PAX Aus 2024 Highlight – Shape Sender Deluxe

Shape Sender Deluxe was one of my favourite titles I came across at PAX Aus 2024. Developed in Wellington, New Zealand by Dead Teapot Games, this is a fun physics based puzzle game where you use different objects like springs, magnets, boxes and more to guide objects from one part of the screen to the other.

At this point in time there is no publicly available demo and no set release date. Whilst having a chat with the developers at their booth, they were telling me that it was interesting watching players find different ways to solve the puzzles on offer. It is a game that gives the player plenty of agency, I even managed to solve one in a way they had not expected.

At its core, Shape Sender Deluxe is a very simple game. In the version I played it’s either balls or stars that get spit out of a pipe on the left. The balls bounce and the stars break. The goal is to guide them into a pipe on another side of the screen using the objects on offer. But sometimes the most simple of ideas are the most fun.

As I progressed through the demo stages on offer (nine I think there were?), they increase in difficulty and introduce new obstacles. But the progression is logical and carried out perfectly so you can take the learning, the trials and errors from early stages and apply them to make your way through.

With Shape Sender Deluxe – I think the sky is the limit. It reminds me of simple, yet genuinely fun puzzle games like Marble Madness for example. Just basic ideas, executed perfectly. The core really is the physics of the game, which allows them to make stages in any configuration they like.

The flexibility of the engine means that they could also introduce player created stages to share and their website indicates they plan to do just that. Shape Sender Deluxe is available to wishlist on Steam now.