Octogeddon

Octogeddon puts players in control of a massive mutant octopus with one goal — destroy the world — attaching an ever-growing arsenal of animal-themed weapons to its tentacles as it rampages through side-scrolling city streets full of increasingly dangerous enemies. Released in February 2018 from All Yes Good, a studio led by Plants vs. Zombies co-creator George Fan, it built a solid, positive following — 93% Very Positive across 826 English reviews — on the strength of its absurd, satisfying premise. Reading closely through the sample confirms that premise lands well in short bursts, running into a specific, well-corroborated structural complaint about what it takes to actually finish the game.

A premise reviewers say delivers real arcade fun

The core appeal draws consistent, specific praise. One reviewer sums up the loop directly: "Albeit simple, only having you move left and right it has a fair bit of skill and strategy with dodging, how you target enemies, and what arms you pick." Another credits the sheer absurdity of the concept: "very fun game from the creators of plants vs. zombies... it is challenging but once you get the hang of the controls it becomes easy. the game is also very funny." A third, more measured, still rates it 8.2 out of 10 for the opening experience: "Octogeddon is an incredibly fun and addictive game during the first playthrough. Unlocking new tentacles, experimenting with different weapon combinations, and progressing through each level makes the gameplay exciting from start to finish." That's genuine, specific agreement that the core "Spin-Em-Up" concept — the developer's own tongue-in-cheek name for the genre — works well for a real share of players, at least at first.

A restart structure reviewers say undermines that fun

Set against that praise is a specific, detailed complaint about what happens after that first playthrough ends in failure. One reviewer explains precisely: "The game is fun on your first playthrough, until you hit a wall and gameover at around world 3, you have to buy upgrades and start from world 1 again, but the early levels have been made harder. When you choose your tentacle mutations you can only choose from 6 random ones you have unlocked, and thats after buying all 6 slots... usually it will be full of situational, bad, or unaffordable tentacles." A second reviewer frames the same underlying problem in terms of futility: "the devs decided to base progression entirely on buying upgrades, which means that all your runs are basically pointless and doomed until you've played the game enough to unlock enough upgrades to be able to beat it. So it feels like a chore." Two independent, detailed accounts of the identical structural issue — meaningful progress gated behind currency grinding rather than skill growth — is strong convergence worth treating as an accurate account of the shipped game's back half.

What the completion rate confirms

Global achievement data offers a striking, concrete corroboration of that complaint. Just 17.0% of the playerbase ever earns the "wingame" achievement — a notably low completion rate compared to most other titles reviewed in this lane, where first-tier story or completion milestones typically land well above 40%. That number lines up precisely with reviewer accounts of a steep, currency- gated difficulty wall around the midgame, and suggests the vast majority of buyers never actually see the ending, regardless of how much they enjoyed the opening hours.

A launch-failure bug that appears to have gone unaddressed

Beyond the difficulty and grind complaints, a separate, recurring technical issue affects some players before they can even start playing. One reviewer with 332 hours logged reports: "it no longer opens. I go to open it and it does not open. Something else opens and it reads 'Failed to start process' and 'Operation did not complete successfully because the file contains a virus or potentially unwanted software.'" A second, independent reviewer describes an identical failure to launch after 55 hours of prior play. Checked against the developer's own partner-events history, the most recent substantive update was a May 2019 language-support patch — everything since has been promotional content for the studio's newer game, Hardhat Wombat, with no visible fix for the launch-failure issue reported by these two players years later.

A pedigree that raises expectations some reviewers say it doesn't meet

The George Fan connection cuts both ways in the review sample. Several reviewers explicitly bought the game on the strength of Plants vs. Zombies nostalgia, and most come away satisfied with the core concept even while flagging rougher edges elsewhere. One more critical reviewer pushes back directly on that expectation, though: "It's a game from a solo dev, and it shows... for 9 bucks, I expect something better than what was delivered here. It's an arcade game, and borderline looks (and plays) like a mobile game. The controls are stupidly basic." That's a minority view relative to the overwhelmingly positive score, but it's worth noting as a real tension in the review sample — a genuinely talented pedigree attached to a small-scale, deliberately simple arcade game, which some buyers weigh against a higher bar than the price and scope were ever meant to clear.

Verdict

Octogeddon delivers exactly the absurd, destructive arcade fun its premise promises, and that delivers real, specific satisfaction for a meaningful share of players in the opening hours. Actually finishing the game is a different story: a currency-gated meta-progression system that reviewers describe as grindy and occasionally futile, confirmed by achievement data showing barely one in six players ever wins, means the back half asks considerably more patience than the lighthearted premise suggests. Worth its low price for short, silly sessions; go in aware that completing it is a real commitment, and check for recent launch-failure reports before buying.

Sources: Steam store page and appdetails API (release date, pricing, platform data); Steam's aggregate review data (query_summary totals, English-language sample); individually read user reviews, both positive and negative, sorted by helpfulness and recency; Steam's global achievement statistics API; All Yes Good's own partner-events history from 2018 through 2023.