PlayStation Plus gets a dose of colorful 3D-platforming fun this month in the form of Sackboy: A Big Adventure.
Originally released in 2020 and created by Sumo Digital, the UK-based developer tapped into its previous experiences across platformer and multiplayer genres (LittleBigPlanet 3, Team Sonic Racing) to craft a captivating yarn. Levels are imaginative and reward exploration, and occasionally stray into musically-led stages backed by pop hits. Collectibles are many and worth discovering – offering secret pathways and increasingly dazzling costumes to deck out your character. Co-op (up to four players local or online) is joyful in its continuous tandem of cooperative and competitive.
To mark its launch on PlayStation Plus, we talked about the game’s origins with XDEV Producer Mark O’Connor. O’Connor shares some early concept sketches and gives his insights into how the core gameplay pillars came to be.
“The concept for Sackboy: A Big Adventure started way back in 2017. The original pitch was simple (to say the least): Sackboy: A Big Adventure at its heart was to be a brand-new platforming experience set in Sackboy’s familiar home of Craftworld; complete levels, battle bosses and save the world!
“We wanted to reimagine the LittleBigPlanet franchise within a vibrant, (and for the very first time) fully 3D environment, that had that familiar feel of physicality woven into the game’s DNA. Everything is physical, from the gameplay, to the world, through to the UI and beyond. Advanced real-time physical behaviors create a highly interactive 3D world: cloth stretches and tears, sponges squash and absorb, balloons inflate and burst, fluids ebb and flow.
Caption: These early concept sketches show how real world materials
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