Fans of the world of Isaac Clarke will no longer have to wait until next year to get back into the world of necromorphs. EA and Visceral Games have announced Dead Space Ignition, a brand new downloadable game that will be released on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. The game will be set in "The Sprawl",  several hours before the beginning of Dead Space 2, and will show the events that lead to the necromorph outbreak Isaac will have to face in the sequel.

Written by Antony Johnston, who previously wrote both the Dead Space and Dante's Inferno comic books for Visceral, Ignition will feature a comic-style storyline with three unique hacking mini games known as Hardware Crack, Trace Route and System Override. Each of those games will combine puzzle mechanics with twitch gameplay to more fully flesh out the events that bridge Dead Space and Dead Space 2. The game's story will be presented in a "Choose Your Own Adventure" style, allowing players to attempt to survive the necromorph swarms in varied ways.

And if that's not enough, executive producer Steve Papoutsis has assured us that Ignition is only the tip of the iceberg for additional Dead Space storylines, saying, "[It] is the first of many exciting game extensions we have planned for the launch of Dead Space 2." Chances are this means more comic books and animated movies, as opposed to more games. No release date has been given yet for Ignition, apart from a vague fall 2010. There also has been no price point announced, but figure somewhere in the $10 range.