The first of 3 ‘deleted scenes’ for Twisted Pixel’s excellent XBLA title ‘The Maw‘ has been released today for the princely sum of 100.  The new level, entitled ‘Brute Force’, is longer than any of the levels included in the game when it was released and slots into the story between the Bulb Valley and Chaindown levels.  Using the powers of Beetull and Gastro, Frank & Maw will have to try and fight their way past the bounty hunters fiercest warriors, the Brutes, on their quest to get back home.

Weighing in at a tiny 604kb, the download has sparked some debate on the net as to whether this is just a download key to unlock content that was included in the original release, so I contacted Twisted Pixel’s CEO Micheal Wilford to get the official word on the situation.  He gave me this response:-

“I can assure you that the DLC pack is not just an unlock key.  Our engine is set up in such a way that we only need a few simple text files in order to add new behavior and gameplay mechanics.  Since the new level re-uses music, sounds, terrain textures, objects, visual fx and more from the main game, the bulk of that 604k is the textures and animations for the new Brute Soldier character.  But as we’ve said in the past, Granny 3D does an amazing job of compressing that type of data.  Our entire game normally would have required more than 2 GB but with Granny we got it to fit under 150 MB easily.  So considering the technology we’re using, 604k is actually quite a bit of data for one level that re-uses a lot of the main game’s assets.”

So there you go doubters, Twisted Pixel are not just trying to fleece you for something you already bought, but instead have the most insane compression system known to man, all hail Granny3D!

See more screenshots of the new level after the break.

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