LittleBigPlanet 3

Play, create, share has always been the mantra of the LittleBigPlanet series. Announced at E3, Sony focused on the play portion of that slogan for the third entry in the adorable platformer. During a Gamescom demo, we got to look at the Create portion.

Nearly 9 million levels have been created for the LittleBigPlanet series, which adds up to over 42 million hours users have spent generating content for the series. Sony and LittleBigPlanet 3 developer Sumo Digital want to make sure that all that content ports over.

But in addition to the 29 enhanced tools from LBP 2 and the 10 tools from Vita version, LittleBigPlanet 3 will feature over 70 new creation tools. Here are a few of the new tools we saw.

Previous LittleBigPlanet  games had three playable layers, but Sumo Digital has bumped that up to 16 layers. This adds a new level of depth and 3D perspective to the game and all of its created content. I saw a basketball level where the ball bounced deeper into the background and foreground, something that didn’t really work in previous games.

These new layers come with suite of new creation tools that take advantage of the additional depth. A new level launcher allows players to drop pads that send Sackboy and friends careening through the world. Players can set the arches for these paths. Similarly, slides allow players to slip into the foreground or background of each area. Players are also able to edit the material of these slides in order to create water and lava as well as a host of other unique ways for your characters to slip into and out of the world.

The bendy rail is a pipe that winds through the layers. Sackboy can grind along these rails much like Booker in BioShock Infinite, and this tool is useful for creating roller coasters. The bendy rail can also be turned invisible, so enemies that appear on this path will look like they’re flying – a great trick for players who want to make a space shooter.

Character customization tools allow you to add specific touches such as, increase their size and dress, add special animations, and even grant them special properties, such as flight. Similarly, powerup creation tools, allow you to make specialty items like fire swords. We watched Sackboy take a basic object and add a blaster to it to create a motorize drill that could annihilate boulders. Using these power-up creation tools players can create crazy power-ups such as banana nunchucks or inflatable boxing gloves that knockout enemies in one punch.

LittleBigPlanet 3’s new touch enable creation tools also lets creators use their fingers to easily place items and stickers into the world and easily resize and paint objects with specialized skins. Given LittleBigPlanet list of new creation tools, hardcore fans of the series will have plenty to keep themselves busy until the release of LittleBigPlanet 4. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves; LittleBigPlanet 3 launches on November 18 of this year. 

Also check out our impressions of the single player game from E3.