Another day, another low-budget indie title billing itself as artsy and unusual as a substitute for interesting or well-designed gameplay. It’s not that Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is a terrible game, or even that it does anything unusually poorly; it’s just the default state for a Metroidvania to exist in without doing anything new or interesting. There’s nothing good about this game that you can’t get from watching the trailer, but it’s also not going to have you tearing your hair out as you wrestle with bugs and bad design.
As a little flying saucer, we collect various components from around the place to help traverse different obstacles, but there’s really no creativity to any of it. You’ll get a grabbing claw to move rocks, a saw to saw through loose ground, and so on; really basic stuff. There’s also no real puzzle solving that goes into using these things, as you’re given a scanning tool at the very beginning of the game that just tells you which tool you need to get past any object. As a result it plays like a bad point-and-click adventure, where you’re just searching for the objects that look out of place against the backdrop and applying the solution as you’re told.
Like I said, I don’t have major issues with it. The combat’s a low point, with terrible sound and visuals for firing your pathetic little gun, but other than that it looks and sounds fantastic. Unfortunately that has never been enough to recommend a game, especially in a market where everyone and their dog has put out a simplified version of a popular game with a unique art style. If you want pretty visuals and good music, you can get both of those things through better delivery systems, like music. Style can be great as a supplement to an already interesting game, but the problem with Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet is that it has been created the other way around.
Dylan's Morsels 