It’s intimidating to think how much work went into UFO 50. Most “collection” games are one of two things: A retro compilation, or a selection of minigames that are typically over in a few minutes. UFO 50 is different. It’s a collection of 50 genuinely new games, from just about every genre you could imagine. Almost none of them are duds.
The premise of UFO 50 is itself delightful, with the library of games acting like a “best of” collection of discs for a fictional retro PC, much like the Commodore 64 or the PC-98. When you first load UFO 50 up, all these discs are laid out, covered with a thick film of dust. After “shaking” the dust off, you can read a little “history” of the game, before plugging it in and starting to play. The developers have gone all-in with the fiction of this, and it does come across as very authentic, in that if you squint, you can almost convince yourself that this really is a forgotten PC with a trove of games you’ve just discovered in a garage sale.
However, while all the games do look like stuff from yesteryear, they all play like modern games, so there are none of the frustrations that many might face when playing retro games today. Controls are tight, levels are designed to be a good balance of retro-style difficulty without the nastier edges that can make true retro games feel impossible to win. It’s the best of all worlds, in other words, and the result is a deep library of games that you’re going to love playing.
I personally added 30 of the 50 to my “favourites” after playing each of them for around 20 minutes to get a feel for them. Think about that, though – more than half the collection were games that I want to play again and to completion. Just a small cross-section of my favourites within that favourites section includes:
- Grimstone: A full scope JRPG from the 8 bit era – yes, really, it’s a full scope JRPG.
- Avainos: A variation of classic strategy game, Defender of the Crown, albeit with more depth in units.
- Kick Club: A single screen arcade platformer in the vein of Bubble Bobble and Snow Bros.
- Paint Chase: If you were to cross Pac-Man with Splatoon, it’d play a little like this.
- Rail Heist: A 2D XCom-style tactics strategy game.
- Rock On! Island: A classical tower defence strategy game.
- Valbrace: A first-person dungeon crawler with an action combat system.
- Quibble Race: A “horse racing gambling” simulator where you bet on races, and can also invest in the Quibbles in the stable to take ownership of them and train them up.
- Night Manor: A point-and-click adventure game in the vein of the Kemco titles of old. If you remember Shadowgate, you know what to expect.
- Lords of Disconia: A tactics strategy game where your units are discs that you “flick” around a board.
Count them: That’s just 10 titles in the collection. There are also Metroidvanias, puzzle platformers, arcade platformers, Roguelikes, A 2D golf game, SHMUPS – side scrolling and vertical, brawlers, and more. So much more.
What is truly astounding about the entire collection is how consistent the quality is. The developers understand what makes a SHMIP kick as well as they have a mastery over various versions of RPGs. Their arcade games are as refined as their more slow-paced strategy titles. Just think about how much work must have gone into doing that? Most developers struggle to get a single game in a single genre out of the door, and there is this developer showing that they’ve mastered just about all the genres.
It’s not just that they play well, either. The art is gorgeous and appropriate to every type of game in the collection. The developers’ take on the Ghouls ‘n Ghosts formula looks different to their take on Mega Man. The auto-strategy game (where units continue to appear periodically on a screen and your job is to move them up and down in their “lines” so they can attack an enemy’s castle) is a very different-looking strategy game to the Defender of the Crown clone. Admittedly, some titles do look better than others, but you’d never be able to accuse any of them of not looking authentic, and it’s incredibly charming just how lovingly the developer has recreated all these different aesthetics from the pixel eras.
The only downside is that UFO 50’s multiplayer options are strictly for local multiplayer only. I understand why that is the case – supporting online multiplayer for the dozens of games that have multiplayer modes would have been a mind-boggling challenge, and the resources required would have been intimidating too. There’s also a thematic reason for it, given that the fictional PC that is being “emulated” here wouldn’t have had online capabilities. However… I could have seen Avainos becoming such a multiplayer hit for my circle, given how much we love strategy and board games. I would have loved to be able to add it to my weekend game club rotation.
I can’t think of a game that I have played in years that has been made with as much love as UFO 50. It’s the kind of project that could only come from people who love video games that much, and it does feel like a celebration of video games right down to its digital pores. I would have happily purchased 20 (if not more) of the games in this collection as standalone titles. Having them all in one package feels so generous I almost feel like we’re all taking advantage of the developers here.
