UFO 50

possibly the highest value purchase possible on steam dot com. All of these games sport unique ideas and incredible execution, you can't find a 1 to 1 game comparison for any of these without downplaying their unique qualities. It has something for everyone, and the games you do mesh with will more than make the whole collection worth for you, despite the games you might not mesh with.

This pitch of this game makes it sound like you're getting 50 NES-Style mini/arcade games, which for the price would actually be a pretty worthwhile value.

What you get is about 30 real genuine retro-inspired full fledged video games, and 20 of the minigames you were expecting. The value is insane. Multiple games in this pack could charge $10 themselves on Steam and probably do well. For the price this is worth grabbing because the act of just grabbing at games at random is really fun and SOMETHING in here will click with you.

Highlights for me so far:
Night Manor - Retro horror point and click adventure with multiple endings. Genuinely spooky.
Warptank - Puzzle game about being a tank that can only teleport to whatever surface is vertical. It's got tons of levels and is really well designed and fun.
Valbrace - First person dungeon crawling mixed with Punch-out style combat. It's a blast. Get a notebook to draw your own map.
Grimstone - A FULL JRPG. IVE BEEN PLAYING FOR 10 HOURS. IT'S GREAT.
Fist Hell - Coop beat-em up that's really tough but fun.
Overbold - Smash TV but you have upgrades between rounds and can gamble on making the next round harder to get more cash to upgrade with. Tough but addicting.

I haven't even tried every game in here. There's so much. Get this.

I'm sure it's already clear in the many existing reviews that is instantly a 40 year old classic. But I still want to applaud the developers on their accomplishment and encourage others to experience this game.

In my first couple hours of UFO 50, I was a bit put off by the retro trappings. The controls and "feel" of some of the early games comes can be fairly described as crude.

But I tried more of the games and found some that I just keep returning to. These games are comfy and nostalgic in how they look and play, yes, but nearly every one also has some little twist of game design that _at least_ makes the experience intriguing, and in some cases, addicting! And the more I've played, the more the conceit of this alternate-universe retro console has felt incredibly fun, and I've been practically thrilled to discover some of the LX-50's secrets :) Bravo to the devs!

This game (really 50 games) is arguably the best value you're going to find on steam. At 50 cents a game, it's a no brainer. Unless retro style graphics make you physically ill, there's no reason not to buy this. This is what games from the 80s would have been like if they had the benefit of 40 years of reflection on what makes game design good.

Just buy it.

Buy this. This whole collection is remarkable and might get you into genres of games you never thought you'd like until given such a fine treatment. Most of the games are hard and punishing, but the sheer quality and fun will keep you coming back for more.

Aesthetically there's an incredible dedication to the collection's "hardware limitations", with UFO having its own selected palette, SFX, and tracker music to really sell the authenticity of its classic design. It's been worked on for several years by the team, and it shows.

Support these devs and buy this game if you love a good challenge and a fun variety of genre-breaking creative entries. My personal favorite is Rakshasa: A very difficult platformer that plays off of Ghouls n' Ghosts with the gimmick of you being able to cheat death as many times as you can get away with.

This collection's gotten me out of a lousy depressive slump and I can't recommend it enough.

Very impressed at how deep each game is. For a game which is a collection of 50 games you'd think each one would be surface level mini games. Surprisingly, each game is fleshed out and can offer hours and hours of content. Some of them are very difficult too. It shows the best sides of 80's era videogames in a complete package. I could see completionists taking hundreds of hours to get everything done. If I had a complaint, it would be the odd choice to only have two buttons for all 50 games. It felt like a needlessly limiting constraint for some of the more complex games. Otherwise a pretty fun game.

A fair warning to the people getting interested in this pack of games due to all the overwhelming praise it's receiving, and why it's an issue reviewing a game containing 50 of them. This is a compilation of games created with the price point and thought process of you not enjoying all 50 of them, so if you purchase UFO 50 expecting all of them to be enjoyable for its price, you might get an underwhelming experience based on the expectations you've set for yourself, especially since the majority of these games despite manageable, can get on the intense side for their difficulty.

Overview

Gameplay

Story & Music

Summary

So what's the deal with this game?

Do I have to unlock all the games?

Are there any bad games?

The best ones?

Verdict

Loungewear Rocks!!

46 hours in, and I haven’t even touched half of the games yet. There’s something for everyone. Insane value for the price!

I have played about 30 of the 50 games at 75 hours. Of those, all except a select few have AT LEAST some fun to be had. Probably three quarters of those games are actively good, and 4-5 are EXCEPTIONAL. Keep in mind I have plenty of literal fan favorites left to play, I didn't leave the bad games for last.
In general, the art direction for all games really stands out. From the backgrounds, to characters and enemies, almost all have fun, unique and COOL visual elements. The soundtrack is also pretty consistently good, even peaking with the occasional absolute banger.
And finally, adding a progression element to the games really help. You can beat games for a gold disc, or cherry them by going above and beyond in some way. Chasing cherries, or golds is fun. In some cases, getting the cherry forces you to engage with the game in a deeper way, often increasing my enjoyment of said game in the process.
Great value for 25 bucks

Not for me. I appreciate the theme of retro gaming and the creativity of many of these games. I just don't care for platformers and games that I have to play over and over to figure out the pattern or goal. I find this more frustrating than fun, but I can see how others may enjoy it.

It's pretty impossible to fully describe what you get diving into a game like UFO50. On one end, you get a massive variety of games to pick from, each with their own unique gameplay and mechanics to suit anyone looking for their next favorite. On the other end, a large number of these games are FULL MULTI-HOUR TITLES that could have been individual releases in their own right, making me question my own sanity and will continue to make me question the quality of other games by comparison.

You Like Balatro? You'll like this.
Metroid? That too.
Bloons? For sure.
Zelda 1? Absolutely.
Double Dragon? Yep yep.
You brought up Snake? Why Snake? I mean yea we've got it and it's fantastic, just didn't think you'd ask about Snake.

At 50 cents a game, each game is WAY more than worth that price. So many great minds have come together for a project that could not be MORE worth your time and money. Please play UFO50, you will love it!

Made me remember what i loved about gaming. Discovering games, learning their rules, and figuring it all out by yourself. Deceptively simple games that use a dpad and 2 buttons. Huge variety, guaranteed to love a handful of the games at least

Limitations lead to great art. The design on display is fantastic and certainly get the most out of the imposed limitations they've put on themselves.

Had a lot of enjoyment out of this . A good "one last try" thing and a decent variety of old style games, some with modern twists. Bit of a surprise to find an idle game and a deck builder in here. - A full on old fashioned JRPG too. - The quality and gameplay of the arcadey games is spot on. D-Pad throwbacks.

A retro pick n mix in a delightful mixture of styles and genres that also makes me very mad because it also includes basically every flavour of retro BS under the sun. I absolutely respect the audacity of its concept and it actually follows through on its vision really well on the whole, you will find plenty to like in UFO 50 no matter what kind of games you like. But also you will probably find plenty that makes you cross, both due to the sheer variety and again, because UFO 50 leans somewhat hard overall?

pingolf da greatest, but also it's the worst, but actually it's the best one nope the ball bounced all the way back to the start, it's the worst one but actually it's a hole in one which means its the best one. oh i love the fifty ufo games but actually i hate the ufo fifty games but actually i love them

I bought this game because I kept hearing good things about it, a friend kept telling me I gotta try this, said it's right up my alley. I loaded up the first game, called Barbuta. The game starts, I see my character in the middle of an empty room, I press right to walk right and one second later I'm dead. 10/10 gaming experience.

I see now why UFO 50 is the highest rated game of 2024 on Metacritic. It's a game for actual gamers. And there's something to be found for everyone!

Let me put it this way: I'm about 10 hours in and I have yet to try half of the games, let alone thoroughly play them (I've beaten 5 and sampled the rest). There is so much depth here. Other than a couple games that were clearly intentionally designed to be... uh, interesting, there are great games right from the "early" part of the catalog. For me, the standouts are the strategy and puzzle games, but almost every game has unique twists.

The flow of play is basically this: you look at a game's controls and a bit of flavor text about the "company" history if you want, and then jump in. There is no handholding and very little is explicitly explained, including sometimes the object of the game. It doesn't take long to get the gist of each game, but I've found it's pretty common to figure something new out after playing for a while that makes life much easier. Just like the old days...

The gameplay itself, though, usually strikes the right balance between old school feel and new school conventions that make play feel less bullshit than the olden days. Many of the games are quite challenging, but I'd say it's about one level below "Nintendo hard". The longer games like RPGs and puzzle adventures auto-save, and even some (not all) of the shorter ones helpfully save your progress mid-run.

I'll update this later as I play more, but as of right now I'm having a blast and highly recommend it.

So far this falls more into the "this is cool" and "I respect it" sort of feelings from me rather than "this is fun" or "I recommend buying this if you'd like to have a good time."

I've still got a ways to go, halfway through, but so far I regret buying it -- something I respect much more than I enjoy. And the games that it pays homage to... I'd rather just go play those.

I feel after 50 hours of UFO 50, I should probably review it. This is one of the most ambitious video games I've ever played, and it's surpassed my expectations in almost every way.

When I was a young kid, I remember finding one of those "100 in 1" game devices at a Radio Shack, and pestering my parents to get it for me. 7-year old me was not so concerned about the quality of the games, but was rather impressed by how so many games could seemingly fit onto something that vaguely resembled a Game Boy Advance! Big surprise, none of the games on this device turned out to be half as good as any game from the system it was trying to imitate, but I still had fun with it and remember it fondly. While I'm sure now that most of the games I had played on it were little more than cheap bootlegs or knock offs of other games, the fun of diving into a new game, not knowing what to expect, and trying to figure out how to play it was an enjoyable experience for me.

So when UFO 50 was revealed several years ago, I wondered if this experience I had as a kid could be recreated by an indie studio, but this time with 50 video games that were competent enough to stand on their own. Now that I've gotten to play it, I think Mossmouth nailed it. This collection genuinely transports me back to a time when I didn't know how the sausage was made with video games, I could dive into a new experience with no hand holding, and just have fun with a random game for a little bit.

I think you can tell pretty quickly whether or not this game is for you just by looking at it. None of the 50 games included in UFO 50 are "retro-inspired" games in the sense that they are modern-feeling games with pixel graphics, like many other indie games. Each game in this collection feel authentic to NES/Genesis-era hardware and game design, but with inspiration from every era of gaming.

A typical game in UFO 50 takes the foundation of a game from the 80's-90's and put a unique spin on it, often by incorporating a mechanic from modern games, indie or otherwise. Want to play Metroid with the gravity-switching gameplay of VVVVVV? Try Vainger! How about Rally-X but with the floor-painting gameplay of Splatoon? Then try Paint Chase. What about The Legend of Zelda, but with... cookie clicker elements??? Then check out Pilot Quest. I don't want to explain any more because a lot of the fun from this collection comes from dusting off a game, booting it up for the first time, and seeing what unique idea the developers come up with.

Despite playing 50 hours, I have yet to try all of the games, because I found myself getting lost in a lot of the ones I really enjoyed. Games like Attactics, Porgy, and Mini and Max are surprisingly meaty, and can take a few hours to finish. Other games like Onion Delivery and Fist Hell are more bite-sized, arcade-style games that are quick to finish but challenging to make it to the end of. There are a couple of stinkers in the collection (I didn't care for Hot Foot and I'd rather not talk about Combatants), but each game in this collection brings something unique to the table, and is at the very least interesting to check out, whether you wind up liking it or not.

All the games in UFO 50 are themed around a development company that made games throughout the 80's and 90's, and as such, you will see recurring characters across games, sequels to games in the collection, and developers in the credits of each game that come and go. I feel like there is a unique story to UFOSoft that I haven't fully dove into yet. And what could that terminal in the menu be used for...?

So if you have a fondness for old games, are willing to put up with "old-school" difficulty, and enjoy exploring unique ideas and mechanics in video games, I can't recommend UFO 50 enough. I am super excited to put 50 more hours into this collection, and then probably another 50 after that.

P.S. Here are some of my favorite games from the collection, if you pick this game up yourself and are wondering where to start:

+ Magic Garden
+ Attactics
+ Mooncat (GOTY 2024)
+ Bushido Ball
+ Campanella
+ Hyper Contender
+ Night Manor

you get 50 games for like 30 dollars canadian or so but at least 25 of these games are worth the cost of that alone, so you get 49 other games for free 25 times = 1225 free games for the price of 1 which is the greatest value product in the history of consumer entertainment

its genuinely mind melting how varied this game is and how often they manage to switch genres entirely and still deliver, its like watching someone pitch a perfect game in the major leagues and then go score a hat trick in the NHL before achieving a 2500 chess rating and then benching a thousand pounds.

there's even some weird ARG meta puzzle stuff about the fictional gaming company if you care about that kind of gameplay, i dont at all but it feels pretty scummy to be complaining about extra content in a game with more high quality stuff in it than most of us will ever get around to playing.

This is really an incredible game. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, I assumed there'd be 50 bite-sized games and I think that would've been perfectly fine. However, it was anything but.

The 50 games in UFO 50 are incredibly high quality, varied, full experiences in their own right. Everything from classic arcade style games, platformers, strategy games; the game is bursting with creativity and care. There are so many games in this that I'd buy on their own and be able to put hours and hours into.

I'm not super fond of every game in the pack, but I think that's part of the beauty of it. In representing the entire history of a fictional game company's output, they also represent all the historical limitations, experimentation, and variety that comes with that.

I think this game is an incredible achievement and well worth the price.

this isnt meant to be clown react bait but i sure feel like im going to get a bunch for saying all this.

put simply, this is extremely not my thing, frankly. i only liked 8 out of the 50 games because the vast majority of them to me felt either too obtuse, too difficult, or just straight werent fun or engaging to play. if youre someone like me who doesnt exactly have the highest of attention spans for games especially when it comes to 8 bit retro games you're likely going to bounce just as hard as i have off this.

the description says "we carefully chose what elements to modernize" but frankly i don't think they tried hard enough, the vast majority of these just feel like good ideas for games that are not fleshed out past the initial concept and were needlessly shoved into the limitation of "fake nes game" which ends up making them play like sh*t half the time because two buttons is nowhere near enough for what they're trying to do. if it werent so tied up in trying to be nes adjacent then this would probably be an enjoyable exploration of weird ideas for games.

presentation wise its also kind of a huge ball of missed opportunity and disappointment. this came out well after last call bbs, zachtronics' final game which also went with a "this system definitely existed, heres some of the games for it look" vibe and the sheer level of comprehensiveness that title went through to make it look and feel like you were truly reviving old hardware and software was astounding. ufo 50 however doesn't really feel like it tries at all with this; in fact it feels like the whole set up of the fake system and company was completely an afterthought more than anything else that is so bafflingly slapped together that it feels as if they shouldn't have bothered.

it feels...confused. it wishes to evoke being a flashcart for the aforementioned fake system vibes, but the way it approaches doing this - and in general how it starts up - gives it the vibe that this is more of an "atari 50" style approach where it is a modern piece of software compiling the historical gameography of ufo soft for future generations to experience. it doesnt seem to know if it wants to be one or the other, and as a result we have this bizarre situation where everything outside of the games also seems to somehow be within the fake system which doesnt really make much sense to me. and then you have the really clumsy menu system which feels like it wouldve been far better suited as a list with screenshots and game info being perpetually on screen off to the side so it can be more easily conveyed what the heck is going on in a game. the dusting off animation is only cute the first couple of times, when you have 50 of these games it becomes a weird brief element of tedium tbh.

like visually this entire thing is bloody gorgeous but the entire encasing premise that surrounds these 50 games is disruptive to the entire concept in a way that actively bothers me just as much as i think that the way it advertises it self in the description is a little too generous and stretched from the truth.

so yeah its just. tl;dr this is a bag of bizarre design choices, poor difficulty curving, false expectations and missed potential for me. you'll probably like it. but i really did not, in a lot of ways that really irk me. but hey, that's games, it aint all for everyone is it now. im curious to see what exactly theyll be changing in upcoming patches if at all and i might revisit this in future if it gets tightened up more and is less busy trying to mimic old nes games of yore slightly too hard.

most games have much more depth than you realize, incredibly charming and genuinely fun despite not being huge on retro games, also an insane amount of content for completionists.

This game is an absolute gem. I'm not a huge fan of every single one of the games in the collection, but it's so fun to jump in between them all and explore. There is a great selection with varying difficulty and game types - something for everyone. After my boys saw me playing this they wanted to try and now they're all hooked (I'm in my 40s and they're around ages 10-13).

I adore the sense of discovery in these games. When you pick up a game and starts testing out the controls, you form assumptions about the limits of the character you play as. these assumptions are often wrong in these games, and you consistently discover more and more of your capabilities and ways to play these games! This entire package is extremely refreshing and consistently surprising!

A very short synopsis of this game is...You remember Action 52? The collection of NES games on one cart that spawned the Cheetahmen as a meme?

This is far, Far, FAR better than that. These are 50 games that would each be mid-late NES era quality, and usually a little larger in scope. The music across the collection is delightfully chiptune, and would've fit quite well on a period-appropriate console. The gameplay on each is generally solid. That said, this is FIFTY games across a whole mess of genres. There'll probably be some games you like and some you don't, but most of them are good quality.

They even took the time to add lore and an over-arching story to this. This is all framed as a forgotten software collection unearthed from a developer years ahead of their time. You can see their progression and improving skills as you advance "chronologically" across the collection. And hey, there might just be a few surprises hidden across the collection.

If you're alright with 8-bit era graphics and sound, I'd say this is a must buy. There are some individual games that could easily be $5-6 indie titles on Steam by themselves.

It's not easy to understand the scope or enormity of the achievement that is UFO 50. It's a love letter to a bygone era or maybe a call to action about an era you missed. There's a indescribable joy of getting a box of games and trying them out one by one. Naturally not every game will speak to you, others might feel like they've been waiting for you to discover them your whole life and you are amazed that it took this long for you to discover it. This game is romantic, enthralling, fascinating and shows what this medium is capable of. On the off chance you've made it this far and it isn't crystal clear. You should buy this game and play it immediately.

I wanted to write an in-depth review for those people on the fence about this game and not buying into the hype wholeheartedly. UFO 50 is absolutely a labor of love by it's developers, and as someone who grew up in the era these games are imitating they absolutely should appeal to me, but they do not. There is a classic trap that many "old school but new" games fall into when trying to emulate the era. That is the fallacy that old games had to have insane difficulty spikes and punishing game play.
[hr][/hr]


Take a look at some classic NES games for illustration of what I mean. Any Mario game will start off easier and slowly ramp up the challenge as you get deeper into the game, however the curve is balanced by not only doing that super late into the game but also by introducing new power ups and giving you alternate routes if you are clever enough to find them. Even games like Contra that are notorious for their difficulty do not punish you for not making pixel perfect jumps or exact to the second timing on your inputs. And even in the rare cases where games did expect that level of skill such as Ghost And Goblins, or Megaman, they kept the gameplay loop interesting enough that you wanted to keep trying.
[hr][/hr]


And sadly UFO 50 does none of that. Every single game in this series will give you one or two levels to get interested in them and then SLAM you with an insane difficulty spike. And there are also many games in this collection where the game play loop is just...bad, or boring, really really boring. Add to that the asinine control schemes of many of the titles, as well as the lack of easy to follow instructions... I just do not think this collection is the right choice for most people who are not absolutely desperate for new content from the 80s-90s era of gaming.
[hr][/hr]


Having said all of that there are a few games I enjoyed such as Ninpek, Mortol (both games), and Warptank. Warptank in fact easily stands up to even the best games of that era in my opinion. But at the end of the day having just a small few games that I enjoyed did not make the collection worth the price to me. I appreciate the dedication of the developers who participated in this, but at the end of the day they missed the mark on the vast majority of these games. I genuinely believe that nostalgia for their childhood is a huge factor in why so many people gave this collection positive reviews.

It's as if time stopped and everything was forced to stay 8 bit for two decades. Think what strange mutations of games you'd see. There's fifty games here, and every one of them would've been something you'd rent a dozen times, easy. There's more wildness here than you'd expect, and while the games are occasionally Nintendo hard they're never unfair. Well worth your time and money.

I was hoping I'd finally have the right words for this at the 100 hour mark, but I'm still struggling. It's really good, might not be for everyone, but is ridiculously technically impressive.

The developers have delivered a package that delivers 50 individual games that are all fun in their own right, but also tells a story about a company slowly developing mastery over game development over a decade.

The first few games in the collection have rudimentary character controls, barely have sounds, don't have title screens, didn't have credits yet, but all innovate in their own surprising ways. Further in the collection, the games get far closer in feeling to what Rare or Capcom made for the NES, but with small callbacks to previous games in UFO 50 for anyone who's taken the time to explore them.

If you're the kind of person that can appreciate the fact that this team included 2 JRPGs in two distinct styles, one where a game over requires the player to load their last save, and another where the player only drops money and is sent back to town, just to tell a story about developers getting better at their craft and ongoing experiments with save systems, you owe it to yourself to pick up this collection.

Nobody at Mossmouth had to make any of these simpler games to learn. Instead, the limitations they've chosen aesthetically and mechanically help push this weird pseudo-narrative artistic interpretation of the collection as a whole. It's ridiculously cool and I don't think there's ever been anything else quite like this.

Simply put, the amount of game development talent on display here is actually incredible.

It's hard to believe what the developers have achieved here. The scale of the ambition on display here is staggering; these aren't 50 mini games, these are all fully realised games with depth and charm.

If these games were real and came out in the 80s then UFOsoft would be as beloved as Nintendo - these games are THAT good.

Several of these games are genuinely GOTY 2024 contenders on their own. The fact that they all come together in one package is still mind-blowing even 35 hours in.

I can see myself as coming back to these games for decades to come.

Astonishing.

It's almost unbelievable how good this pseudo-retro collection is. Most of the game design decisions made inside of it are absolutely stellar, I truly adore such delightful gameplay.

I am 10 hours in, current completion (just the golden award, not the cherry challenge) - only FOUR games (out of 50!!!, not touching RPGs yet!), some games require an hour, some of them are deep enough to sink 10-20 hours into (moreover, there are a few roguelikes involving unique level generation), some of the games can be enjoyed every weekend as crazy, even addicting couch brawlers on par with Nidhogg, Samurai Gunn, Duck Game or Towerfall Ascension, absolute MOST of the collection is a polished, top-notch retrogaming experience, still reading the review? You will love UFO 50.

My conclusion here - now I perceive it as the Little Pandora's Videogame Box, insatiably taking your time, giving you sleep deprivation, crushing your plans, playing with your nerves... but at the bottom of the box lie nostalgic, warm memories of NES/SNES/SEGA/GB gaming era, sense of achievement upon beating that hard rival/zone after dozens and dozens of tries and the last, but not least, pure gaming joy.

At worst, it's 50 cents a game. At best, it's a reimagining of retro games that have learned from 40 years of design. Challenging, clever, and cute as heck.

unbelievable collection of games. UFO 50 is more than just "check out this absurd amount of games"--it's a really well-constructed package that makes trying out new stuff feel exciting. the games here do not hold back and you have to be willing to put in a ton of effort to get the most out of them--you can bounce off something very easily but find that you actually love it when you take the time to commit. i think it's given me a new perspective on what it means to find value in games--having fun with something that you'll likely never be able to finish, stepping outside of your comfort zone, figuring out what sorts of things matter to you the most. its existence feels impossible but it's real and you can play forever.

This brings me back to being a child and switching out the Nintendo cartridges to play a completely different game every 10 to 15 minutes. I thought I was losing interest in gaming in general, this has helped me learn to just enjoy games all over again.

I don't think this game needs my help to convince anyone to play it, so let me just give a tip to anyone starting UFO 50: Boot up the 44th game Pilot Quest first, as it has idle game mechanics in it, so the automated processes you set up will continue to make resources while UFO 50 is open. I would recommend you start it up first so that you bank resources while you play the other games.

Just to preface, I'm approximately 50 hours into UFO 50. I have played 35 of the 50 games in chronological order and fully completed 18 of them. A full completion is referred to as a 'cherry' in this game.

This game is incomprehensibly ambitious and I still can't wrap my head around how this was ever made and released at such an inexpensive price point. There really are 50(!) video games in this pack, each of which could have been released for $5 and nobody would bat an eye. Of course, some are better than others but there is not a single one that I've played that could be seen as being objectively bad.

As you work your way through this fictitious developer's chronology, you'll notice a marked increase in video game complexity and scope, which makes me so much more excited to try out the remaining 15 games. Many of the earlier, more simplistic games took me 1.5-2 hours for a cherry completion but the newer RPGs, puzzle games, strategy games, metroidvanias, and even an immersive sim-like are taking me upwards of 5 hours per game to cherry.

One tangential complaint I have is this game's handling of achievements, it should have shipped with 100-150 achievements with 2-3 per game to meet the gift, gold, and cherry requirements. The current achievements are extremely unrewarding and frankly dull.

I believe UFO 50 is a must-own for any gamer who even remotely enjoys the NES/SNES era of video games, and for those who don't, this is an excellent introduction and what may become an eventual deep dive into what made these games so iconic. Almost all of these games, if released in the 80s, would be talked about like Mario and Zelda are today. A tremendous accomplishment from Mossmouth.

This is a once in a life time game. Even after 100 hours and 15 full clears, I still have so much more left to explore inside UFO 50. I wanted to hold off writing a review for this game until I had collected all the cherry disks but that seems like it'll take months at the rate I've been going. So instead here's a short review telling you this game is absolutely worth your money. The variety alone is enough to guarantee that you'll find something in this collection that'll click with you, even if you aren't the biggest retro gaming fan.

I adore this game and want nothing but the best for these developers.

I am shocked with how many substantial games are included. They don't feel like mini games or flash games. There are some full fledged, feature length games in here!

i would be lying if i said some of these games didn't turn me into the Freakin' Angry Video Game Nerd but the overall quality is so high - even in the ones that have admittedly overtuned difficulty - that it's impossible not to recommend this. i spent more time on just Bug Hunter, Avianos, and Devilition than i spend on some entire games that i've paid more than 25 dollars for, and i haven't even gotten to 70% of the games on UFO 50's roster. crazy!

It's difficult to describe what a tremendous value UFO 50 is. It's a tremendous accomplishment of game design, 50 cohesive, interesting, diverse, fun, clever games of different lengths and genres, but/and it's also so clearly a labor of love made by people with a deep nostalgic fondness for the early videogame industry and a beautiful vision of an alternate history where one company had a catalog this strong on an Atari-alike that never existed. If you have any fondness whatsoever for retro gaming, you need to own and play this. Take your time with it. Chase the high scores. Read the behind the scenes info. Learn its weird crafted history and the invented names of the people who made it. I can see why it took 7 years to make, and it was time well spent. Bravo, Mossmouth. This is an achievement.

In the current gaming landscape, the unabashedly retro UFO 50 feels like a breath of fresh air. Firing it up feels like the perfect antidote to what often feels wrong with modern game design. No need to spend hours getting through the opening cinematics and tutorial stages just to find out that it's the same thing you've already played a thousand time before. Just a few button presses and you're in.

For anyone who grew up before the PlayStation era, the types of games that make up this collection should be instantly recognizable: adventure games, puzzle games, sports titles, and many more. When you launch a new one, the basic gameplay tends to be immediately obvious. Despite relying on only two buttons, many of these have a surprising amount of subtlety and depth; some even take hours to finish. UFO 50 isn't content just to rehash the tropes of those genres, but adds its own twist to whatever it does. The golf game isn't just a golf game, but also a sidescrolling sci-fi platformer. The adventure game isn't just a adventure game, but a procedurally generated open world exploration game. As such, what really makes UFO 50 stand out is not the way it is retro but the way it modernizes old tropes.

Playing these games doesn't feel like they were made by someone taking their first steps towards understanding game design - rather they feel like a creative outlet for someone feeling burnt out from spending years on large game projects. These comparatively tiny games (some can be played from start to finish in as little as 15 minutes) seem to have no room in a gaming industry that favors blockbuster titles over small yet imaginative projects. In a strange way, I found that spending hours on UFO 50 didn't make me nostalgic for the glory days of NES, but I found myself missing the Flash game scene where a small game with an interesting idea could unexpectedly find itself in front of millions of players around the world. As such, I hope UFO 50 can find itself an audience large enough to inspire a cottage industry of similarly high-quality titles.

Barbuta is game of the year
Bug Hunter is game of the year
Ninpek is game of the year
Paint Chase is game of the year
Magic Garden is game of the year
Mortol is game of the year
Velgress is game of the year
Planet Zoldath is game of the year
Attactics is game of the year
Devilition is game of the year
Kick Club is game of the year
Avianos is game of the year
Mooncat is game of the year
Bushido Ball is game of the year
Block Koala is game of the year
Camouflage is game of the year
Campanella is game of the year
Golfaria is game of the year
The Big Bell Race is game of the year
Warptank is game of the year
Waldorf’s Journey is game of the year
Porgy is game of the year
Onion Delivery is game of the year
Caramel Caramel is game of the year
Party House is game of the year
Hot Foot is game of the year
Divers is game of the year
Rail Heist is game of the year
Vainger is game of the year
Rock On! Island is game of the year
Pingolf is game of the year
Mortol 2: The Confederacy Of Nilpis is game of the year
Fist Hell is game of the year
Overbold is game of the year
Campanella 2 is game of the year
Hyper Contender is game of the year
Valbrace is game of the year
Rakshasa is game of the year
Star Waspir is game of the year
Grimstone is game of the year
Lords Of Diskonia is game of the year
Night Manor is game of the year
Elfazar’s Hat is game of the year
Pilot Quest: Return To Zoldath is game of the year
Mini & Max is game of the year
Combatants is game of the year
Quibble Race is game of the year
Seaside Drive is game of the year
Campanella 3 is game of the year
Cyber Owls is game of the year

This game is absolutely insane. With 50 FULLY REALISED GAMES, NOT JUST SHOVELWARE SLOP, you'll find at least a couple you like, even if some of them don't entirely resonate with you.

Oh, and do mind the first game. It's intentionally clunky to give that "Dev's first real game" feel.

This simulates going to a garage sale in the 90's and getting a NES and 50 games for 20 bucks, no manuals, no guides, and no wiki with three decades of datamining. This is possibly some of the highest praise I could give to a game.

To the younger players, sink a few hours into a game, and you start to understand how it works and you get better at it. Try to play every game and get a grip on it, meet it half-way. Don't give up.

UFO 50 is the real deal. The people who know, know exactly what that means. If you've played video games for the last 25+ something years, you owe it to yourself to play this.

The mad lads at Mossmouth have done it: they've gamified the concept of playing videogames. For anyone who enjoys digging through archived media, piecing together the connective tissue between the works, and falling in love when you least expect it. UFO 50 is more than the sum of its playable parts, it is a meditation on the world's strangest most fascinating form of entertainment and a love letter to the incredible people behind it. There is a reason why those bored business software engineers were destined to take that first bold step into a new realm of creativity and imagination. When given the right tools, art finds its way out of the soul. #1 Thorson Petter fan signing off.

I don't think there is ever going to be a 'perfect' moment to review this game. It is so notoriously BIG. Colossal. Monumental in size and scope.

In a nutshell what it is: A fake imaginary company has made a set of games for a imaginary machine called LX. These are the games that have been 'salvaged' (from a garage?). In reality it's like loading up a ROM set for some unknown console from the 1982-1989 era and diving in. Games reflect that.

So why should you care? If you are into anything retro then check it out but if you are having doubts then please look into gameplays and reviews. Some are refunding because they dont like the first game that is deliberately very plain. After all according to the fake development story 'it was made in secret as a side project at work and nearly got the dev fired'. And from there the fake game company story opens up as you play the 50 different games, all available to you right away. And the Meta.... there is actually a 51:st game as well that covers all the games but that is for the player community at large to find out and it will take time so if you want to contribute to this wild treasure hunt for meta and secrets buy in now and get into it.

For once here is a game that has not been spoiled to pieces yet and it will take considerable time before it is in such a state, the content is just so massive.

10/10 potential, GOTY 2024 potential and GOAT potential. Period. Impossible to give a proper x/10 grading now as my hours are not even close to what they should be.

This is super cool. There's so much there, and a lot of it is obviously fun right away. There are a handful that are more mechanically interesting and take a little time to suss out. The sheer variety and interesting variations on what you might expect is a huge accomplishment.

When I was a kid, I traded a prized game boy cartridge (can't recall which one) to a kid for a (bootleg?) foreign multicart game with a button on the back. It allowed you to hit the button to switch to a different game on the cart. The number of games was in the dozens, my little mind was blown by this. None of them were games that I'd known and there were a few gems in there that were actually compelling to play. This game reminds me of that treasure trove of games, or even going to distant relatives a few hours away and stumbling upon an epic collection of NES games I'd never played before. In this case however, most of the games are actually compelling and fun.

this game is crazy good, don't listen to the haters who booted up 'barbuta' and assumed every game was going to be like that. it is intentionally abrasive and clunky because it's the first game for the console and was developed in-universe by one guy in secret while the console was being developed (which is a wonderfully cool bit of storytelling expression in gameplay - in fact, you can see all of the games get more visually complex and more developed as the chronology goes on).

there is a truly impressive amount of variety on display here, and tons of unique ideas that are well worth $25. some of my favorites were Avianos (grid-based territory control strategy game), Night Manor (horror point-and-click adventure), and Waldorf's Journey (jump king-esque platformer) - but really, above all else, my favorite aspect of this game is the amount of stunning pixel art on display. every single game in this collection is dripping with style, and I spent quite a bit of my playtime (20 hours as of writing, barely scratched the surface of most games) marveling at how gorgeous these games are.

all of this fails to mention how many 2-player co-op and competitive games there are in here. bushido ball, avianos, quibble race - the list goes on, genuinely - this game has *insane* value for someone who is able to take advantage of the couch co-op 2P/3P modes.

highly highly recommend if you find games as an artform engaging or interesting at all. this collection is a real display of how beautiful and varied the medium can be. just make sure you read the game descriptions - you may find something extra hiding in there.