Tarsier on Little Big Planet

We caught up with CEO Mattias Nygren and studio director Peter Lübeck from Tarsier Studios to discuss the prospects of Little Big Planet on Vita and what became of The City of Metronome.

"It was a huge honour to get the responsibility, but also this great scare. How are we gonna tackle this? We know there is this great community out there who just love the game and we know there is big pressure on us, but we also took a lot of help from the community. A lot of people who have been working on this game are from the community. Next to Media Molecule they are the foremost experts on the game", says Mattias Nygren.

"When we started out on this game it was very much about staying true to the previous games and finding that sweet spot between what people expect from a Little Big Planet game and what people expect from a next generation handheld game and I think we have both the traditional handheld levels with a sprinkle of Vita features as well as mini-games and standalone game experiences that are completely Vita focused," Peter Lübeck said when asked about how they choose to implement various Vita features.

Tarsier rose to fame many years ago with a concept called The City of Metronome, a sound based adventure that never quite made it out the door, and perhaps was a little bit too much ambitious an undertaking for what at the time was a very small studio.

"The City of Metronome pretty much define us as a studio - bringing out new interesting IP with original look and everything, and whatever comes out of the Little Big Planet franchise we're probably going to have a finger in, but when we also can start making our own experiences and do our own original IP's even if it's not Metronome it's going to be exciting, new and fresh," Mattias Nygren teases with a smile on his face.

"One of the things about Metronome as we've been looking at it in the last two years is that when the company started out it was very much about making Metronome, but over the years the company became Metronome. So the vision behind the game sort of became the creative vision behind the company, and all the things we've done since has a bit of that soul, a bit of that vision in it, and you will see a part of that in Little Big Planet as well," Peter Lübeck adds.