One thing is for sure: the developers of Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet did not compromise. They had a vision for the kind of game they wanted to make and they made it. No corners were cut and no artistic vision was shuttered in favour of mechanics or game design. It is admirable to see a team go for their vision with laser focus like the folks at Fuelcell games did.
Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is the equivalent of a film short. This is because the man behind the project, Michel Gagne, is a famous animator known for doing these types of movies. Like many film shorts, ITSP is a silent game. The game's music is nothing more than a few ambient whirrs here and there. There is no dialogue in the game. The closest thing to a narrative are a few esoteric five second animations about, well, nothing at all. There is very little purpose shown here. Even the weapons that you acquire are nameless and simply go by a symbol on an equip screen. Your only source of information is a scanning device that lets you interact with objects to learn how to manipulate them. This will show you what device of yours can interact with said object. No words, no understanding, just a symbol. Perhaps the most striking thing about the game is the lack of a HUD. There are no life bars, no on-screen symbols, no anything. Everything is implemented in-game.
This silence is a double-edged sword. On one hand, the game's atmosphere is enhanced greatly by this silent, unknown world. On the other, you are often given no context or understanding as to what is going on or what to do. The game has a unique control scheme where you have four hotkeys that you can assign to your eight weapons, but there is no way to convey that. Even the help menu is a series of obtuse pictures. It wasn't until the end of the game where I truly started to recognize which symbol corresponded to which weapon and felt comfortable cycling through them on the fly. You will sometimes die without knowing that you are close to death due to the lack of a life bar. Many people will feel some dissonance with ITSP thanks to its absolute refusal to convey basic things to the player.
And yet, this unknown quality ends up being a strength of the game. Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is ostensibly a Metroid game. Metroid is a game that thrives on its setting and its atmosphere. ITSP's worlds are very alien and disconcerting thanks to several factors. One is Gagne, the game's creative director and animator. Gagne is the game's greatest strength: ITSP's art has a unique twisted cartoon look to it that fits into a video game perfectly. Exploring the game world is a real thrill thanks to how menacing the environments are. The animation is second to none. The attention to detail is striking for a downloadable game. Every animation is a thrill to see. Combine this with the silent movie aesthetic and the game has an atmosphere that, blasphemous as it is to say, trumps Metroid in every aspect. If video games were all about art, setting and atmosphere, ITSP would be one for all time.
It actually isn't the gameplay that stops ITSP from being great. The gameplay in ITSP is really good. Movement feels really smooth, weapons feel really good and enemies have great variety. There are multiple ways to take on each enemy thanks to great weapons: a saw that functions as a melee weapon and feels very visceral, a rocket with tons of power and limited mobility/speed, a laser beam that fries enemies but needs time to recharge, a grappling hook that can pick up just about any enemy and render them helpless, a shield that deflects near anything and a gravity beam that can send enemies flying. You can even smash enemies against walls to kill them. Boss fights and large enemy encounters will often find you cycling through weapons like crazy instead of just finding the best available weapon and blasting everything until it's dead. It is a testament to the gameplay that this works so well.
Level design is where ITSP falters. The game has a great sense of pace thanks to traversal being so intrinsically interesting. Using these weapons is a lot of fun and killing enemies is a delight. ITSP grinds this pace to a halt by using environmental puzzles so liberally. Every area has a different environmental theme and corresponding type of puzzle for you to solve. Puzzles start out simple but end up getting fairly devious thanks to the game's steadfast refusal to give you any kind of context or hint. Oftentimes you spend 10 minutes wandering around an area trying to figure out what's missing or where to go. The puzzles are fairly clever and offer good use of your weapons but wandering back and forth through the same rooms over and over really ruins what makes the game so fun: pushing forward, discovering new places, seeing new environments and killing new enemies. Compounding this is the fact that ITSP's level design funnels you toward everything in sequential order. A true Metroid game would let you tackle things however you like but ITSP has a handful of one-way passages that force you to go a very roundabout way, even at the end of the game. For those looking to collect all of the items or see all of the different places, this is particularly maddening.
Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is a great attempt from a very creative team. Its sharp visuals, smart use of weapons and great boss fights make it a game to remember and recommend to anybody. Unfortunately, its level design and odd linearity stop it well short of being on the level of a Super Metroid. ITSP succeeds 85% of the time at being amazing. The other 15% make you wish they had a bigger budget, a better understanding of what makes the game good or something. I hope this team stays together for another game because it could be fantastic.
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