little big obsession

Amanda and I have been playing Sony's Little Big Planet for the last few weeks in a fairly heavy rotation. If you don't know it:



I'm totally in love with it. We've beaten all of the single player levels. We've aced (completed without dying) most of the levels. And we're really close to having found 100% of the prizes hidden within all of the levels.

With all of that so far along, I've been turning more to designing my own levels lately. What's interesting is that we're finding that Amanda and I are both really good at different parts of the level design process. She's a fantastic gameplay engineer - able to design the mechanical contraptions behind puzzles, vehicles, etc. I'm more of an environment artist. I have a knack for the visual aesthetic of a level or enemy design.

Together, we've been making some really cool stuff so far. Unfortunately, not much of it is actually finished. So, we really have yet to publish much of it. We had created a really fantastic Jack and the Beanstalk level during the public beta, but didn't publish it in time and it evaporated. One of these days, I hope to redo it.

Anyway. I'm obsessed. Great work, Sony (and specifically Media Molecule). Oh and the music, sound, and voice in the game rule as well. If you have a PS3, you owe it to yourself to check the game out.