get it on Steam →

Screenshots

Shaped Touches price

Shaped Touches is free to play — there is no purchase price, on Steam or anywhere else we track. We keep watching it, so if it ever stops being free the price history on this page will show when that happened and what it changed to.

About Shaped Touches

✦ AI summary

Shaped Touches invites you to explore architecture as a spectrum of sensory experiences, where different bodies perceive the same spaces in radically different ways through enhanced perception, augmented reality, and environmental awareness. The game reveals how future buildings might accommodate diverging sensorial abilities—like seeing infrared or hearing plant communication—creating layered realities that fragment and recombine like stations on a radio dial.

Architecture is a ‘shaped touch’ between what our bodies can perceive and the information around us. As our bodies increase their range of sensorial abilities through advancements in healthcare and wearable technologies, climate change is simultaneously redefining our expectations of future environments.

Examples include the ability to see within the near infrared spectrum of light, access layers of augmented reality, hear plants communicate in low frequency sound or the ability to empathize with those who’s senses differ from your own.

Architecture’s shape is less of an objective form and more of a spectrum of sensorial shapes layered upon one another for those with varying access. Much like a radio dial, occupying the same space might not mean you’re tuned to the same architecture...leading to immense creativity as well as public space to potentially fragment even further.

This game was installed as part of the 17th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia.

Shaped Touches — game info

Platforms
Windows
Player modes
Single-player
PC Game Pass
Not included

What Steam players say

Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.

✦ AI summary

Shaped Touches is a minimalist art installation experience rather than a traditional game, offering contemplative exploration of space and sensory perception, but it suffers from severe technical issues including poor optimization, low framerates, graphical glitches, and lack of any gameplay or educational depth. Players are divided on whether the artistic concept justifies the experience, with some finding it thought-provoking and worthwhile as a free download, while others feel the technical problems and minimal content make it difficult to engage with its philosophical goals.

Not recommended Nov 15, 2021
Shaped Touches is not a game, although it has erroneously been launched on Steam as one. It's a simple demo where you can look at an art installation in 3D. There's no real interactivity, no gameplay loops, less content than a walking simulator. It's a common mistake for developers to confuse games with things that are not games, and instead of seeking clarification, launching their non-games on Steam as games anyway. This has the unfortunate side effect of polluting the store and taking up market space and visibility that should more properly be made available to genuine game developers making products for gamers. Because this is not a game, I do not recommend this as a game for gamers.
3 found this helpful
Recommended Jul 30, 2021
This isn't so much a game as it is experiential experimental art. It's a thought exercise on alienation, architecture and design, and sensory experience. It's extremely simple and some may find it boring or pointless, but I think it succeeds in its goals, and I found myself spending a while pondering and feeling the experience. I think it's fascinating, and worth the download since it's free, although I would like to see it better optimized, since it runs pretty poorly at the moment. The concepts might also be interesting to incorporate into something larger, but for just getting you to think about how we interact with space and senses, it does well, and I'm glad I downloaded it.
2 found this helpful
Recommended Mar 20, 2023
[h1]Before I played Shaped Touches, I had a small pp, no friends, no gf, depression, and no life. These things havent changed, but the game is pretty good[/h1]
1 found this helpful
Not recommended Aug 15, 2021
does "base sensoral perceptions" include the headache I get from staring at this slideshow of a game? I get the idea and love the concept but the game was running at 12 FPS or under the entire time. Why? There is no moving objects or anything complicated to render. It's a VERY tiny area with a bunch of static objects. It's really hard to appreciate the philosophical undertones when my eyes are about to explode from staring at such low FPS. Also there are tons of graphical glitches + walking through solid objects including the ground itself at certain spots. I also think each scene could include some educational props. Maybe even just a placard somewhere that you can walk up to a read to gain additional insight on the topic at hand. The lack of educational content just seems lazy as hell. It's free, but it's not worth wasting your bandwidth to download.
1 found this helpful
Recommended Jan 22, 2025
I couldn't shape any touch 5/5
Not recommended Nov 6, 2021
absolute dogsh*t. barely runs and there are no video settings

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