Final Trailer + 10 Screen Shots

E3 and a New Review

Come play ITSP and meet Joe Olson and I (Michel Gagné) at Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), June 7-9, at the Los Angeles Convention Center, South Hall – Space 1637.

On a side note, here's a new review of our demo that was just posted at Crush!Frag!Destroy! This brings the total of reviews of our PAX demo to 22 (those are the ones we know of). You can check out all the reviews at this link (PAX Demo Reviews).

Interview at Polygamer

For those who can read French, here's a recent interview that was published on Polygamer.

The First Official ITSP Collectible

One thing I forgot to mention about PAX East last March, was the fact that the XBLA marketing department released a set of 6 limited edition postcards featuring Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet and other upcoming games. The postcards, designed to look like vintage movie posters, were quite a hit with the crowd. Only 700 copies of the set were printed so those puppies are pretty rare. Here's a look.

A Day In My Life...

A couple of months ago, I was contacted by Mercedes Milligan, associate editor for Animation Magazine. She asked me if I'd be willing to be the subject of their monthly feature called, “A Day in the Life of...”, to which I answered, "sure, why not!"

And so, I proceeded to photographically document my day, giving an insight into my not so glamorous life. The pictures and captions I provided are featured in the April/May issue. I scanned the page for your viewing pleasure. Click here for a larger view.

Sweet Shadowy Dreams

Bartek Kielban sent me a picture of his bedroom. He writes: "After being inspired by your work we want to send you a photos of my room painted similar to your arts from Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet."

Nicely done!

Back From PAX

Joe, Andrew Scott (sound maestro) and I had a lot of fun in Boston at the PAX convention. The reception to ITSP was incredible. The booth stayed completely busy the whole time with lines of anxious gamers waiting patiently their turns to experience ITSP. Everyone was so excited and positive towards the game, it really warmed our hearts.

Joe and I did several interviews and answered a lot of questions. We were given the go ahead by Microsoft to reveal that the game will be released this summer and that it will feature a coop version.

Observing people playing the game was very insightful. We took a lot of notes and will make sure to use the knowledge we gathered to make the game even better.

Here's a sample of the reviews we received from journalists who got to test the game for themselves:

IGN
Critical Bits
Indie Games
Gay Gamer
Platform Nation
Horrible Night
Armless Octopus
Game Rant
Rax Dakkar
Side Questing
VGrevolution
My Gamers
4PlayerPodCast

PAX East Gameplay Footage

We'll have more on our visit to PAX East in the coming days! Thanks to everyone who stopped by!

PAX East, New Website and Press Release

The past few months have been quite a marathon, to say the least, with Joe and I, as well as members of our team working into the wee hours of the morning. We're approaching the completion of the game and we're all dedicating ourselves to make ITSP as memorable as possible.

Joe, Andrew Scott (our sound maestro) and I will be flying to Boston tomorrow to unveil the game at PAX East on March 11th. You can read our press release here.

I've also designed a new website that centralizes everything about Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet. Even this blog will now be readable within the main website. Go check it out at www.InsanelyTwistedShadowPlanet.com.

The website is going to keep growing with artwork and videos added periodically until the release date. Check out the art gallery for a peak at what's coming!

Last but certainly not least, we're going to release a gameplay video with 10 minutes of footage to coincide with the PAX event. Make sure you check out our video section on march 11th when the videos go live.

Coverage from Montreal

Insanely Twisted shadow Planet has caught the eyes of La Presse, Canada's largest francophone newspaper. They did a video interview with me a few days ago, and today, they published a cool little article in both the printed and on-line version of the newspaper. Here's a link to the article.

My apologies to my partner, Joe Olson, who gets referred to as Joe Wilson in the article.

Prelude to Eden

We're going to have some big news about the game very soon. We're all working around the clock as our completion deadline approaches. We're asking everyone for a bit more patience. I guarantee you will all agree that it was worth it when you see the finished game. In the meantime I thought I'd post my 1995 short film, Prelude to Eden, which I just uploaded on YouTube in full HD 1080P.

Videogames as Art

I recently became aware that the famous movie critic Roger Ebert wrote,"videogames can never be art". I find it puzzling that he could make such a statement, since what attracts me to videogames, as an artist, is the unlimited potential for art. The cinematics are one of the many aspects that get my creative juice flowing.


While building the cinematics, I've been forced to constantly use my imagination to solve creative and technical problems while remaining on target for our milestones. It has been challenging and exhilarating at the same time. One of the thing that Joe and I agreed upon right off the bat was to keep them short and sweet - focus on quality rather than quantity. I'll take two great minutes of animation over twenty minutes of average any time. We want the cinematics to feel like rewards, not something you want to fast-forward through.

The next challenge will be to make the transition between cinematics and game play completely seemless. I look forward to that!