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What's good in UFO 50?

I found a SECRET. I found the terminal code in the description of Night Manor (is that the name? That adventure game), which lead me on a breadcrumb trail of clues. Going to Mini & Max, found the next code, and so on. Until I was in the first chronological game, entered the code I found into the terminal, and was in a new game. Top-down adventure, I guess, in "The Basement", with weird, creepy music, everything being sad, and I guess this is now inspired by Earthbound, with only the weird vibes, not the rpg parts. I found a disk and played another version of that game where you paint the floor with your car. Then it was over. I assume I will find more leads in other games? Because the trail was over, at this point. There was space for two more disks, so I guess I can get in there again.
 
Not clear to me if you're looking for a response or not, so I'm going to nest some spoilered replies.

No, given what you've said, you cannot expect the trail to pick up later.

Beating the prototype disk gives you another clue that leads to the next part.
 
Alright, I was listening to the Eggplant episode on Grimstone recently and I think this is unbelievably cool. You'll have to forgive me, as I'm paraphrasing this from memory, and I can't find the explanation online to copy/paste, but I at least have the gist of this correct:

The utterly beautiful/deranged/unprecedented way that the hit rolls on the shotgun work is that it draws hit starbursts on the corner of the targeted enemy sprite and then checks for actual sprite collisions against the targeted enemy and neighbouring enemies. This means that large targets are easier to hit with the shotgun, and that targeting enemies in the middle of formations or with tightly packed sprites means that you'll do more splash damage. That's really cool, and I absolutely didn't intuit any of it during gameplay.
 
Neat! Now I have to decide if I want to double-dip for that sweet physical copy. I should probably dive back into UFO 50 as well, because I've left quite a few games of interest languishing. My favorite is still Warptank.
 
I'm psyched to finally get to play this. I will always prefer the idea of owning a physical copy, but part of me doesn't want to wait until February and also feels like I'd want to have access to this on my Switch basically at all times. It's a dilemma!
 
The artwork for the strategy guide looks delightful.

(I keep forgetting that Yu is a damn talented visual artist on top of being an accomplished game dev, not to mention whoever else is contributing to this thing.)
 
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I bet that book is going to have new secrets in it, and I want them.

(Also, I'm excited for Switch users to have the opportunity to play the best game of last year.)
 
Does anyone know if there's a limited amount of time to order a physical copy? Still haven't made up my mind about which version to get.
 
Personally, if it's one you feel like you'll regret not getting later, I'd go ahead and jump on the deluxe version. It's honestly pretty fairly priced, as @Sarcasmorator says.
 
This is a little silly: instead of the deluxe edition I ordered the standard edition and added the book on. I know that's the same price, but I wasn't particularly interested in the bonus prints or stickers and I'd rather not have extra stuff gathering dust around the house. Plus, if there'll be a limited amount of deluxe editions, that's one more that can go to someone who really wants it.
 
Not getting additional stuff you don't want or need is a perfectly reasonable thing. You don't need to take everything, just because it's free.
 
Yeah, I know. It's mainly a side effect of life under capitalism that I feel the need to explain why I didn't want free stuff.
 
lincolnic said:
This is a little silly: instead of the deluxe edition I ordered the standard edition and added the book on. I know that's the same price, but I wasn't particularly interested in the bonus prints or stickers and I'd rather not have extra stuff gathering dust around the house. Plus, if there'll be a limited amount of deluxe editions, that's one more that can go to someone who really wants it.
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Nah, not silly at all. If that's what you wanted, that's what you wanted. The book is the biggest thing I want, too. Maybe I should have just gotten that, ha.
 
Excited that I'm finally getting to play this. I've tried the first 10 games, and Mortol is definitely the one I'm most interested in going back and playing at length, and Paint Chase wins the toddler award. As a general preference, I'm not as interested in the ones that take place on static game boards, but they seem well-designed and interesting for what they are, and I'm sure there's plenty more that will catch my attention.
 
I feel like my dopamine receptors are busted.

I've been eagerly awaiting this game since it came out on PC last year and snapped it up the day it launched on Switch, but so far I'm kind of disappointed in my experience with it. I've played the top row of ten games and while they're certainly all clever, varied and inventive, I'm not really having fun with any of them. I poke at each one for a few minutes and then I've had enough. (Contrast GameCenter CX / Retro Game Challenge on the DS, whose faux-retro games had me grinning from ear to ear.) I get that they're not all going to be winners and I have plenty more to go, but going 0 for 10 doesn't feel great. I expected I'd spend all weekend wrapped up in UFO 50 goodness but I've felt little incentive to go back to it after my initial session.

I don't know why I'm posting this, as obviously this is an incredible package and I'm just an unpleasable grump. Clearly I'm just approaching it wrong... but do the games get "better" as the LX's fictional lifespan progresses?
 
My suggestion for enjoying UFO: pick a game that looks promising (I'd go with something toward the middle of the collection) and stick with it for an hour or two. The beauty of these games is that they all have depth, but it doesn't always show itself right away. Playing 5-10 minutes of each game, you won't have time to see that they aren't actually one-trick ponies.

Also, most of the stuff on the first row is kind of rough. I still think it's good, but you have to be in the right mindset to enjoy something like Barbuta. FWIW, the first game that I played seriously was Party House and I wound up really loving it.
 
My favorites from the set so far have been Warptank, Vainger, and Night Manor. I didn't care much for the first ten games, either. There's bound to be something in there that will appeal, especially since they typically increase in complexity further down the list, reflecting the faux time lapse between releases.
 
Change the game sort order to "random" and play the first cartridge that still has dust on it.
 
Thanks for the advice, everyone! I'm going to stick with this game and not let my early experience discourage me, because I know there's good stuff here. I'll report back.
 
The faux-chronological order totally mimics the lifespan of something like the NES: The earliest games are really experimental and lacking in design or aesthetic depth. (In the top row, Mortol inspired a sequel, which tracks as I'd say it's more polished than the others.) The final row, by contrast, has attempts at idle game elements, voice samples, and however you'd describe Mini & Max's world.

There isn't a "right" way to try out the games - I think chronological is great in the spirit of experiencing the LX as a fictional gaming machine, but like MCBanjoMike said, the first row games are quite a bit rougher than the others. If the experience is available to you, imagine you're a kid at the video store again. You don't know anything about these games except the cover and the back of the box info (conveyed here by hitting the B button) - which one looks appealing to you? Luckily, there are no wrong answers - you already own all 50 games so you can go pick something else out.

One other thing I've noticed in the way people (myself included) rave about this game is that it's a love letter to lots of things - the NES, Newgrounds Flash games, single-developer indies - but it's also a love letter to jank in game design, in all its forms. Throughout the collection, quality-of-life is more reflective of a game released in 2024 than the decidedly 80s timeframe of these games, but the intentionally strange design choices abound. The silent hostility of Barbuta is an obvious case of this, and Combatants' brokenness a slightly less obvious case, but it's everywhere: Bug Hunter feels like a converted board game, Planet Zoldath seems like a cult DOS game for reasons including irritating hit detection, Kick Club/Fist Hell/Rakshasa/Star Waspir are all representatives of "Nintendo-hard" games that resist easy playthroughs, and the physics in games like Onion Delivery and Camapanella 2 seem like catnip for high-performance gamer sickos. I absolutely love this collection, but I appreciate more of the individual games than I enjoy playing them. (This is in contrast to Retro Game Challenge which was all killer no filler by design.)

The last thing I want to gesture at is the metagame and secrets through the Terminal codes. I'm a sucker for lore generally, and it's great to have at least tried about 30 of these games before finding answers to questions like "What is UFO Soft?" or "What is UFO 50?". Don't rush into it or anything, but going through it has helped contextualize individual games as well as the general arc of the system.

Personal faves by row: Mortol, Avianos, Party House, Grimstone, Mini & Max
 
i think this is especially true of the first set of games but overall there aren't many games in the collection that have instant appeal unless they're just completely up your alley. the combination of not really easing in and overall high difficulty, plus pretty much everything being so different from everything else, means the barrier to entry for each game is generally a lot higher than you'd probably expect.

tho i suppose i'm also a bit cooler on the project as a whole than a lot of people around here, lol, i think that a large chunk of the individual games are good to great but if anything i love "real" old games and their strangenesses more than ever, and i think the vibe here is quite different from that. for the most part i'm inclined to see it more as a collection of mostly small and polished contemporary indies...which still has a lot of upsides in my book
 
I picked this up! I needed to update my software, then like 8 other games had updates before UFO50 appeared (maybe it downloaded concurrently?). I had time to visit 15 screens in Barbuta and then play a bit of House Party, which I’ve heard great things about. Both seem pretty interesting. I’ll try sticking to a limited number of games to start, per recommendations.
 
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