Ultimate Sackboy launched on mobile this week, a new endless runner based on Sony’s beloved Little Big Planet series. It not much different from the last LBP mobile game, Run Sackboy! Run!, which came out nearly eight years ago. I was looking for a game that would put my brand new Samsung s23 Ultra’s octa-core processor and Adreno 740 GPU to the test, and Sony - industry leader of cutting-edge games - delivered the goods with a clone of 2012’s Subway Surfers. Sony likes to say “Play has no limits”, but I can think of at least one.
For decades, the PlayStation Mobile Inc label has mostly only published companion apps for games like Driveclub, Until Dawn, and God of War, as well as PlayLink apps for the PS3 and Vita. Ultimate Sackboy, developed by Exient, is one of the very few PlayStation mobile apps that actually includes a game, and it’s currently the only one available on Android, aside from the aforementioned Run Sackboy. Why we needed yet another hollow Sackboy endless runner is anyone’s guess.
Ultimate Sackboy is an endless runner starring Sackboy, and there isn’t much more to say about it than that. Sackboy runs, and you swipe the screen to make him jump and slide around obstacles. Your goal is to collect orbs that you can spend to upgrade sackboys outfits. Like all modern mobile games, it’s filled with layers of abstracted currencies, delayed progression, loot boxes, and plenty of ways to spend money. Within five minutes of downloading the game I’d already been asked to buy a battle pass and a bucket of gems.
It isn’t a new take on the endless runner, and it doesn’t introduce any new ideas to the genre. As much as I criticized Crash: On the Run for leveraging every dirty mobile trick in the book, it at least felt like an original game. Bad, but original. Sackboy is Crash: On the Run in a new skin, and it’s less mechanically compelling than Ratchet & Clank: Before the Nexus, which launched almost a decade ago. All we ever get from Sony’s IPs is endless runners. When is it going to start taking mobile seriously?
Endless runners themselves are an antiquated genre on mobile. Games like Subway Surfers, Temple Run, Jetpack Joyride, and my all-time favorite, Robot Unicorn Attack, had their heyday in the early aughts but have since been supplanted by more sophisticated genres – namely, strategy games (Clash Royale, Rise of Kingdoms), RPGs (Genshin Impact, Raid: Shadow Legends), and most recently, straight up casino games. Endless Runners aren’t dead - the amount of Subway Surfers content in my TikTok FYP can attest to that - but they’re not the kind of game you’d expect an industry leader like Sony to release in 2023.
Ultimate Sackboy stands in contrast to Mighty Doom, a mobile spin-off from Bethesda Softworks coming to Android and iOS next month. Mighty Doom is a chibi-style, top down, bullethell roguelike that looks like it has some depth. The mix of RPG-style gear loadouts and bullethell action feels like a good fit for Doom. Even if it turns out to be poorly monetized, at least it’s modern and interesting. Sackboy is no different than all the other endless runners we’ve seen over the last 20 years. When Sony inevitably scrubs it from existence just like it did with Ratchet & Clank: Before the Nexus, Uncharted: Fortune Hunter, and Knack’s Adventure, it won’t be much of a loss.
None of those games exist on mobile anymore, and Ultimate Sackboy is the first mobile game based on a PlayStation character in over eight years. That may change, as the company recently announced big plans for mobile and has even started acquiring some studios to that end. This is long overdue, and dropping a tired old game like Ultimate Sackboy on mobile serves as an uncomfortable reminder of just how long Sony has been out of the game.