Development
Space Invaders Infinity Gene was developed by Taito, with Reisuke Ishida as the director. Following the 30th anniversary of the original game, Taito challenged its employees to reinvent Space Invaders. Ishida—a fan of the Space Invaders series and shooting games—had primarily worked on Taito mobile phone games, such as Trance Pinball, a pinball game with musical elements. He handled Infinity Gene's graphical design and applied an atmosphere similar to Trance Pinball. Realizing that younger generations may be familiar with the characters but not the gameplay, Ishida wanted to convey the evolution of Space Invaders and made that the game's theme. After deciding on the evolution theme, he researched evolution as a whole and integrated his findings into the game; stage names and terminology reference evolution. Ishida hoped that showcasing the evolution of the series from its original form to a modern one would increase interest in the shoot 'em up genre.
In designing the gameply, Ishida felt that simply combining the classic elements of Space Invaders with newer ones from Trance Pinball would not resonant well with the current generation of games, and decided that updated visuals were necessary to successful mix the elements. As a fan of rhythm games, he wanted to fuse the musical and visual aspects of the game and include direct interaction between the two—a general goal Ishida had since joining Taito around 10 years prior. The development staff drew inspiration for the game's visual from music videos for techno songs. Ishida also drew inspiration from Metal Black, a 1991 Taito shooting game; he commented that the game has an "element of 'evolution' as well". Ishida avoided the "bullet hell" (弾幕, danmaku?, literally "barrage" or "bullet curtain") style of gameplay because he felt that it would have limited the game's audience. He believed that the intense difficulty of bullet hell games dissuaded beginners and wanted Infinity Gene to serve as an introductory shooting game. Instead, Ishida aimed to capture the "flashiness" of the genre in the game's visuals. To increase the "fun and exhilaration", he wanted the game to only look like it has extremely intense battles. The staff applied this to the different game modes, with an emphasis on the Music mode.
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