UFO 50 is celebrating its one-year anniversary right now, September 18, 2025. Under, we replicate on how digesting the sport week by week for a complete yr has made a long-lasting impression.
UFO 50 is essentially the most audacious recreation experiment I’ve ever seen. The pitch–a fictional retro recreation assortment consisting of fifty full-fledged retro-style video games, all linked with sequel iteration and a winding meta-narrative–was spectacular from the primary second I heard about it. I beloved the sport after I reviewed it final yr, and it ranked extremely on my checklist of the yr’s favorites.
However even nonetheless, I wasn’t ready for the way UFO 50 would observe me into this yr with ritualistic regularity. In the long run, this assortment of faux retro video games has been an unimaginable ongoing lesson in recreation design.
For my evaluation, I dabbled in all 50 video games, however naturally, I did not full all of them. Not even shut. I performed sufficient to get a really feel for them, to see the breadth of genres, and to select just a few key favorites that I spent extra time with. That was sufficient for an preliminary, vital analysis.
On the identical time, I caught wind of an virtually equally audacious plan from the podcast Eggplant: The Secret Lives of Games. The present, hosted by a group of unbiased builders together with former recreation journalist Nick Suttner, had been round for years, taking a deep-dive on numerous indie video games. With the discharge of UFO 50, the present dedicated itself to “A Yr of UFO 50,” taking part in every recreation within the assortment one after the other in what they’d come to name a “guide membership” format. I acknowledged Suttner from his days on the 1UP Present, and I used to be curious to listen to a deeper examination of every recreation, so I checked it out.
One yr later, I am satisfied that that is the perfect strategy to play UFO 50. One recreation at a time, punctuated by insightful commentary.
The primary episode adopted the primary recreation Barbuta, a basic and rudimentary-looking metroidvania. Most individuals’s first expertise with Barbuta is identical: You are taking a single step to the correct and instantly die. There isn’t a tutorial or immediate to activate this; you are simply positioned in a room, dealing with to the correct, and your gamer instincts have taught you to “learn” a display from left to proper, so that you begin strolling in that course.
The truth that the sport instantly and brutally punishes you for this is sort of a mission assertion for the gathering: Query your assumptions, watch your step, and be keen to take these video games on their very own phrases. It’s additionally, fact be instructed, a reasonably good joke, when you’re keen to simply accept that slapping down the participant in sudden brutal trend will be humorous when you take it with the correct humor.
The Eggplant podcast examined all of this with a depth and readability that feels prefer it may solely correctly come from those that have really been within the trenches growing video games themselves. I used to be hooked, and resolved to observe alongside every week–if not ending every recreation, no less than placing in a while to grasp what made them tick on a deeper stage than I had an opportunity to for evaluation. It felt like listening to panels on the Game Builders Convention. It’s fascinating as a result of it is not consumer-facing. These have been builders speaking to different builders concerning the work of but different builders. I used to be glimpsing a personal house.
Over the course of 1 yr with UFO 50, I’ve realized a few wealth of board recreation influences on numerous basic recreation genres; how golf mechanics are far more prevalent than I might realized in a group that has no less than two precise golf video games; the varied methods UFO 50 marries influences from the Eighties with the flash recreation tradition of the early 2000s; and even how the sport itself is in a deep, probing dialog with a 1978 guide by Bernard Fits referred to as The Grasshopper: Video games, Life, and Utopia. This will have been apparent sufficient for many who had formal training in recreation growth and browse Fits’ guide as a part of their curriculum, however for me, it was a revelation. That is removed from an exhaustive checklist, as I am certain I am going to proceed recalling and using what I’ve realized for years to come back.
Because the yr of UFO 50 has come to an finish, the podcast has more and more shifted its focus to the meta-narrative. UFO 50 drops Easter eggs all through, and I had gotten a obscure sense of bigger happenings and conflicts between the characters of UFO Delicate as I performed for evaluation. Now understanding the complete narrative arc of the fictional, doomed growth studio, all the expertise is richer and extra textured. There are a number of plot twists inside UFO 50–not the person video games however the meta-game itself–that I’d have utterly missed if I hadn’t launched into this journey of discovery.
Because of this, UFO 50 is much more spectacular than I had first thought. It is a compilation of fifty completely different unique video games, a lot of that are sensible on their very own. However it’s additionally a singular recreation, with all 50 items taking part in their very own function, making a selected assertion and offering a mirrored image on recreation growth, company tradition, the character of play, creative endeavors, and extra. UFO 50 got down to inform the story of a recreation studio that by no means existed, and brought holistically, it is an unimaginable achievement that may inform how we have a look at actual builders who do exist, artwork, and artists, and the challenges of creativity and capitalism.
For me, diving deep into UFO 50 with regularity every week has made the expertise higher. I’d advocate the podcast to anybody who likes that listening medium. However even when not a podcast, the easiest way to take pleasure in UFO 50 is with a neighborhood. The UFO 50 subreddit has fertile discussions over tier rankings and mods. Lots of the video games have spawned their very own devoted speedrunning lovers. Speedrunners even put collectively a latest charity occasion referred to as Cherry Rush, as among the greatest UFO 50 gamers on the earth pooled their experience to realize the “Cherry” completion standing for every recreation within the assortment in a single weekend. Cherry is the last word achievement in every of the UFO 50 video games, marking not simply completion however mastery of the programs.
UFO Delicate is a fictional online game developer. The precise video games have been made primarily by Spelunky creator Mossmouth, aka Derek Yu,alongside builders Jon Perry and Eirik Suhrke.However whilst formidable as UFO 50 appeared after I first heard about it, spending a yr exploring it with a neighborhood and studying extra about online game growth has made the achievement much more spectacular. The chance to see it deconstructed not simply as a gamer or a critic, however the best way builders themselves see it, was a uncommon deal with. I will not quickly overlook it.