Another first-party Playstation game is coming to PC, and another item is ticked off by the impressively accurate GeForce Now leak, which is sort of a crystal ball for the PC release schedule at the moment. But is it Demon’s Souls (which is in the GeForce leak), or maybe Bloodborne (which we all pray in vain for)?
No, ladies and gentlemen, it is Sackboy: a great adventure (cue irregular, muffled applause). On the one hand, that’s cool and all, especially since it marks a new Sony IP to make its way to PC, but given the nature of the former Sony exclusives that have them, and we hope will come to PC, it’s a bit of a shrug. Let’s face it, Sackboy isn’t exactly Crash or Ratchet the way a “cute mascot” recognizable goes, nor does Sackboy’s first spin-off game offer us anything significant on PC that we don’t already have. But hey, Ariana Grande likes it, so there’s that…
To be clear, there’s nothing inherently wrong or offensive about Sackboy, but the cute pincushion isn’t recognizable for the memorable platforming adventures we’ve shared with him a la Mario, or Sonic, or Crash. Sackboy’s recognizability is more or less intertwined with the LittleBigPlanet series, which, alongside the platforming, was about creating a huge universe of player-created content. that is the real draw of the Sackboy IP, and while Sackboy: A Big Adventure will be a fun little addition to Sony’s PC repertoire, LittleBigPlanet would have been a phenomenon.
I can’t tell you how many hours I dragged into the LittleBigPlanet games in the early 2010s by player-made creations – a veritable galaxy of wacky and wonderfully inventive games that were mainly 2D platformers, but with LittleBigPlanet 3 branched out to the top-down games, racing games and even shooters. I remember my friend and I spent three hours trying to top the online leaderboards in a recreation of the original Donkey Kong. Around Halloween or Christmas I would dive into lovingly crafted festively themed levels to get in the mood, and especially in LBP 3 I remember some incredible well made party and board games.
The series brought just a little bit of that creativity we’d see mostly in the PC modding scene to the PS3 and PS4 – it made consumer creators.
LBP was a weird and erratic series, bound only by the relatively limiting toolsets available in the game – the kind of toolsets and possibilities that would be completely limitless if they opened up the world of PC modding. Sackboy’s upcoming debut on PC isn’t unwelcome and will almost certainly find an audience, but Sony could have tapped into something with LittleBigPlanet a lot taller.
Where new content for LittleBigPlanet was always limited to carefully curated and cleaned-up DLC on the Playstation Store, on PC it would all come from the community; as with many PC games, it would be a matter of opening the game code just enough for players to fully customize sackpeople, have more flexibility with making props, custom music and sound effects, and enable modders tools to further streamline the creation process. Then there’s the inherent precision and speed that comes with using a mouse and keyboard. The efficiency of creation on PC alone would enrich the creations that would come out of the LBP PC community.
Sony could even go a step further and bring Dreams, Media Molecule’s 2020 creation engine to PS4, that opened up that Play, Create, Share ethos even further. Console folks have done incredible things with the tool – from Elden Ring fan art to parts of Halo Infinite, Silent Hills PT, and the original Resident Evil. If this came to PC, Sony itself would have a long-term marketing piece where we’ll be seeing news stories, videos, and mods for years to come showing the incredible things that can be accomplished by combining a creation toolbox with the tinkerer- friendly PC platform.
It’s actually a bit surprising that no PC developer has replicated the ‘Play, Create, Share’ concept on PC. Of course there are things like GameMaker and RPG Maker, but they are at a slightly more advanced level than say a LittleBigPlanet or Mario Maker.
However, that may be about to change.
In 2019, modding collective Trixel Creative tried to make a fan-made version of LittleBigPlanet (LittleBigPlanet Restitched) for PC, but got a shutdown order from Sony. It’s actually understandable, since it’s a valuable Sony IP address and technically already available on PC via Playstation Now. In a 2020 interview with Eurogamer, Trixel acknowledged Sony’s right to defend their IP, though they lamented that they couldn’t give LittleBigPlanet the presence it deserves on PC.
But to prove that death can indeed lead to rebirth, Trixel Creative made the wise decision to continue. They dropped LittleBigPlanet from the name (leave just ‘Restitched’), replaced Sackboy with stitched-together little stuffed animals, and kept the 2.5D LBP tone and ethos.
The studio was officially founded in February this year and posted a reveal trailer to YouTube for their new game, Restitched, in July. Sure, it looks more like LittleBigPlanet 1 or 2 than LittleBigPlanet 3 (let alone Dreams), but it’s the start of the journey for the studio, and unless Sony gives them some competition by deciding to bring the much-loved LBP to PC , there’s no reason why we shouldn’t see Restitched evolve and go through better and better iterations over the years like LBP did on Playstation. There is a niche there waiting to be filled.
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