You know how people always feel like there’s too many games coming out? Well one of the year’s most exciting games is actually 50 games in one! UFO 50, a collaboration between the devs behind Splunkey, Downwell, and many other indie classics, just came out, and it presents players with a collection of fifty original games for a fictional NES-era console. These are not micro or mini games like Mario Party or Warioware, coming more into line with the length and depth of the 8-bit era.
I’ve been diving a bit into the game, which is overwhelming at first, and the range of experiences is extremely impressive. Many of them are more arcade-sized experiences with simple mechanics that you do over and over to beat levels and chase high scores, but plenty of the games are more robust experiences. There’s a small fictional history to each of the games, and you can actually follow along as their games evolve and respond to genre trends of the time.
Just like how the NES had its share of spooky-themed games like Castlevania or Sweet Home, UFO 50 plays around with the genre for some of its entries. I’m still working my way through this massive collection, but here are a couple of the horror-tinged experiences to try out.
DEVILITION
I love the little tidbits of information you’re given about games in UFO 50, and Devilition, a clever portmanteau of devil and demolition that effectively summarizes the gameplay, has the best: “Many retailers refused to carry this game due to its demonic box art.” While it doesn’t go for scares or horror in the actual gameplay, it does use horror imagery in its setup. The simple premise is that your town has been overrun by demons, and you have to drive them out while saving the townspeople in the process.
The actual play of this isn’t an action-adventure game like it might sound, but instead a clever little puzzle game about creating chain reactions of explosions on a grid-based map that’s populated with demons and townsfolk. You’ll always have three pieces that you can put down that have various explosion patterns, and will continue placing until you hit your limit of pieces for the stage. For example, some of them blow up all the spaces around them, while others destroy everything in a straight line.
The real puzzle of it comes from the fact that you can only detonate one of the pieces that you put down, and the rest must be kicked off by another explosion. Once you put down the piece, you no longer see the pattern of its explosion, so it can be a lot to keep in your head as you’re trying to make sure you can chain reaction these explosions to kill as many demons as possible without also hitting townsfolk in the process. At the end of the round, if you have more townspeople than demons, you move on to the next stage. UFO 50 excels at building these simple arcadey mechanics that are fun to do over and over, and Devilition is a prime example of one where I’m always ready to try just one more round.
FIST HELL
The beat ‘em up is a classic staple of this era of games, from Double Dragon to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Fist Hell takes that iconic gameplay and sets it in a city that’s been overrun by zombies. You go level by level as you try to rescue your mother, who is running for mayor, by yourself or with a second player. The imagery is a bright and cartoony take on zombies, but is, as the trivia fact says, the first game in the UFO 50 catalog to depict blood.
You can pick from one of four characters that, surprisingly for the era it’s emulating, have different stats that change how they play. The gameplay is fairly simple, but gives you more tools than just mashing the punch button. In addition to that standard attack, you also have a spin move that can clear out enemies on both sides and a throw attack that allows you to hurl enemies across the screen into the oncoming zombies.
As you make your way through the stages, you’ll pick up cash that can be spent at the end of a level to upgrade your character’s stats, so there’s some tangible progress that can be made throughout. It’s not a mindblowing reinvention of the genre, but I definitely find myself coming back to it when I just want some simple, butt-kicking fun.
GRIMSTONE
An angel walks into a tavern on fire and saves four of the patrons trapped within. This forms your party in Grimstone, a JRPG where you inhabit a part of the wild west that has been swallowed into Hell itself. It’s a super strong premise that feels like it gives Grimstone a unique identity within a genre that’s so dominated with fantasy tropes. The Hell setting mixes perfectly with the Wild West, giving you a world where you are just as likely to get jumped by bandit gunslingers as you are to run into a dusty town taken over by demons.
UFO 50 definitely commits to the bit and doesn’t add too much gameplay complexity to Grimstone in order to keep it in line with JRPGs of the time, but it does have a timing based mechanic that makes it feel slightly more modern. Every time you attack you’ll have to stop your arrow along a meter that’s either white (miss), orange (hit), or red (crit). Some weapons are even high risk, high reward, only presenting a small sliver of red among the white meter.
Most of the battles still revolve around spamming attacks occasionally mixed with skills and items, but the timing gimmick keeps you a bit more engaged. It can feel a bit grindy, as depending on the characters you pick at the beginning you may be underpowered for the threats you’ll encounter, but overall it’s a surprisingly robust game in the collection.
NIGHT MANOR
One game in UFO 50 not only has horror-theming, but also aims to actually scare players, and that’s Night Manor, a point and click adventure game where you wake up after a car crash, trapped in a mysterious house where you’re hunted by a monstrous killer. To escape, you’ll need to explore the manor, solve puzzles, and run away from the killer as he chases you from room to room. It feels very much like Clock Tower for the SNES, with great visuals and stellar music.
Rooms are presented as single screens, and gameplay involves either looking at an object or attempting to interact with it. Puzzles are pretty clever and don’t rely too much on out-of-left-field solutions that can be annoying in other adventure games. There can still be some finickiness involved, particularly when trying to use one item on another, but I was a big fan of the way the puzzles slowly unlocked the manor like a survival horror game.
When you end up getting found by the killer, he pops up on your screen, causing your cursor to start to get shaky. You’ll have to navigate your trembling cursor to the exits of the room in an attempt to run room to room and lose him. Certain rooms have places to hide, which prompts you to do a Dark Pictures Anthology-style quick time event to stay hidden. It can be pretty startling for such a low-fi game, knocking you out of your calm puzzle solving rhythm and sending you into a blind panic trying to remember the best places to seek shelter. Even if you do die, it doesn’t reset your progress, instead waking you up in the starting room, leaving you wondering if your death was just a bad dream.
UFO 50 is an absolute treat for retro gaming fans, and I’m still just scratching the surface on the experiences contained within. It’s been a blast to chat with my other friends who are playing it, sharing which experiences are working for us. If you’re been playing, sound off in the comments with your favorites so far!
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