Earlier this month, Sony announced their intention to bring the LittleBigPlanet series to mobile platforms with Run, Sackboy, Run! The game is a side-scrolling auto-runner that features plenty of unlockables and even the ability to unlock special items in the console versions of LittleBigPlanet. Sony is no stranger to mobile tie-in games that connect to their console big brothers, but thus far none of their mobile offerings have been particularly strong on their own. I was really hoping Run, Sackboy, Run! would break that tradition. Late this past Friday, Run, Sackboy, Run! soft-launched in the New Zealand App Store, so I figured I’d grab this early version and see what it was all about.

First off, Run, Sackboy, Run! is a very straightforward auto-runner. Your Sackboy runs on his own, naturally, and tapping the screen makes him jump. Tapping and holding longer sees him jumping even higher, which is important for grabbing certain items or making it up onto certain platforms. Sackboy can also briefly dash forward with a quick forwards swipe. The evil Negativitron is constantly chasing you, and the levels will sporadically feature pink goo that will slow Sackboy down in his tracks, letting Negativitron gain ground on you. The forward dash lets you get back ahead of this looming threat.

In addition there are several types of enemies roaming around which you can dispatch in classic fashion by jumping on their head, and there are also environmental hazards like spikes and electricity which must be avoided. Aside from the pink goo, which slows you down but is able to be recovered from, hitting other hazards like spikes or enemies will kill Sackboy in just one hit and end your run. To counter this, Sackboy has a special shield power-up that will slowly fill up as you play. When it does you can tap it to trigger the shield, which is kind of like one of those plastic hamster balls, and it lets Sackboy safely roll right through spikes and enemies for a brief period.

One thing I really like about Run, Sackboy, Run! is that the levels feature several branching pathways, so you can try to pick and choose which way to go. There are even certain routes, denoted with a signpost, that are advantageous to take while you have your shield active. For example, there might be a series of platforms floating over spikes, and in those spikes are red bubbles, which are worth five normal bubbles. You can avoid the spikes by jumping across the platforms normally, but if you have a shield ready to go, you can enable it and roll through the spikes, thus collecting all the bubble rewards.

Run, Sackboy, Run! is an endless runner, so the main goal is to try and make it as far as possible and earn the highest score you can during a run. The real meat and potatoes of the game, though, is the unlockables and upgrades. As you play you collect bubbles, which are the game’s one and only currency. Bubbles go towards purchasing new outfits, upgrading power-ups, and buying consumable boosts before a run. You earn bubbles at a pretty decent clip just from playing, but there’s also a bubble doubler you can buy to speed up the process if you wish. Unlocking costumes is especially fun, both because the costumes are adorable and because they offer increasingly greater score multipliers with each one.

Along with unlockables Run, Sackboy, Run! features a meta-goal system very similar to Jetpack Joyride’s. Each run will feature three different goals to shoot for, like making it a certain distance, collecting a certain number of bubbles, and that sort of thing. Based on the difficulty of each mission, you’ll be awarded medals which go towards leveling up your Sackboy. Similar to costumes, each new level brings with it greater score rewards. Unlocking costumes, upgrading your abilities, and completing meta-goals becomes the driving force for playing Run, Sackboy, Run!, and it’s quite fun.

As I said before, Run, Sackboy, Run! is a very straightforward runner, but just because it’s not breaking any new ground doesn’t mean it’s not fun. It’s also a delight to look at with crisp LittleBigPlanet visuals and appropriately catchy music and sounds. The monetization system isn’t overly-gross and is pretty typical free to play fare. Overall, I really like it a lot, and the players in our forums seem to as well. Its one glaring omission so far is its lack of Game Center integration, which is puzzling for a high scoring game, so hopefully it gets added at some point before its full release, though that seems doubtful as none of their other iOS games have it. If you’re into the whole Facebook thing you can compare scores that way, but that’s not for me.

Sony has pegged the release of Run, Sackboy, Run! for sometime in October, which means it could be as early as tomorrow. We’ll keep you posted as to when it hits the US.

New Zealand App Store Link: Run, Sackboy, Run!, Free (Universal)