I made it into an IGN video once, and I thought it’d be cool to bring it up here as a little memento to share with you all.

Feel free to skip to the end if you want to watch my part of the IGN video!

But before that, a little bit of background; I’ve played and made lots of things on the computer since I was very little, but the game LittleBigPlanet for the PS3 was truly the start of my journey into game design. Playing, creating, sharing, and receiving feedback from a vibrant community of creatives opened my eyes to how fun it is to create an “experience”. A full vision. Way back when I was 4 years old, I used to make short Pivot Stick Animator animations and show my parents. I remember always looking forward to showing them and seeing their reactions. It’s likely where my drive to create ultimately came from!

Now that I’m older, that audience has changed quite obviously. It is no longer your parents, but the online communities and loving fans that want to give you money to play your unique experience. In many ways, it’s so much better! Anyway, I bet you can guess how happy I was when Media Molecule, the creators of LittleBigPlanet, announced a whole new game where you can make anything at all! “Dreams”.

You see, LittleBigPlanet was awesome, but it was also restricted to a 2D plane with only 3 lanes to bounce in and out from. I was much older at this point, as the very last LittleBigPlanet game was at least 6 years before Dreams. This meant I’d already had a lot of experience in more professional tools on the computer for game creation like Unity and Blender. Nevertheless, I remember scouring over all of the developer interviews and gameplay previews of the new tools and what the developers themselves were making after all this time. You can 3D model, draw things, and make music using the Dualsense?! That sounds great! I couldn’t wait to return and make some stuff for old times sake.

Eventually, the release date rolled around and the game was out. I remember spending the first week of release absolutely plastered to the telly day in and day out having fun figuring out all the new tools. Eventually I wanted to make something! How about a remake of Metal Gear Solid’s first level? I already knew how it played out in my head, so it would almost be like a stress test of Dreams’ toolkit to see if it could make something vaguely representative. Long story short… it worked pretty well! After the week was over, IGN compiled a list of their 13 favourite Dreams remakes and I got featured in there as one.

Below is my mention in the video:

If you want a longer preview of the whole level, below is a video posted by a community member that recorded it all in its entirety including the often missed gunplay mechanics. Credit to kazedmonks for the video: