Twisted Pixel is a developer focused on making a name for itself in the digital download sphere. The company’s first title, The Maw, an award winning platformer with fantastic visuals and gameplay (but just a tad too easy) came out in January to much success. Now we are onto the company’s second effort for 2009, an offbeat 2D platformer called ‘Splosion Man, whose insane antics combined with quality gameplay make for one of the better original efforts on Xbox Live Arcade this year.

‘Splosion Man’s greatest asset is the titular character, who is completely insane. He is crazy in a lovable way much like Daffy Duck in his early cartoon shorts, but he is certainly a few peas short of a casserole. Among ‘Splosion Man’s mindless antics are practicing martial arts while when left idle, acting like a plane (with noises) while running up a hallway, and singing about how much he loves donuts while hugging a portly scientist. As you’d gather from the title, he can also explode at will, which is rather convenient, as it works as both a propulsion mechanism, and turns most of his enemies into big chunks of meat.


Little time is spent worrying about how ‘Splosion Man came to be or what his objectives are (outside of acting like a loon); players are simply dumped in a laboratory and need to find the exit to each level. Early levels do well to settle players into ‘Splosion Man’s brand of puzzle oriented platforming without cumbersome tutorial sections or too much hand-holding. Players do not have a whole lot of moves at their disposal either – all of the face buttons cause ‘Splosion Man to explode (which he can do three times in succession), while holding the right trigger causes him to spontaneously combust and return to the previous checkpoint.

There are a number of obstacles thrown in your way in ‘Splosion Man, though the developers tend to rely on a set of staple puzzles like wall jumping, using explosives to propel ‘Splosion Man across a chasm, and flanking a scientist controlling a turret. New puzzles are kept tightly to the chest, only thrown into the mix every couple of levels, but many are variations on existing puzzles – instead of avoiding a turret and taking out its operator, you might use a fat scientist to shield yourself from turret fire. Puzzles also increase in complexity at a steady pace, requiring better timing on the player’s behalf for longer jump puzzles or explosion chain reactions.


‘Splosion Man offers 50 levels of action for both single player and cooperative multiplayer for up to four participants. Regular platforming levels are broken up with the occasional boss fight. Boss encounters are well designed, and their personalities are clever – the first boss is a giant robot who acts like a combination of Earthworm Jim and a classic college-age stoner, going on about how uncool it is for you to hit him each time he cops an attack. These level sets are independent of each other, so there are effectively a hundred levels on offer. Completing both sets is a pretty demanding exercise, especially since the high difficulty in the multiplayer side of the game is compounded by some really awful net code. Fortunately, you can play offline, but in this age of online gaming, there is no excuse for delivering a multiplayer game where players can fall so far out of sync on a regular basis.

There are a few other challenges to give players a bit of extra value for money – each level has a large cake hidden somewhere, along with a leaderboard for the best time and score. In addition to the usual set of achievements, ‘Splosion Man follows in the steps of The Maw by offering unlockable Gamerpics, Themes and – for the first time - Avatar Items. Hopefully more developers start to follow Twisted Pixel’s example in the coming months.


Like The Maw, ‘Splosion Man is one of the Xbox Live Arcade’s more visually impressive games, with highly detailed and well animated characters. The game’s art-style is great – ‘Splosion Man himself is a great character, but the scientists and enemy robots are also charming in their own way. The level architecture and texturing isn’t quite as impressive as you would hope, but it is restricted by the laboratory theme for the most part. The game manages to maintain a stable frame rate throughout.

‘Splosion Man’s combination of crazy characters, quality presentation and solid puzzle/platforming gameplay make it one of the better offerings on Xbox Live Arcade. The game has some problems in that it relies on the same types of puzzles and has atrocious multiplayer code, but the quality of gameplay and sheer amount of content help one overlook these issues. At 800 Microsoft Points, ‘Splosion Man is well worth checking out.