UFO 50 Reviews

The sheer scope of this game is completely and utterly ludicrous and yet against all odds it succeeds spectacularly. Like, seriously, it's 50 entire games. Which'll take you at LEAST 150 hours to 100%. I'm 55 hours in and I've barely scratched the surface.

I sampled 7 games at random, and I hated them all. I don't have the energy to continue. I'll keep trying the other games, but so far, most of these are gimmicky throw-away games. The one that angered me the most was the super-slow "Metroidvania" style game where you have no attack distance, and moving is comically slow. The presentation, music, sprite work, color palette is wonderful, but these games aren't really that good.

simply a delightful achievement. full of wonder and beauty. i think it puts forth a thesis of a beautiful kind of game development. i like mooncat and zoldath the most...

I recommend this incredible gem of a game to anyone who knew early video games or people wanting to discover how gaming evolved during the early days. It is an absolute delight, I am having mad fun with it

This game is a mirror to your own human psyche. The more you invest in UFO 50 the more you get out of it. Maybe my favorite gaming experience of all time. Learned new things about myself, tried some things ive never tried before. I like bullet hells now! I don't think i would have ever given the genre the time of day without trying to engage with each title as much as possible. There are so many innovations here big and small. Chances taken, that would be a commercial failure most likely, if sold independently. How about trying a control scheme thats never been done before (mooncat)? How about innovating on genres in small foundational ways that change the whole vibe and experience (waldorfs journey). How about making a fantastic bag building game ala Quacks of Quindlenburg but as a small little game about throwing a party (party house). I could go on and on and on. Every single game has value. This is a game for people who love games. For people who have played ALOT of games. People who know the lineage and design principles and conventions of gaming and want to see what else can be done, while still showing huge admiration for whats come before them. This game stands in stark contrast to what modern AAA games are becoming. It is so pure. Its as pure as the era of games it pays homage too. Its a modern recreation of the sincerity, innovation, and tenacity of the NES era but with modern design sensibilities. Video games forever.

UFO 50 is a collection of 50 different retro games that were inspired by classics from the NES era. You probably won't like every game in here but with such a large collection you will have enough alternatives to play. The game tries it's best to emulate the feeling of these old games including graphics, sound design and even their jankiness. Barbuta, the very first game in this list, stands out as being a very obscure game with no directions given, a very terrible control scheme and extremely hard gameplay, which is what most of those old games were at that time. There are tons of different genres here, classic arcade games with high scores, shoot 'em ups, platformer even rogue-likes and full RPGs. It's interesting how creative some of these games are and these aren't even small games, each one of these feels like it could have been sold individually. Listing every single game would be a bit too long, so I will describe some of my favourites. [b]Bug Hunter[/b] is a tactics game in which you have to kill bugs that spawn inside a mine. You must fulfill your quota if you want to finish your day but you only have a limited amount of turns to do so. The bugs will never attack you but they will evolve every turn which gives them some special abilites that makes it more difficult to kill them and if you don't destroy their eggs, they will swarm the mine and you loose. You have a limited amount of movement and attack abilities but if you collect energy cubes you can buy new ones that replace older ones. The only goal here is to kill enough bugs for your quota, how you reach your goal is up to you. It's a very fun game with many different abilities and tactics to try out for such a small game. [b]The Big Bell Race[/b] is a little racing game similiar to Mario Kart of F-Zero but with controls similiar to Flappy Bird. You play as one of multiple ufo racers and your method of transportation is to hold the button to hover in the air and release it to lose height. That way you have to navigate through the obstacle course and finish multiple laps. You can also "slash" at other racers if you are near them, which damages them. Racers have limited hit points and get destroyed if they lose all of them, whcih sends them back to the beginning of their current lap. The racing track will also spawn power ups that can be used against your opponents. A fun little game despite the unusal controling scheme. [b]Waldorf's Journey[/b] is a platformer with the difference that you charge and release your jumps in a target direction. You basically fling yourself into the direction you want to travel. You have to try to land on the floating platforms because if you fall off the screen you have to restart from the beginning. There are some tools that can help you on your journey including birds that rescue you if you fall in the abyss. The goal is to reach the end of the level which isn't that long but it's really hard. It's a great game for a short round between some of the longer games. [b]Party House[/b] is a deck builder with different "scenarios". Each scenario has their own selection of party guests and your goal is to "throw the best party" by inviting four VIPs. To get these VIPs however you have to recruit a bunch of other party guests first. There are two resources, popularity and monhey. Popularity is used to invite more guests to your party (which act as extra cards for your deck) while money expands the maximum amount of guests you can have (the amount of cards you can play). The gameplay itself is very simple, you reveal one guest after another from your deck, after each guest you can decide to invite another until the house is full. There are however trouble makers which, if there are too many, will end the party and give you no resources. You have to juggle the different party guests and decide how many you want and which of them you need. It's surprisngly complex and even has a random mode. [b]Divers[/b] is an obscure and dark RPG. You play as three lizard people that dive into an ocean to explore underwater ruins. What makes this game so interesting is how little it tells you about itself. There are no explanations, items in the shop don't tell you what they do, you don't know what your goal is except that you have to dive deeper. Items have limited use, so you always have to return to the surface to heal, save and refill your items. The game also makes use of a limited sight range, which adds to the uneasiness that you will feel during the game. There are sea monsters everywhere that are often outside your sight and suddenly come in view and start chasing you, there is no map, so you don't know where you are and you will get lost while you try to evade monsters. I really love this scary atmosphere that the game has. [b]Overbold[/b] is probably my favourite game in this collection. It's a small arena roguelike similiar to the Binding of Isaac but inside a single room. You have to survive 8 fights in the arena and after each fight you can spend the prize money on upgrades. What makes this game so much fun is that it entices you to risk more than you can manage. After each fight you can decide to raise the prize money but this will add more enemies to the next fight. The last fight will always have a full arena including a boss, so you have to be prepared for it but if you risk too much too early you might lose and have to restart. It's incredobly addictig, especially since each run is so short and you can play multiple runs back to back. [b]Vainger[/b] is a classic metroidvania heavily inspired by Metroid. The main gimmick here is that you can jump again in midair to flip your personal gravity, allowing you to walk on ceilings. This simple feature changes completely the level design and how you approach each room. Some enemies and obstacles react to your flip ability and will change. Another great feature is how upgrades work in this game. The game does not have many ability upgrades but you can slot them in one of three different mechanics, your gun, your body and your gravity flip ability. This changes how an upgrade works, the fire ability for example enhances your gun in that way that it can detonate exploding barrels and also deal more damage to enemies but if you slot it in your body it will instead protect you from high temperature, allowing you to travel through hot rooms without taking damage. Since you can only switch these upgrades on save stations, you have to approach each section of the game differently. [b]Pilot Quest[/b] is a mix between an idle game and a Zelda-like adventure. Your ship crashes on a planet and you have to find the three missing parts to repair it. At the start you are inside a camp that has a big crystal that you can mine for smaller crystals. These crystals can be used to buy plants that produce more crystals or you can smelt them into an ingot which is used to build various buildings. You will hire helpers that help you produce more stuff and the game will continue producing even when you play another game. At some point you will explore the world but you have only limited time depending on how much meat you have. Time acts also as health, enemies will deduct from your time instead of hurting you. There are several dungeons in the worold that you must explore to find your ship parts. These dungeons also have bosses that mus be defeated first. Although the time mechanic can be somewhat annoying, it is fun to play this between other games and come back to it to collect your progress and explore the world again.

In Short. It's an amazing collection of fun games and has a lot of variety and plenty of games to dig into. Also despite what Steam says, I have almost 60 hours as of posting and most of it was offline. Now here's my more in depth trash amateur review. A real love letter to Video Games that makes you remember why Video Games can be amazing and fun! Each game is vastly different and while it can be obvious to where some of their inspirations are at times, they still add something unique and new adding for some very interesting and fresh games. The span of genres and setting is very varied and neat, but can also crossover with certain games with appearances of some characters and especially assets overlapping between games that's also an in universe reason from the fictional Company UFO Soft. Being a part of a fictional Console from a fictional Company there's many neat tidbits about the Console and Company in each game's info text. There's also a hidden meta narrative about UFO Soft themselves It's hard to choose, but some of my personal favorites are Avianos, Hyper Contender, Party House, Bushido Ball and Elfazar's Hat. They're the ones I've enjoyed the most so far and after 60 hours of playing some of each game, I'm still just scratching the surface as some games can be beat fairly quickly while others can take up multiple hours for a playthrough. The difficulty for each game can vary, but do take in mind that the clear obvious inspiration of especially the NES lives of to that era of Video Games in less so jank for most games but instead challenge. The games can be very tough, but fair. There's 50 whole games to choose from and some games have mini-games and even micro-games in themselves so there's always something to play. When they say "Play Forever" they mean it.

While in the handful of the games I tried they are nostalgic the controls feel sluggish and unresponsive just like older games and it makes the whole thing very under whelming. Its like they purposely used the bad game design along with the good.

It's very hard to write down something specific about UFO 50, just because there's SO MUCH of it. Basically - it's a collection of 50 fully-fledged NES/SNES style games, created by an imaginary game developer. Except they have none of the old-timey jank and have lots of new and unique game design ideas. And yes, it's literally illegal to talk about UFO 50 without saying "game design ideas". There's a: * Strategy game, where all your units are discs that you launch into enemy discs, to cause them to ricochet from one another. Imaging curling, but with ogres * Rogue-like deck builder about making the coolest party in town, where you have to manage popular people, rich people and trouble makers in your deck * Super Metroid but VVVVVV * Proto-immersive sim * Proto-uhhh, Civilization? Or Heroes of Might & Magic? I'm not sure, but you pray to cool dinosaurs * An atmospheric first person horror point & click quest * 2D Splatoon * A platformer where you have to use your dead bodies to make it through the level * PINBALL GOLF (greatest idea in history of humanity) * Surprisingly interesting stealth-puzzle about being a chameleon ...and more. Some of it even has couch multiplayer! Also there's a greatest achievement system ever: each game has 1 achievement, and if you earn it - a cute little piggie will get a gift from that game. That's what I call motivation. It gets a bit overwhelming if you keep playing UFO 50 back to back to back, but after the initial excitement of discovery wears off it becomes a great in-between game for Steam Deck - if you have some time to kill, then UFO 50's got options for ya.

The experience of playing UFO 50 is picking a game and being shocked by the depth and love that went into it, getting hooked on it for a bit, then being drawn back to the imposing menu of 50 games to dust another off and repeat the process. You would think at some point the surprise would wear off but UFO 50 is consistently delightful to a degree that continues to shock again and again.