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Making games, from one-person text adventures to multi-studio AAA blockbusters, is hard, but a lot of that difficulty is hidden away from fans. One independent developer, however, is putting their mistakes front and center.
Oxonian Games is currently working on its first game, a “retro-style space shooter” known as Odd Infinitum. It’s neat, with unique, biological enemies and an overheating system that forces you to balance how fast you shoot lest you take too much self-inflicted damage. A demo is currently playable through the game’s itch.io page, but Oxonian Games has taken another tack in marketing its game by also showing off the road bumps they’ve hit along the way.
Take the GIF at the top of this story, for instance. It comes from a recent Reddit post by one of the Odd Infinitum devs showcasing how a bug caused the game to ignore the cooldown between a boss’ attacks. The screen is quickly filled with projectiles, transforming Odd Infinitum from manageable shmup to bullet hell to something impossible to survive with even the best reflexes and execution.
“Normally, there’s supposed to be a delay between these attacks, but for whatever reason, the attacks came constantly, producing this effect,” the developer explained further down in the thread. “Not only are the visuals overwhelming, the sound effects that play over the attacks are playing constantly, producing a cursed soundscape.”
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This sort of public self-reporting isn’t new for Oxonian Games. An update from late 2020 details some of the other amusing issues devs have encountered while making Odd Infinitum, and the studio’s YouTube channel includes even more examples, like the unintended way this homing missile tracks down an enemy.
“Developing a game is very much a marathon, not a sprint,” Oxonian Games wrote on itch.io. “Throughout the 2-5 years or more it takes to create a game, you will experience triumph, hardship, satisfaction, and frustration and moments that are downright… odd.”
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