Insanely Twisted DLC coming soon

A DLC pack is in the works for this week's Summer of Arcade release Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, its co-creator has told Eurogamer.

Fuelcell Games CEO Joe Olson revealed that a new multiplayer mode is currently in the works for the quirky Metroid-with-flying-saucers caper.

"I can't talk too much about it as we're still in the earlier stages," he told us over the phone earlier today.

"One of the things - while we're really happy with how [existing multiplayer mode] Lantern Run turned out - we wanted to bring a co-op experience that's a little bit more like the core campaign experience. That's kind of our goal with the DLC."

Olson also touched on his future plans, explaining that though he'd like to do a sequel, it might not be the next game he works on.

"We're just going to see how this one does. But we're always looking for something new to do so if there is a sequel it might be the third or the fourth game [we make]."

It seems there's plenty of material left over for a follow-up - the original game was significantly larger than the final product at one point.

"It was a lot bigger," he revealed, "but to make it a focused experience we ended up cutting a lot. Ultimately, cutting some areas out of the game meant cutting some really good gameplay ideas. They either got incorporated elsewhere in the game or just got shelved for use down the line."

Discussions are also ongoing with publisher Microsoft regarding a possible PC release, though that's "to be determined at this point".

The third release in this year's Summer of Arcade season has met with rather a mixed response following release yesterday. Its Metacritic currently sits at a very respectable 78, but scores run the gamut either way, with Eurogamer's Simon Parkin settling on a 6/10.

Why the spread? Olson believes the decision to take a less-is-more approach to sign-posting and storytelling proved a Marmite design choice.

"It seems like the biggest polarising factor is the fact that we don't give you completely cut-and-dried, black-and-white goals. It seems like those who have an active imagination - just from what I can tell - seem to fill that in and enjoy it, and that's actually their favourite aspect of the game.

"But other people seem to ding us on the fact that we're not pounding you over the head with the task hammer every second to let you know exactly what you have to do next.

"It was a conscious decision on our part to leave that open. Even on the story side, we did it in a style that has no words, no text, no dialogue. Take from it what you will, add to it, it is what it is."

Olson also answered criticism from some reviewers that the game is too short, insisting that if you play the game as intended you'll get plenty of value for your money.

"I think that just about every game that's on XBLA has been bashed for this. In the critics' world it seems a lot of the time we're getting reviewed as if we're full retail games. We were only in full production for a year and a half and our budget was fairly small, so we did what we could with it.

"We wanted to make sure we weren't just giving people hours of gameplay that wasn't tight. We wanted to make sure that however short or long the experience was, it was consistent throughout."

"I'm reading some reviews where critics are saying it took them three or four hours," he continued.

"I'm wondering how much they actually tinkered with everything or if they just blazed through it. The idea of the game is to experiment and explore. A lot of the tools function in different ways depending on how you use them - they can be offensive they can be defensive.

"Blazing through it is a style of play you can do - it's up to you as to how you want to play it and how much time you want to spend with it. A lot of these reviews that say it's too short for the price... I don't know. It depends on how you play it. I think it's good value."