New details surface about Tearaway - Media Molecule's PS Vita saviour

One of the highlights of Sony's press conference at Gamescom 2012 was the announcement of Media Molecule's latest game, Tearaway.

As well as looking fantastic, Tearaway attracted a good amount of press as it was the first original intellectual property created by Media Molecule since the wildly successful LittleBigPlanet.

The biggest question facing Media Molecule since Tearaway's unveiling was two-fold: why set it in a paper world and why choose the PS Vita specifically?

Gamasutra sat down to interview the two designers of Tearaway - creative director Mark Healey, and tech director Alex Evans – to shed a bit of background on the game's origins.

From its inception, Tearaway was always destined for the PS Vita to take advantage of its robust suite of input features.

During development, Media Molecule considered bringing Tearaway to the PS3 in addition to the Vita but reconsidered.

Speaking frankly, Evans defended their decision: "It was like, hang on a second, if it can be done on the PS3 successfully, then it's no longer a Vita game."

Now firmly established on PS Vita, the designers began focusing on the overarching goal of Tearaway.

With a world of paper to play with and in, the designers wanted to give players the feeling of what it would be like to enter into the game itself.

This manifests principally via the rear touchpad on the Vita, where players can tap and drum to punch their fingers into the graphics of the game world. In a very real sense, they are putting a part of themselves in the game.

As players make use of this manipulation, they blur the line between themselves and Iota, the game's papery protagonist.

We don’t have a release date yet for Tearaway, but it is expected on the Vita sometime on 2013 – and we're quite eager about it.

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