"Our level is real annoying."

That's one of the comments from Kunal Patel and Zach Gage as they demo the Little Big Planet level their team created last weekend at the 24-hour game jam for the Parsons New School for Design in New York City. 150 students were divided into teams and given 24 hours to use the tool set from Sony's upcoming platformer to make their own levels. Patel and Gage's team, Team Good Sportsmanship, crafted a journey through a giant monster. You climb your little Sackboy (that's who you play in Little Big Planet: Sackboy) up the legs, into an arrow wound, around the innards, through the heart, past the brain, and eventually out the mouth of a giant crocodile sort of thing. The "annoying" comment comes after repeatedly dying during one of the tricky jumps.

Game Set Watch has written up a first-hand account of the competition and Joystiq has a video of Patel and Gage's presentation.

And while this fantastic voyage is imaginative and sometime lovely, I have the same reaction watching it as I do when I'm actually playing Little Big Planet: "So this is just a 2D platformer?" Yeah, it's gorgeous, and it's a great outlet for creative folks like Team Good Sportsmanship, but where's the twist? Can I eat monsters to change the gameplay, like in Kirby? Can I rewind time like in Braid? Are there Wario Land-style controller shaking minigames? Do I get a Bionic Commando style grappling hook arm? Do my weapons upgrade like in Ratchet & Clank? Are Little Big Planet's considerable charm, physics puzzles, and amazingly photorealistic textures enough?

Because as I watch the demo and see Sackboy falling off platforms, plunging into stomach acid, missing a jump from one tooth to another, and being hit by falling drops of digestive juice, my reaction goes from admiring their creativity to wondering what it would be like to actually play it.

"Their level is real annoying," I think to myself.