What's good in UFO 50?

[spines]

overbold cherry. i kind of don't like this game much, but it had a claw grasp on my brain because it was so easy to want the runback every time i lost. the multiplayer sounds cool...

this game has a pretty strong snowballing effect, which includes inside the battles...if you win a battle once you get the level 2 medkits around stage 3 or 4, it feels like you could've gone on twice as long, because you're finishing with so much hp. but of course every time you actually try to do 9 rounds you're going to lose probably unless you manage to completely duck some kind of awful enemy (of which toucan spiders are #1 by far)

Spoiler

really once you've got most of the defensive upgrades and fully upgraded bombs (minus manual detonation...i guess it's probably really strong but i've never really tried it), you can probably tackle full boards and crank your guns real quick before the end, which smooths out some of the remaining issues. but the bombs are way too good, and bring a lot of power even in early rounds since the starter upgrades are so efficient.

it's incredibly funny that i looked at the "bombs lure enemies" thing and thought "ok, surely it's kind of a mild effect, right? it'd be absurd if it just makes guys walk straight at the bombs so you can move around them easily" but then i bought it and found out that it makes guys walk straight at the bombs so you can move around them easily

 

[MCBanjoMike]

I got the cherry in Rock On! Island last night! Took me 8 hours to finish the game and another 8 to get perfect clears on every level. I am sad that there's no more Rock On! Island to play (although I did just learn about the existence of a hidden area, so I should at least go check that out).

I'm also close to having the cherry in Pilot Quest, but actually getting it is a pain in the ass. You have to fight Nozzlo something like 6 times in a single expedition to get the artifact, which is pretty obnoxious IMO. I'll probably do it anyway, since I'm at the end of my second playthrough and I don't really want to start over again.

The only other I've completed recently is Mortol, which I wound up really liking. Very fun and also extremely dark, if the characters weren't tiny little guys this game would be incredibly grim. I actually wound up playing through most of it a second time in co-op with ShakeWell, which was lots of fun. The sequel is quite different, based on the short time I spent with it, but I don't get the impression that I'm going to enjoy it as much as the original. Oh well, I can always spend some more time with this game trying to get the cherry.

Not totally sure what I'll tackle next, although Vainger and Mini & Max both look pretty appealing. I might also take a break from UFO 50 at some point, but for now I'm still happy to keep poking at it.

 

[Isrieri]

I did just learn about the existence of a hidden area, so I should at least go check that out).

I accidentally found that myself a while back so all I will say is - don't get too excited.
I too wish there was more Rock On! Island. Very simple and addictive.

 

[RT-55J]

After getting sidetracked by a bunch of other, more pressing commitments, I finally finished my 1:4 scale map of Vainger. Check it out!

Maybe I'll finally get around to playing all 50 games finally.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

That's awesome! Vainger was really fun and your map would be right at home in the Nintendo Power walkthrough for it.

 

[Bongo]

Recently I finally got the gold in Warptank and Pilot Quest (I didn't idle efficiently), and cherries in Party House, Bug Hunter, and Waldorf's Journey. Gold in Seaside Drive and Magic Garden remains tantalizingly close, and I just need to get more consistent.

I'm gonna use that Vainger map.

 

[ShakeWell]

After getting sidetracked by a bunch of other, more pressing commitments, I finally finished my 1:4 scale map of Vainger. Check it out!

Maybe I'll finally get around to playing all 50 games finally.

Nice. I just finally played that one. I like it!

 

[Isrieri]

I managed to get the cherry in Divers. I mentioned before that Divers goes out of its way to inform you of precisely nothing. It also takes pains to be as old, janky, and barebones of an RPG as possible. It isn't grindy in the traditional sense (the way its designed it actually discourages grinding) but its annoying in the same way Porgy can be. The gameplay loop consisting of constant backtracking. I wouldn't blame anyone if they choose not to bother with it, especially if they don't like RPGs to begin with.

Somehow I like Divers anyway. I wouldn't play it again but I enjoyed the time I spent on it. It had all the signs of being the brainchild of Barbuta's ficitonal developer Thorson Petter and I think what makes Divers, Barbuta and Mooncat so charming is that despite being different genres they all share the need for the player to 'figure out' what the game's angle is. Each one is deliberately strange and what you have to do not at all clear, but once you pick up on the rules of each game then all three become pretty simple to play.

That's the fun appeal for me: I've heard some people say that Mooncat among other games in the collection is like learning how to play games for the first time again. I wouldn't say Divers is quite like that. Its more like you're playing an RPG that doesn't make logical sense, because you and I are creatures that breathe air and sleep under trees and eat cooked food. Divers is a truly alien world, and each trip to the depths involves a lot of caution, poking, and prodding to unravel the game.

I don't want to spoil that experience but the game really does need some tips to get the ball rolling so if you'd like to streamline the game but don't want to use a guide, I'll leave a few non-specific hints as to equipment and battle mechanics in the spoiler below.

Spoiler: HINTS

1) When you begin, you should buy two Coral sticks, a Wet stick, and a S. Potion. The majority of enemies in the game are weak to Wet and you ought to prioritize those when upgrading your gear, but the Eels at the beginning are weak to coral and render them a minor issue when exploring.

2) I wasn't able to find any use for the Mallets. The Lid shields boost your defense while equipped, but deal little damage and you probably won't want too many. Think carefully about what you want to take with you each trip.

3) Weapons and items don't have 'durability' but 'uses.' The number will be refilled each time you return to the surface even if you use it all up. When you buy an item it's yours forever.

4) You can Check locations in the caves with Button A. Search suspicious spots!

5) The enemy weaknesses don't seem to follow any rhyme or reason, but its actually very easy to tell who's weak to what. Just perk up your ears.

6) Level ups apply to all three characters, even if they died in the battle. If things get dire, just get back to the surface.

7) Defending is a little weird. I don't think defending normally reduces damage much if at all. But it is very effective if you are defending with an item your attacker is weak to.

8) Some equipment require special baubles in addition to coins. You can see the number you have in the menu at all times. You can only carry a maximum of 9 per, so spend them when you have enough for what you want.

9) The game saves when you return to the surface AND when you dive back down. If you make a mistake on the shop screen don't panic and just reset the game. But anything you buy will be finalized after you leave.

10) Finally, each level you gain is very significant. The only stat you can see is health, but you do get stronger. I beat the game at Lvl. 12.

Lastly, there's a mysterious room late in the game that seems important and significant but I couldn't make heads or tails of it. If anybody did, I'd love to know!

 

[JBear]

I loved Divers. Great game.

RE: mallets, same, although there's a good early unique findable mallet that I used for a while.

RE: shields, I like them early on, because they allow you to safely attack urchins without taking damage with each attack. I didn't bother with any of the later ones, though, because they take the same resources as the weapons and I was always limited by my resources.

As to your last question, I think it's nothing. I know that I searched it exhaustively, anyway, and tried bringing some items that felt like they could be relevant besides. Divers feels like a very "vibes" game, and I think that area is just about the primo vibes.

 

[Violentvixen]

Spent a little time with this over the weekend and we played a lot of couch co-op Mortol, what fun. Excited to try more of these!

 

[Falselogic]

Former forum member, Kayin, did an entire blog post ranking all the games in UFO 50. I thought some people here might appreciate her comments: https://kayin.moe/ufo-50

 

[RT-55J]

Kayin says she hates Solar Jetman, but she puts Porgy in the top tier. Curious.

(very nice write-up)

 

[Kalir]

There's a lot of fascinating choices in that list, but probably the most fascinating is ranking Hyper Contender so low. That one honestly has some of the best potential out of the versus games in the set to me.

 

[narcodis]

One of the coolest things about UFO50 is just how varied everyone's tier list ends up being. In my mind it's crazy to put Pingolf in the bottom tier, while simultaneously I can't understand the love for Divers. But in my opinion, a game not being for everyone is Extremely Good, Actually, and the deeply varied tier lists are definitive evidence that UFO50 is in part accessible to everyone without sacrificing the unique weirdness that makes it also not-for-everyone.

 

[RT-55J]

I've finally given Barbuta a proper shot, making a fastidiously detailed map on paper as I go.

I "only" explored 44 rooms before getting a game over, but I know enough to say that this is a wonderful, wonderful little game.

After a few months of being busy with other stuff, I came back to this with my map and golded it in an hour and some change.

What a deceptively strong game. It makes me want to make one of these things.

 

[ShakeWell]

@MCBanjoMike and I played a bunch of two-player stuff on stream this week, and I think I speak for both of us when I say Rail Heist Vs. is fucking rad.

 

[That Old Chestnut]

I've played so much damn Grimstone here lately. Also been kinda using it to get my resources up in Pilot Quest. Synergy!

Weirdly enough, Campanella 2 is probably my favorite out of all of them right now, even if I've yet to get past the Burrows. It just feels like a logical expansion from the arcadey feel of the first game to a full-fledged adventure, with a fun blend of Jetpac and Blaster Master. The side-scrolling shooter portions are competently done, and short enough and full of enough lovably goofy alien critter goodness that they add a lot more than they take away. Very much the Super Mario Bros. to Campanella 1's Donkey Kong (or yeah, regular Mario Bros.).

Mini & Max is probably gonna completely blow my shit once I get into it, but I'm gonna try to progress in some of the others first. I understand there's a few callbacks, and I want to APPRECIATE those callbacks.

 

[Bongo]

If you want to grasp all the callbacks in Mini & Max, play the following:

• Combatants
• Rail Heist
• Party House
• Night Manor

I suggest finishing Night Manor, but for the others just a little bit of normal play will probably suffice.

 

[That Old Chestnut]

Much appreciated! I've already made a little headway in Night Manor, so I will follow your advise.

 

[MCBanjoMike]

That’s gotta be the first time I’ve seen anyone recommend Combatants for any reason.

I was really excited to get into Campanella 2’d roguelike/adventury gameplay, but in the end I preferred the straightforward arcadiness of the first game.

 

[Isrieri]

I know what you're all going to say but hear me out: Give Onion Delivery a chance. This is actually a decent game here once you discover that health regenerates and the existence of the brake button. You'll find that it is still wildly impossible to control at first but braking allows for sharp about-faces and tight cornering. That opens up the door to improvement and with practice you'll be able to make those turns before you know it. Plonking away at it between other games I managed to complete two days and discover some of the hazards that await later in the week. Of course a giant rampaging onion is nowhere near as dangerous as simple rain. That's not as funny.

The game's map is always the same. After a while you can semi gauge where you need to go by the location name and not the radar. The radar is more a hindrance than a help because of all the pitfalls into the water. Found it really enjoyable to whiz around the city. Now, investing loads of time to complete the game isn't worth it but its got a charm and appeal such that I don't think it should be left to collect dust.

On the flipside we have Caramel² which has become my least favorite of the collection. When you think of "hard games" its popular to think of Dark Souls or other action titles but those aren't the hardest games: It's always been the shmups. Your R-Types and your Ikarugas of the world. I think it's part of the genre's legacy but there's a limit to how much I can take before it gets too much and Caramel makes some strange choices that don't endear me to it. I spent such a long time trying to just survive to the first stage miniboss and trying to rack up points to hopefully get an extra life. I thought the two they grant you was way too few considering the lack of any kind of powerup or unique ability to give you an edge against all the violence. The camera is highly situtational and requires quite a bit of skill to use well which should feel rewarding but enemies don't remain frozen for very long and the space to catch them in is very tight. Points you accumulate never seem to translate to anything valuable, and snapping photos of specific background objects is the only trick I know to rack up bonuses save from cramming as many enemies into one snapshot as you can. I did discover a wrench that gives you an extra hit point. It was then that I discovered you don't have two lives - you have one. Oh, so that's the kind of game this is, huh?

Ultimately the best strategy I found was to not shoot at anything and just dodge. That's the opposite of what you want.

 

[Bongo]

The other thing you can do with Onion Delivery is enter the terminal code ROAD-RAGE to get infinite time and health.

 

[narcodis]

I had a good time with Caramel Caramel, but I'm also That Guy who cherried the three most shmup-like games in the collection. they were all real fun.

 

[FelixSH]

I think I will write here, when I get the red cherry for a game. Or when I'm done with it, meaning I gave up on the cherry.

Probably unsurprisingly, the first game that I Red Cherried is The Big Bell Race. Simply because it's such a short and easy game. I came in last place in two of the courses, the first time, but that was just a bit bad luck with getting bullied by everyone at once. So it was obvious, that I could complete it pretty easily. I did need a third try, because the second race went bad. But the third try ran pretty well.

I do enjoy the controls, so I'm looking forward to play, uh, Campanella, or however it was called. It has a nice feel, is challenging enough, but also the collision detection with the walls seems to be pretty generous. As a race it's decently fun, but I also feel like you can get easily cornered by a bunch of other racers, leading to getting destroyed. The powerups are fun enough, but also didn't really matter much, in my experience.

I don't think I have more to say. It's a simple, little game that's fun enough for the short time you need to play it.

 

[FelixSH]

And next game: Camouflage.

This is an amazing game. Very fun puzzler, and way too short. I want to play a full game of that, with 100 levels or so, different predators, and so on. Maybe multi-screen levels, where you need to get a color from one screen to the next? I hope for a mod, maybe?

I assume just beating it would be pretty easy, but I wouldn't know. Most levels, I just solved completely from the get-go (so getting the two fruits, and the baby chameleon). Because the core gameplay here is so much fun, and so clever. That said, I did prefer the toads to the crocodiles, because I like it more when monsters are static, and you can just take your time. Still I enjoyed the inclusion of the crocodiles. I assume, the focus here was on puzzles, not on action, or elsewise, you would have more situations where you have to hide behind a crocodile (or maybe another, smaller creature). So much potential. But what's there is great.

Silly as the story is, I enjoyed the ending. Very cute.

 

[That Old Chestnut]

I suggest finishing Night Manor, but for the others just a little bit of normal play will probably suffice.

Oh yeah! I actually did this, even though I had to look up a thing or two I was never going to figure out on my own. Namely, having to use the wrench and only the wrench to break the mirror in the master bathroom. Why wouldn't you be able to use literally any other halfway weighty object in your inventory to do this? Except I know that shaky-at-best logic is just how older adventure games roll. Oh well, it was still a pretty good time.

Mini & Max is probably gonna completely blow my shit once I get into it

Any yep, my shit was blown! In ways I didn't entirely expect even! When I first climbed up inside the clock starting out, I remember seeing what looked to be a random stray pixel on one of the circuit boards, and that got my brain going "hey wait a minute can you shrink even further?" Then later on, to my delight, I found out you COULD. . And I love how the game demands you make use of this in ways that are both delightful, and make a perfect kind of cartoon world sense. I could easily see a stand-alone game based entirely around the concepts explored here. Let me explore a whole house like this!

 

[FelixSH]

Porgy is done. Great game, nice length of 6 hours to get 100%. Didn't get the cherry, but I assume that happens when I beat the last boss again.

The only thing I really disliked, and man, did I dislike it, was the Nautilus boss (I think Neptune?). Way stronger than all the other bosses, finding it seems luck based, even if you know where it is. And there is no reason why you should know, it's way too well hidden.

But aside from that, I enjoyed every minute of this game. Didn't mind, that you had to swim back and forth. On the contrary, I think, I enjoyed how you could get farther and farther, setting generally a slower pace than people enjoy. Together with the music and the slow movement, this created a very relaxing game. And it does feel good to get stronger and stronger, being a bit of a juggernaut at the end, just wrecking all those fish and stuff that were so hard to defeat at the beginning, or even the middle.

Loved the inclusion of the radar. It didn't give you all the locations, but if you swam around, you would find what you missed, the radius was big enough. And in the end, four items was enough for me.

Unlike Camouflage, I also feel like they did enough with the concept. I wouldn't have minded for one or two more hours, but in the end, I think the length works very well, especially considering the age it is supposed to have. More could have meant, that it overstayed its welcome.

I did like it more then The Big Bell Race, but that's partly due to the genre. Wouldn't know, if I liked this or Camouflage better. Both did very well, for their respective genres.

 

[FelixSH]

I cherried two more games. One of them is Magic Garden. A really nice game, but unfortunately, it's just about highscores, so after getting the cherry, there is nothing of interest there for me anymore. Still a lot of fun, very nice concept. Getting the high score is easy, when you just make insanely long chains of blob thingies, and then destroy them all with the potion. A lot of muscle memory, maybe, because after beating it one time normally, and taking a break, it was way easier to beat again.

The other game is Kick Club. Easy three worlds, and then the fourth world wrecks you. Mainly due to the football monsters, and their weird footballs who fly and bounce annoyingly and long around. But I got better with them, as I got more often into that world. The boss, thankfully, was very easy. Thankfully mainly, because I was on my last life. And the jerk decided to park himself on the ball for some time.
Dunno what, but something about this game really speaks to me. I don't care for sports, accept when they appear in a fantastical setting. Especially soccer. There have been Donald Duck comics, the weekly ones, where they made special stories when some soccer event was happening, and I always enjoyed those, for whatever reason. This game, more than any other in this collection, feels like a game I would have played as a kid, including that artstyle. It feels very 90s to me, a typical SNES game, that I would try again and again, failing all the time. I really, really like it.

 

[FelixSH]

Hyper Contender is cherried. Not too much of a fan, but fun enough, and it's so short that playing it a bit isn't a time sink in any way. And I do appreciate, that all eight characters play very differently. Not just the weapons, but also the jump. Sure, you have the angel(?) who can just jump and then float. But you also have someone who charges, and the longer you charge the higher you jump. Or someone who reverses his own gravity. In normal beatemups, the basic moveset is very similar, if not identical (at least that's how it was in the 90s...Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Toshinden, I think?).
Still, I have no idea if I am just bad, or if the AI there is weird, but some rounds were basically impossible, due to how the enemy would block always just in time, everything I did. It's clearly more of a multiplayer game, and I don't think I will revisit it. Still, for what it is, it seems pretty competently done.

 

[Kalir]

Hyper Contender has a lot of tech and I greatly adore it. They really did a lot with the limitations they imposed on themselves.