ITSP is inspired but uninspiring, if that makes sense. It absolutely looks the part. The art style is pretty unique, and does a good job of conveying the vastness and indifference of the setting; it's very atmospheric, and it's dripping with the 'otherworldy' vibes that I'm a sucker for. And there's a decent framework to build gameplay on in here too: the abilities you get are varied, intuitive and fun to use. And yet despite all that, I came away from this game feeling pretty indifferent.

The actual gameplay in ITSP is pretty inconsistent in terms of quality. The highlights are some of the environmental puzzles which require you to observe and experiment with unfamiliar objects to work out how to proceed. These parts feel pretty organic, and I appreciate how the scanner tells you which tools you have can interact with any given object, which prevents needless flailing in the dark without making the puzzle solutions too obvious. But these high points can be pretty few and far between, especially in the latter half of the game, and most of the time is spent on mundane things like generic redirecting laser puzzles and clunky and awkward combat.

The combat in this game really sucks; I appreciate how many of the abilities you get can be repurposed as combat tools, but fights in this game are chaotic and frustrating. There are plenty of times when a perfectly good puzzle sequence is ruined by the game's need to spam respawning projectile-shooting enemies all over the screen and turn what should be a methodical investigation into an absolute clusterfuck. For the most part the boss design is substantially better, but if anything these have even more unnecessary projectile spam. It feels like 'spam a billion things on screen' is the only way the devs could think of to make the game harder; it does make the world feel more hostile, which is good for atmosphere, but it's also just stressful in a bad way. I think this game would have been substantially better if they just took out combat altogether, and maybe ratcheted up some of the already present environmental hazards if they wanted to maintain a similar difficulty level.

There's also a massive missed opportunity here I think. The game is framed as an expedition into the heart of an unknown entity, and structured like a metroidvania... and yet I never really felt any sense of exploration. In general I'd say the level design is quite poor; the first area makes some attempt to have the branching looping paths inherent to the metroidvania genre, but after that the game becomes extraordinarily linear. There is always a big marker on your map telling you to 'go here', and it's always pretty obvious how to get to wherever you need to go. The only deviations you really need to make from the path are for a few easily found collectibles down short branches, and ocasionally you have to backtrack slightly to use a new ability in a previous area; but these diversions feel somewhat tacked-on, more a way to justify being a metroidvania than an inherent part of the fun. The level design definitely gets worse though as the game goes on, and in the last couple of levels even these sidepaths stop being a thing. You end up just proceeding down the game's linear paths because there is no other options, rather than out of any desire to explore.

So yeah. I think this could have been great with a bit more focus and polish on the gameplay side of things. But as it is, ITSP ends up being a remarkably forgettable game considering how strong it is on an aesthetic front. I'd say on balance I did enjoy playing it overall, despite some very frustrating combat roadblocks, but this game could have been so much better.

In my first attempt to review every single game on my 100-something top games list, I'm generally going to keep the early reviews short because I simply don't remember them extremely well.

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet was one of my first forays into indie Metroidvanias, and it's definitely a "style over substance" example of the genre. The art style is gorgeous, the ambiance is incredible, and instead of platforming it's a flying elegantly through bleak caverns and mazes. The boss battles are beautifully animated. My big grievance with the game is that the actual combat feels weak, like you're firing a pea shooter at these large monstrosities; the feedback is lacking. And also generally said, the actual game does a lot and doesn't do much of it exceedingly well. It's sufficient, merely competent at what it does without excelling and any real exciting way outside of the art direction and uniqueness of the exploration and gameplay.

That being said, it's still good fun and a nice bite-sized adventure in the genre without overstaying its welcome. It's not fantastic by any means, but it holds a special place in my heart for being one of the first real indie games I latched onto.

A Metroidvania at heart, the key difference here is the player 'character'. The spaceship enables a freedom of movement not often seen in the genre, and the suite of upgrades unlocked are inherently unique.

These tools serve two purposes as you navigate the environment, light-puzzles and combat. The puzzles are decent, if basic, but the combat is dull and uninteresting, and the game would have been better served without it.

The art here is great, unfortunately the action is often zoomed far too close-in. It's only in boss-battles where the camera pans out that you can really appreciate the design on display.

An interesting concept with poor execution, ITSP doesn't capitalize on it's unique mechanics and stylish artwork.

Twisted escapes some common pitfalls of generic metroidvania games by foregoing platforming in favor of speedy hovering, and by giving the player tools 360° expression beyond their obvious lock-and-key functionality. Yet Twisted remains a missed opportunity. Michel Gagne's concept art features marvelous landscapes that are only seen up-close in-game; it's like trying to admire a Monet through a magnifying glass. Additionally, the narrative fails to set the stakes – everything is strange and alien before the real threat even arrives. This makes the rather oppressive atmosphere of the shadow planet hard to endure, even with the game's short running time.

This game's title does it such a disservice. An interesting and somewhat novel experience hidden under word salad.

ITSP - because I refuse to type it all out - is the one and only game from Michel Gagne, who worked as an artist and animator for the beloved film The Iron Giant. You probably didn't know that, because this game received almost no fanfare whatsoever, before, during, or after its heyday. It was a casualty of the indie floodgates opening, lost in the shuffle. Taking heavy inspiration from the tone and concept of the original Metroid, you play an alien piloting a little flying saucer through the caverns of the titular ITSP, a sentient mass of limbs and goo that's infected your home galaxy in the name of voracious expansion. The planet is draped with bold shapes, jagged thorns, sporing plants, sprawling machinery, and an eerie silence.

Your saucer is easily the game's best attribute, and what helps it stand out from the sea of 'm-words' that populate digital marketplaces everywhere. It has complete 2-axis movement, removing any element of platforming, and in its place is a fairly robust and demanding twin-stick shooter system to deal with the bulbs and bugs and other nasties in the depths. Your ship is fitted with a smattering of utilities that all have multiple use cases for combat and unlocking areas of the map. They all re-use the twin-stick aiming, and this makes the more innocuous attachments, such as your little hand-claw and Metroid Prime-esque scanner, feel fluid and snappy.

Where ITSP does not meet the mark of its inspiration is in the structure. There is a slowly-uncovered map, yes, and it does have multiple themed sub-areas, yes, and there are minor rewards available for the backtracking-inclined as you unlock new abilities, yes, but it is all overwhelmingly linear. The subareas unlock sequentially, and a series of mandatory one-way vents that connect the areas can unfortunately draw a straight line that the player is meant to follow to complete the game. I still enjoyed my time with the game, but this feels misleading, the early game implying a degree of exploration and freedom that you come to learn is mostly guided. What surprised me most, however, was that the first subarea is far and away the most geographically complex, housing the majority of optional backtrack collectibles. Not only is your path through the areas predetermined, but the areas themselves become more and more like corridors as you progress. These two level design issues blunt an otherwise extremely solid set of puzzles and combat encounters, which were respectively neither obvious nor trivial.

In this way, I wonder if having someone from the film industry as your project lead is a hindrance. In the name of a curated experience, the mechanical foundations adopted here are more akin to window dressing than real substance. ITSP may be mostly a novelty, but it's a compelling novelty nonetheless. It probably needed more from Metroid than it ended up taking.