Octogeddon

Octogeddon is an arcade action-strategy video game, with elements of roguelike games.^[1][2] The player plays as a titular octopus, named Octogeddon, who decides to seek vengeance against humanity after watching a video of a chef cooking sushi.^[2][3] Octogeddon goes through five stages, each divided up into six levels. The first three levels take place in the ocean and the last three levels take place on land.^[3] The octopus has limbs that can be used to attack enemies as the octopus progresses through each level. Octogeddon has to be rotated in order to aim the limbs and deal damage to the enemies. Octogeddon has a certain number of hit points that will be lost if the octopus is hit by an enemy. If all the hit points are lost, Octogeddon will lose a life. There is a permadeath aspect to this game: if all the lives are lost, the game has to be restarted.^[1]

Between each stage, the player can buy Octogeddon more powerful limbs or abilities using coins picked up during the stage. New lives can also be purchased using coins. The limbs the player can give the octopus is selected at random. Between each game, the player can spend shells on more lives, more hit points, and DNA; which allows the player to select from a higher number of limbs between each level. Between each playthrough of the game, stronger enemies are introduced to the earlier levels of the game.^[3]

Before developing Octogeddon, George Fan designed Insaniquarium and Plants vs. Zombies for PopCap Games.^[4] PopCap Games was bought by Electronic Arts in July 2011.^[5] On August 21, 2012, fifty employees, including Fan, were laid off from PopCap as part of refocusing on freemium games for social media and mobile devices.^[6][7][8]

Days after he was laid off, George Fan started working on a video game called Octogeddon for the 2012 Ludum Dare contest.^[9] Ludum Dare contests involve having a designer create a video game from scratch in 48 hours with the theme picked for the particular year. The theme for the 2012 contest was "evolution". In order to match the theme, Fan decided to create a video game where the character was constantly "evolving" by attracting new limbs to the character, each with their own function, until the character was a "massive shooting machine".^[10] Octogeddon was met with positive reception in the contest, inspiring George Fan to continue work on the game for several more years.^[11][12]

In order to create Octogeddon, Fan, along with Rich Werner and Kurt Pfeifer, founded the company All Yes Good. Werner was the artist for Plants vs. Zombies while Kurt Pfeffer was the programmer for the Xbox 360 port of Plants vs. Zombies.^[10][11] A few years after the prototype was created, All Yes Good started officially developing the game,^[11] with Fan as the designer, Werner as the artist, and Pfeifer as the programmer.^[13] The soundtrack was provided by the Jimmy Hinson.^[14]

In December 2017, Fan started a closed-beta of Octogeddon consisting of players who "pester[ed] George on Twitter".^[15] That same month, PCGamesN, a news site dedicated to PC gaming, offered to give away eight beta Steam codes for people to be able to get Octogeddon before its release.^[16] Octogeddon was released on Steam on February 8, 2018.^[17][1][13] A Nintendo Switch port was released on May 16, 2019.^[18][19]