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Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet

It could have been called Insanely Beautiful Shadow Planet, but the developers went with Twisted instead...

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There are games you simply cannot help looking at and be amazed. Not necessarily based on technical merits, but purely based on the artstyle. Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is one such game and it's all thanks to Michel Gagné. The Canadian cartoonist, best known for his work on films such as The Iron Giant, The Land Before Time, and Ratatouille to name a few, but he is also well known for his comics that includes ZED and Batman: Spore for DC Comics. A few years back he teamed up with the folks at Fuelcell Games for Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, his first venture into video games - and what looks like the most important game to keep an eye on out of the entire Summer of Arcade line up on Xbox Live Arcade.

We met up with Michel and his colleague Joe Olson at the Best of Xbox showcase during E3, as they lined up next to the other games that make up the Summer of Arcade - Bastion, From Dust, Kinect Fruit Ninja and Toy Soldiers: Cold War. A strong line up, but visually Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet was the most striking one. With the developer each holding a rather sizeable drink (their fifth of the evening by their own count), we asked if we could do an interview. "Not until you've played the game", Joe Olson told us sternly. Said and done. We sat down to play what amounts to the "trial version" of Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet. And it's easy to see why he would tell us to play as it really needs to be experienced with headphones on to fully appreciate what kind of game it is.

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet

The visuals are almost distracting us as we try and figure out what parts of the living pulsating world are enemies, and what we can interact with. And even if this is just the very first level where players are taught the basics of exploration and combat, it's easy to see where the inspiration Olson says was taken from Castlevania and Metroid comes into play. Another comparison we quickly draw is that the game plays similar to PixelJunk Shooter, even if it doesn't have mechanic of mixing elements to solve puzzles. The controls are as precise as they need to be in this kind of game and we are equipped with a gun, a claw and a scanner early on. The scanner helps us scan enemies and objects in order to gain some idea as to how we best interact with them. There are boulders to move, paths to clear or open up, and at the end of it we faced off with the very first boss of the game. A giant sphere that spews out bullets, but that is also fairly generous with health boosts.

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You can only use one weapon and tool at a time, and you pick these from a wheel and you can also map the various weapons and tools to face buttons (just remember where you mapped what) to switch on the fly. Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is the kind of game where you can pick your own pace for much of the journey, either rushing into things with your laser blazing or going about things more methodically scanning and looking for secrets.

The first level is fairly simple and subdued compared to the rest of what we are going to experience in Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet and it's probably a good thing as one has to get used to the level of distraction the art brings gradually. The music is also superb, suitably orchestrated and epic, and perhaps a wink to the early days of animation.

They first started on the project five years ago, but even for independent developers with the goal of creating a piece of art there are deadlines.

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"Three months ago Joe told me I had to stop adding stuff as they had to finish the game", Michael Gagné says with a big smile on his face. He admits he simply could not stop working on new stuff to put in the game, but at that point Fuelcell Games just had to dig down, polish and finish what was already there in order to meet the deadline Microsoft had given them.

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is a game you just cannot ignore and we're confident it will take us on a journey we won't forget anytime soon.

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Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet

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PREVIEW. Written by Bengt Lemne

"Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is a game you just cannot ignore and we're confident it will take us on a journey we won't forget."



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