Studio IGGYMOB on ODDROOM – Interview Series

Team ODD and Studio IGGYMOB have collectively announced ODDROOM, a hyper first-person shooter that will reportedly allow lucid dreamers [the player] to “utilize their dreams to engage in fast-paced, coolly unrealistic combat.” According to the team behind the upcoming title, the game will feature an ever-evolving collection of rooms, dream-like atmospheres, and unpredictable progression. Sounds like a real hoot, given everything we've heard to date.

Thankfully, I had the folks over at Team ODD swing by earlier this week to speak more about ODDROOM. Here's everything I was able to learn from that brief, albeit insightful conversation with the studio…

Thanks for sitting down and speaking with us today. Before we tuck into ODDROOM and its dream-like properties, please could you introduce yourself to our readers and tell us a bit about Studio IGGYMOB?

Maximus: My name is Maximus Hwang, and I'm the producer of Oddroom at Team Odd. Iggymob was founded in 2012 and mainly develops single-player action games. We have two teams, Team Odd, which is developing Audroom, and Team G, which developed Gungrave Gore, and is currently working on a new project.

Please could you tell us more about your upcoming “variety first-person shooter” game, ODDROOM? How would you best describe it, and how would you compare it to other “variety” games of its kind?

Maximus: A hyper shooter FPS in which lucid dreamers utilize their dreams to engage in fast-paced, coolly unrealistic combat against dream monsters, utilizing abilities and odd weapons that transcend reality. At the beginning of the game, it may feel very difficult, but as you open the ODD skills and O weapons one by one and get used to using them in combination, you will find yourself opening doors in your dreams to catch odd monsters with excitement.

We’re curious to hear more about the art style and the design choices you made during the preliminary stages of development. What works inspired this “look” if you don’t mind me asking?

Maximus: The art style of Odd Room is ODD.

I wanted to convey the crazy dream world of a slightly weird and optimistic protagonist who is having a lucid dream. When you open the door and go in, you go to a place with a scary atmosphere, or you suddenly enter a world like in a cartoon, and I wanted to show a crazy dream world where realistic monsters and monsters that look like graffiti come to life coexist in the same place. As the player opens the next visit in the form of a stage, we want them to be excited and curious about what strange things will happen in the next room.

Tell us a bit more about the storyline. In recent posts, you’ve mentioned a “dream.” Could you tell us more about this dreamscape? Also, how will we fit into it?

Maximus: When the player starts the game, he is already trapped in a dream. Normally, if he dies in the dream, he will wake up from the dream, but after the player dies, the game progresses by investigating each room one by one to find clues to wake up from the infinitely repeating dream that starts from the beginning again. If you catch a monster in your dream, you will obtain a currency called Cat Coins. If you give Cat Coins to the unidentified cats in your dream, you will be able to use more powerful weapons and skills. By clearing ODDRooM one by one, the player will learn why trapped in a dream and learn the identity of the cat.

Let’s delve a little deeper into the gameplay and, more broadly, the challenges that ODDROOM has to offer. Could you tell us a bit about both of these things?

Maximus: The basic foundation of Oddroom's gameplay started out as a retro FPS.

However, the monsters in each room of ODDRooM are hard to defeat with just shooting, as you have to deal with enemies with crazy and ridiculous moves and skills.

For example, as you expand your skill tree, you'll learn different skills and use each skill's damage multiplier to maximize the damage you deal to enemies by combining skills and combinations of skills to increase the damage multiplier, and then multiplying it again with a headshot.

The core play of Odroom, which is being developed in a retro style, is to find, combine, and use these hidden elements to clear the game.

Additionally, since the weapons obtained through weapon vending machines are random, you may need to use different strategies when playing the same stage if each weapon has different characteristics.

And,  it has a challenging element to the player's control skills.

There may be players who can clear the level even if they lack skills and weapons, and there may be players who have difficulty clearing the level even if they have sufficient skills and weapons.

We have a plan to support the elements of clearing a stage with minimal skills and competing elements of the clear time of each stage through rankings in the future.

Where might we be able to source some additional information on ODDROOM ahead of its global debut? Are there any useful social channels, support networks, or newsletters that we could share with our readers?

Maximus: You can find them on Iggymob's official Twitter and Steam Page.

Would you like to add any final touches to this story before we wrap it up?

Maximus: Oddroom will be a very difficult game in the early stages of the game, and will stimulate your desire for challenge.

We are working hard to develop it with the goal of maximizing the fun of control with fast and stylish movements as you go through the mid-game.

We hope you will experience the dream world of ODDRooM during the early access that will start soon.

Please, Check out Oddroom on Steam now!

Thanks again for taking the time to speak with us — we really appreciate it! We look forward to catching more of ODDROOM in the future!

You can find more information on Studio IGGYMOB’s ODDROOM over on the official website here. For even more updates and pre-launch news coverage, be sure to add the game to your wishlist on Steam here.