The most awesome feature of the upcoming puzzle-platformer game LittleBigPlanet is its intuitive, on-the-fly level editor that lets players create their own surprisingly detailed run-and-jump games.
After concocting their levels, players can push a button and share them online as easily as posting a YouTube video. Sony has invited thousands of gamers to test their level-designing chops with a scaled-back beta version of the PlayStation 3 game. LittleBigPlanet will be in stores Nov. 21.
Here are ten of the best user-created levels we've found so far, and the names of their creators.
1. LittleBigColossus by Danielsan88
The best LittleBigPlanet level we've found so far is a take on Sony's brilliant game Shadow of the Colossus. It's more of a loving homage than parody: It captures the original's atmosphere perfectly, with blowing wind and a horse's neighing the only sounds to break the silence. It's much less challenging than the real thing, but feels eerily similar.
Defining moment: The final fight against a giant, lumbering colossus.
2. Hollow Bastion by DavisTheDarkest
One of the most interesting levels, Hollow Bastion takes happy-go-lucky LittleBigPlanet and transforms it into a haunted house full of blood, dead things and eerie screams.
It's a challenging level, too, with some precision jumping required and wheels of death that rotate quickly and fling you off them, but the atmosphere is what makes it great. (Also the fact that all of the text is in Italian.)
Defining moment: The giant Godzilla monster that stomps through the garden, accompanied by a chorus of shrieks.
3. Escape the Cave by zero2kz
Now we come to the cream of the crop: User creations that feel like real, polished videogame levels.
Escape the Cave features multiple pathways and a variety of different challenges and secrets. Players trying for a high score on the online leaderboards can explore everywhere and try to complete the "race" segment in the middle of the level more quickly.
Defining moment: Traipsing over the skulls of less fortunate explorers.
4. The Heist, Part 1 by jiggles
LittleBigPlanet does have its limits. Each level is self-contained; you can't string them together to create a continuous, persistent game.
But some designers are already creating stories, like "The Heist," that span multiple levels. In the first part of this adventure, you've got to rob a bank by dodging some robotic guards and cracking its passcode. In the second level, you run from the cops and end up in jail.
Defining moment: Dodging PC Nasty's electrified hands while waiting for the sponge elevator. (You had to be there.)
5. Captain Sackbeard's Treasure by Burning_Out
Yarr! Take to the high seas in this pirate-themed level. The centerpiece of the stage is a giant pirate ship, with a massive cannon located below decks. You'll sit in the captain's chair and pull a lever to move the ship forward and backward in search of treasure, firing the cannon at a creepy, bat-infested cave to clear obstructions. Eventually you'll disembark.
Defining moment: Figuring out that Captain Sackbeard's downed ship has all the same features as yours, and that it's a clue as to how to defeat him.
6. Houston, We Have a Problem by Dead_Air
Some early LittleBigPlanet levels have explored the idea of telling a brief story with a few different settings. In this level, you climb up a tower and blast off in a giant rocket, landing in space. After riding in a lunar rover and encountering aliens, you return home. It's more about exploration than challenge.
Defining moment: When the electrified aliens start launching themselves at you.
7. Duckroll mobile by Tempy-kun
Many boring, short or otherwise forgettable levels have already flooded the LittleBigPlanet servers -- the fate of all user-generated content schemes.
This level is just a riff on duckrolling, the soon-to-be-forgotten internet meme that spawned the far more popular Rickroll.
Defining moment: So why is this here? Because even silly levels like these have serious benefits: Users can take the Duckroll mobile and use it in their own levels. It'll still contain the original creator's ID in the metadata.
8. Red Rings of Burninating by gevurah22
LittleBigPlanet is a PlayStation 3 exclusive, meaning that its early adopters are die-hard Sony fans. Naturally, several of the game's levels poke fun at the competition.
The first thing you'll do in this level is fight an evil contraption made of Xbox parts. Then you'll descend into a hellish maze filled with some of the most devious traps we've found in one of these levels so far.
Defining moment: Having to navigate a tightly wound maze of deadly fire while riding a jetpack, with the camera zoomed in really tight.
9. Takeshi's Castle by LonERecoN
Many of LittleBigPlanet's beta-test levels are modeled after other games, movies and TV shows. This level is modeled after Takeshi's Castle, a well-known Japanese game show that aired in the United States as MXC.
LonERecoN's brief level, which remakes three different games from the TV show, is less challenging than it is funny, as hapless competitors run on rolling logs or slide downhill in a tea bowl.
Defining moment: Actually getting the teacup to go down the hill with you inside it.
10. AsianHeights by Plugpin
AsianHeights incorporates many of the things that amateur designers can instantly create with LittleBigPlanet's editor: jumping challenges, puzzles and mazes. Many of the parts -- like the background music, the water wheels and the skateboard -- are prefabricated, but LittleBigPlanet allows players to mix and mash these elements into unique challenges.
Defining moment: Ascending into the clouds, which, in a unique aesthetic touch, are made of blocks of wood and strung together with pieces of rope.