LittleBigPlanet coughs up Shadow of the Colossus level, Sackboy-style
If you ever wondered about (or doubted) how powerful LittleBigPlanet‘s user-creation engine is, leave it up to a handful of design school students to put their foot down and prove to everyone LBP‘s worth. Over at Parsons School for Design’s Game Jam event, a team of design students had coughed up a Shadow of the Colossus-style level for LittleBigPlanet. “Oh my God” moments, anyone?
If you ever wondered about (or doubted) how powerful LittleBigPlanet‘s user-creation engine is, leave it up to a handful of design school students to put their foot down and prove to everyone LBP‘s worth.
Kotaku was able to head off to the LittleBigPlanet Game Jam event hosted by the Parsons School of Design where some 120 students were given the chance (oh envy!) to go wild with Media Molecule‘s game.
See, the game was designed to give users all the tools and options they could possible need to create their own Sackboys and stage levels. But more than that, apparently, given the same toolset, there’s a lot of other things you can do besides. Media Molecule art director Kareem Ettouney sums it up this way:
But the exciting part of LittleBigPlanet is everything else you can do with it. We didn’t want to hinder people. What we wanted to make sure we widened the palette. The only real limitation is your imagination.
And of course, given 120 design school students, you’re bound to find some novel ideas and creations resulting from a 24-hour LBP-a-thon event.
Entries that made the list of finalists encompassed various LBP projects like a racing game (where distribution of Sackboy weight proved crucial) and a virtual washing machine (created by a team of female designers, none of which had any prior gaming experience). Lo and behold, a Shadow of the Colossus-type project called “Sack Monster” was even spotted.
Following Kotaku’s description, Team Good Sportsmanship’s LBP project involves a Sackboy trying to scale (side-scrolling platformer style, of course) a huge Sack Monster and get inside via its bellybutton. Levels inside the creature involve making your way through blood, bone, and tissue, so to speak, until you finally get on top of its head. Kotaku writes:
The level is packed with tons of creativity in both game mechanic and visual design. As you prepare to make your way inside the beast, for instance, you have to climb across two bloody arrows embedded in the creature’s stomach.
Later in the game, as you strive to avoid the sackboy-incinerating gastric juices of the stomach, gamers have to drop a tire into the pool of acid to move ahead. The tire disappears in the stomach fluids causing gas bubbles to appear and slowly drift up and out of the stomach. Sackboy can grab these bubbles and make his way to the rib cage.
Ok, so how’s that for Molyneux’s little “Oh My God” moments. Oh, and just in case some of you guys were asking, the online Create mode was probably not available during the Game Jam event – a clear sign that you can still have fun without the online multiplayer creation aspect.
And yes, the winning entries in the Game Jam event will be available for download in LittleBigPlanet. Sackboy of the Colossus, here we come!
(Btw, image above was taken from *another* LBP design contest, more specifically, a Sackboy concept art contest, seen here – the concept art and Sack Monster project from Game Jam are from different people)
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