''Oddity'' is an upcoming

role-playing video game A role-playing video game (commonly referred to as simply a role-playing game or RPG, as well as a computer role-playing game or CRPG) is a video game genre where the player controls the actions of a character (or several party members) immers ...

. Its development was first announced in 2008 as ''Mother 4'', an unofficial

fan game A fangame is a video game that is created by fans. They are usually based on one, or in some cases several, video game entries or franchises. Many fangames attempt to clone or remake the original game's design, gameplay, and characters, but it ...

in Nintendo's ''Mother'' series. Over the course of development, the game removed its ties to the series and rebranded as its own entity in early 2020. It has no set release date.

Gameplay

The game takes place in Pleiades, a fictional country based on the United States, during the early 1970s, as a boy named Travis Fields leaves his town of Belring to join three other characters, Meryl, Floyd, and Leo, to uncover the mystery surrounding the "Modern Men". Its music and visuals are similar in style to the ''Mother'' series.

Development

Near the end of its development, ''Mother'' series creator

Shigesato Itoi is a Japanese copywriter, essayist, lyricist, game designer, and actor. Itoi is the editor-in-chief of his website and company '' Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun'' ("Almost Daily Itoi Newspaper"). He is best known outside Japan for his work on Nintend ...

announced that ''

Mother 3 is a 2006 role-playing video game developed by Brownie Brown and HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy Advance. It is the third entry in the ''Mother'' series. The game follows Lucas, a young boy with psychic abilitie ...

'' (2006) would be the last entry in the series. While fans of the series pressured Nintendo for a sequel, the company was not interested and in March 2008, fans announced that they would be developing their own entry as ''Mother 4''. In a preview of the game, ''

Kotaku ''Kotaku'' is a video game website and blog that was originally launched in 2004 as part of the Gawker Media network. Notable former contributors to the site include Luke Smith, Cecilia D'Anastasio, Tim Rogers, and Jason Schreier. History ...

'' described the fangame as visually stunning and true to the series, from its environment design to music, with a new nine-track soundtrack. The game was originally expected for release in late 2014, but was delayed several times. In 2015, the development team consisted of eight members working part-time, on a voluntary basis without compensation. ''Mother 4'' was planned as a standalone game, with no emulator required, for Microsoft Windows,

OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

, and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

at no cost. In 2017, the team announced that the title was no longer a

, and in 2020, they rebranded the game as ''Oddity'' with no formal relation to the ''Mother'' series. It has no set release date. The development team has not provided any formal updates since December 2020.

References

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