Welcome to GameOnn’s new monthly column featuring my personal pick on the best indie game developer. As August is coming to an end I thought it would be nice to give credit to the fine guys at Twisted Pixel for making  games that are built upon such a simple concept, yet deliver on so many levels. The Maw and Splosion Man were released almost 6 months apart from each other in 2009 and are easily two of the best Arcade games ever released.

When Splosion Man was announced on April Fool’s Day via press release, a lot of us didn’t take Twisted Pixel seriously. On a day when just about every news story was taken with a grain of salt, Twisted Pixel described its new game as one with, “lots of ‘splosions . . . like a guy made out of ‘splosions, and he’d be like ‘splode ‘splode ‘splode! and then things die.” The following day Twisted Pixel assured us that Splosion Man was real and the rest is history. It’s not everyday I read a press release that’s entertaining but Twisted Pixel produces an amusing take on something that is usually very bland. In fact, Twisted Pixel just sent another press release about a title update for Splosion Man called Splodejement Day.

Here’s an excerpt from that release.

“It goes on-line August 31^st, 2009. Human decisions are removed from leaderboard defense. Splodenet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Pacific Time, September 1^st. There is no score but what we earn for ourselves.”

That is probably the most clever way to tell the public about a patch that will fix a leaderboard exploit.

Based out of Austin, Tx Twisted Pixel’s first show on XBLA was with The Maw - a game which featured a small alien and its extremely greedy pet. The best thing about The Maw was its laid back approach to gameplay. You couldn’t die in the game and hence, couldn’t lose. Maw would get a new ability on each level and got larger in size as the game progressed. It’s a very colorful game with a soundtrack to match. Twisted Pixel then released three new stages on XBLA that served as the lost levels from the main game. Currently the team is working on an MMO with a high profile studio that’s shrouded in secrecy.

Whatever its next project is we’re confident that Twisted Pixel will deliver in spades once again.