The dev had to change the title to Oddity and remove all the Mother references from the game to make it an entirely original Mother-like game to avoid getting the game nuked by a C&D from Nintendo. The game is otherwise the same and still in development. It's just taking forever just like every official Mother game spent years in development hell and every time got saved by Satori Iwata who is arguably Nintendo's GOAT (Miyamoto is overrated).
The dev had to change the title to Oddity and remove all the Mother references from the game to make it an entirely original Mother-like game to avoid getting the game nuked by a C&D from Nintendo. The game is otherwise the same and still in development. It's just taking forever just like every official Mother game spent years in development hell and every time got saved by Satori Iwata who is arguably Nintendo's GOAT (Miyamoto is overrated).
So I looked it up and yeah it's exactly as you described it. Iwata really is one of Nintendo's underrated heroes, along with Gunpei Yokoi.