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adamwhiteley
24th January 2025

UFO 50 review: An inventive collection that’s more than the sum of its parts

50 more ways to get distracted from your work
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UFO 50 review: An inventive collection that’s more than the sum of its parts
Credit: Mossmouth

UFO 50 is ostensibly a minigame collection designed by a 6-man team, led by Derek Yu, the mind behind games like Aquaria and the highly acclaimed Spelunky. However, to describe UFO 50 as a ‘minigame collection’ seems like a disservice. ‘Minigame’ conjures up images of games like the WarioWare series or NES Remix, full of five-minute endeavours that you’ll play a couple of times and forget about for a while. While certain games in UFO 50 fit this mould (and do it extremely well, mind you), there are games here that are so fleshed-out and detailed they would’ve been worth the £20 price tag by themselves.

The internet’s (and my) game of choice seems to be ‘Party House’, an extremely charming roguelike deckbuilder where you have to invite guests to your party, gaining money and popularity while trying to avoid trouble, all in the quest to hold the ultimate party (whether it be with aliens or T-Rexes). There’s also ‘Night Manor’, a horror point-and-click adventure game with multiple endings and an engaging story, and ‘Rail Heist’, described by some as a ‘metroidbrainia’, where figuring out the intricacies of the game’s mechanics makes for a fun and challenging puzzle platformer. As soon as you think you’ve found the best game, you find one even better.

The unsettling point-and-click adventure ‘Night Manor’. Credit: Mossmouth

The sheer variety on display here is astounding. If you’ve ever seen the Angry Video Game Nerd’s review of Action 52, you’ll know how often he complains about the abundance of space shooters, or puzzle games in the Sega Genesis remake. No such complaint can be made about UFO 50. Nothing is constant, with games ranging from simple and fast competitive arcade action like ‘Bushido Ball’ to sprawling, expansive RPGs like ‘Grimstone’. You can play for days and never get bored.

The completion tracking is also smartly done, with in-game disk icons being ‘gilded’ if you complete their main objective, and then subsequently ‘cherried’ if you do something extraordinary like 100% completion or achieve a specific score. A virtual garden gets filled up with gifts as you play, giving you a nice visual representation of your progress. There is even a secret 51st game, ‘Miasma Tower’, accessible by executing a specific command found in the first game in the main menu terminal. I have sunk 90 hours into UFO 50 and there are still games where I’ve barely scratched the surface. It’s a completionist’s dream.

UFO 50 sets itself apart from other games of its ilk by establishing a universe containing a fictional company named UFO Soft, responsible for creating all the games in the collection. Each game is given a fictional year of release, and ‘Miasma Tower’ shows the failing state of the company in its final year. The files were reportedly found in an abandoned warehouse and collated by developer Gregory Milk. These little details give the games so much more character and make them feel much more cohesive and expansive than other minigame collections, especially with certain characters appearing multiple times in separate titles.

The audiovisual component of the game also gives it a unique feel, with a charming ’80s-inspired palette of only 32 colours per game and individual intro screens for each entry. The nearly seven-hour-long soundtrack, composed by Eirik Suhrke, uses wavetable synthesis to create an atmosphere more akin to a home computer system rather than the common NES-inspired indie game soundtrack trope. Even if you suck at one of the games (curse you, ‘Onion Delivery’), it’s just fun to experience the atmosphere.

Now, unfortunately, with 50 games involved not all of them are going to be classics and there are games here that I do think have failings. Despite its interesting premise, the underwater Metroidvania ‘Porgy’ suffers due to the constant backtracking and lethargic early-game progression. ‘Combatants’, a game about controlling an ant army, should be fun, but unfortunately, the AI is either bugged or poorly implemented and it’s quite difficult to get your ally ants to do anything you want them to.

But even if a couple of games are a bit below the curve, that still gives this game a 96% success rate — a pass by any margin. And with a steady stream of updates, these issues will most likely fade in the coming months.

UFO 50 is a charming, fun, and creative selection of games, and really will have something for everybody, whether you’re a casual player or looking for something to spend hundreds of hours mastering. While the fact that the game is a Windows exclusive may turn some people off, I implore you to check it out and give each individual game its due attention. It will not disappoint.


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