Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet sends little flying saucers through an alien world of black silhouettes, strange creatures, and bright pools of color. Its main campaign is for one player, but two separate cooperative modes let you bring up to three friends along: Lantern Run and Shadow Hunters. Both support online and local shared-screen play, so you can use separate computers or gather around one screen. You can also use Steam Remote Play Together to share a local session with an online friend. The campaign’s exploratory journey stays solo; co-op is a pair of self-contained survival challenges built around carrying light through hostile spaces.
The campaign is context, not co-op
The solo adventure gives the multiplayer modes their world and tool set. You pilot a small UFO through a sprawling two-dimensional planet infected by a shadowy organism. The map connects distinct regions, including icy, aquatic, mechanical, and organic spaces. New equipment opens passages that were blocked earlier, so the campaign folds exploration, puzzles, and fights into one gradual trip. It also tells its story mostly through animation and images rather than dialogue.
That structure does not carry over as a four-player campaign. Your friends cannot join the story mode and explore the full map beside you. Instead, Lantern Run turns the pursuit of light into a fast escape, while Shadow Hunters adds a sequence of asteroid missions with a bomb to escort. Both reuse the flying, grabbing, shooting, and tool-finding ideas, but each has its own route and win condition. The difference matters if your group is looking for a shared Metroidvania adventure: the co-op gives you focused challenges rather than a second ship in the main campaign.
Lantern Run keeps the group moving
In Lantern Run, each player pilots a saucer with a lantern to carry through a shifting tunnel network. A huge shadow creature presses in from behind, turning the route into a race to move forward before it catches up. The path is generated for a run, with obstacles, small enemies, and pickups breaking up the flight. The mode uses the same crisp silhouette art as the campaign, but the pursuing monster gives the screen a constant direction: the light and your ships have to keep moving.
Your lantern is more than cargo. It is the light source that makes the dark passage visible, and letting it be destroyed puts the run at risk. The ships can be knocked out by the creatures and hazards in the tunnels as well. Checkpoints give the challenge a series of short milestones: if a ship reaches the next one, fallen players can rejoin there; if the whole group goes down, the run ends. That means a scramble near a checkpoint can turn into a shared rescue attempt, with one surviving saucer carrying the progress forward while others wait to return. The escape is cooperative, but the scoring adds a small competitive wrinkle: distance contributes to the team result, while touching lanterns contributes points to individual ships.
Combat is brief and tied to clearing the path. Each saucer begins with basic tools, and pickups can add weapons or protection. You can shoot at enemies or use the ship’s claw to pull, lift, or move objects as the route demands. The tunnels are narrow enough that a creature blocking the way can become a problem for the whole group, while the shadow behind you leaves little time to sit still. The simple objective makes it easy to understand what is happening at a glance, even as the run becomes busier.
The randomized route gives Lantern Run a repeatable score-attack shape rather than a plot that unfolds differently each time. You push farther, collect upgrades, and see how many checkpoints the group can cross before the monster or a hazard ends the run. The layout and encounter mix vary, but the core loop stays the same: move, protect the light, fight when something blocks the tunnel, and reach the next checkpoint. If your friends want a compact session that starts quickly, this is the more direct of the two modes.
Shadow Hunters makes the light a shared delivery
Shadow Hunters is the other cooperative mode in the Steam build. Its opening animation continues the story after the single-player finale, but the play itself is not a co-op version of that campaign. Your group enters infected asteroids and tries to carry one large lantern-like bomb to the center. The bomb has a countdown, and its fuse loses time as you travel. Glowing yellow spheres restore some of that time, while enemies that reach the bomb can drain it faster.
Each asteroid is arranged as a small connected area rather than one uninterrupted tunnel. Passages branch toward recharge points, respawn spots, and power-ups; side rooms can hold short battles or small environmental puzzles. Your ships begin with a blaster and grab tool, then find additional weapons as they explore. That equipment gives the group more ways to clear enemies than in the opening moments, while the bomb’s timer puts a limit on how long you can search. The main route still leads to a boss at the asteroid’s center. Defeating it lets you plant the bomb and destroy that section of the infection.
Clearing an asteroid carries the group into a harder one, with collected power-ups retained between rounds. That creates a rising run of exploration, combat, and boss encounters rather than a single fixed campaign. The bomb has to continue moving and receive enough time, so the group’s progress is visible on screen throughout the mission. You might be pulling it through a passage, protecting it from a creature, or crossing the area to reach a timer refill; your friends’ ships share the same space and objective.
The large bomb also changes the pace from Lantern Run. Its camera follows the object, which keeps ships close together and makes it difficult to split off in different directions. A rare weapon pickup can become a useful addition to the whole run, but there is only one of some upgrades at a time. The mode’s connected rooms and boss fights bring more variety than a straight corridor, while the countdown keeps the group from exploring every branch at leisure. The successive asteroids and score or achievement goals give it a longer challenge to return to, though each round uses the same basic escort structure.
Shared tools, no character classes
There are no characters with separate classes or fixed support roles. Everyone flies a small saucer and works with the same kinds of weapons and environmental tools. The claw is central to both co-op modes because it can grab the lantern or bomb and interact with objects along the route. The blaster provides a basic answer to hostile creatures; later pickups broaden the weapons available. In Shadow Hunters, your group gradually finds more of the campaign’s equipment, and a few items also help solve compact puzzles or open a path.
That common tool set keeps the roles flexible. One ship can be moving the objective while nearby ships clear a threat or collect a visible upgrade, but the game does not assign those jobs or lock anyone into them. There is also no shared skill tree or campaign inventory to build over time. Most progression happens within a run: weapons and shields appear as pickups, checkpoints mark Lantern Run’s distance, and Shadow Hunters carries upgrades into the next asteroid. Once a run ends, that equipment path starts over.
Each mode supports up to four people online or on one shared local screen. On PC, you can use Xbox controllers or mouse and keyboard. For local play, test the input combination your group plans to use before starting.
Public lobbies may be quiet, so arrange a session with friends instead of relying on random players to be available.
A strange atmosphere in short bursts
The visual design gives the modes most of their identity. Your saucer is small against the screen, and the world frames it with thick, animated silhouettes: thorny growths, pulsing organisms, mechanical shapes, and creatures that can reach in from the edge of a passage. Strong colors set each region apart, so a dark cave can give way to icy blue or a warm orange field. The lanterns add points of brightness to a space that otherwise seems to swallow the ships. That contrast suits the cooperative objectives: you can see the item the group is trying to protect even when the next threat is mostly a shape in the dark.
There is little spoken exposition or character banter. The atmosphere comes from the moving backgrounds, creature sounds, music, and the sudden appearance of enemies or a pursuing mass. In Lantern Run, the threat is always behind the group; in Shadow Hunters, the ticking bomb gives the same pressure a destination. Neither mode leans on elaborate story scenes between rounds. You spend most of a session navigating the hazards and trying to keep the light alive.
Together, the modes offer two compact co-op challenges rather than a long shared campaign. Lantern Run is a quick chase through randomly arranged corridors: reach checkpoints, cover distance, and pick up weapons or shields along the way. Shadow Hunters extends the escort across successive asteroids, where side routes, glowing spheres that refill the bomb timer, weapon pickups, and boss encounters add things to manage. Both modes support replays for distance, scores, and achievements, but their basic loops stay focused on the same chase or bomb escort. They do not provide new story missions or shared campaign progress; co-op centers on focused survival runs and their replay goals.