Reviewing Every Single UFO 50 Game

20 Oct, 2024

Intro

UFO 50 may be one of my favorite games ever made. After ~8 years of development and lots of delays, a group of veteran game developers did the impossible: create fifty high quality retro games! Needless to say, I've been a bit obsessed with the entire thing.

Reviewing UFO 50 is sort of an impossible task. Every review boasts something along the lines of "There are 50 games and they're great", but that's like saying the SNES has dozens of fantastic games. What about them is great? Which ones made the biggest impression?

That's what inspired me to write this post. Rather than waiving at the whole thing and saying it's fantastic, I wanted to delve deeper and write a full review for each game in UFO 50. Things got a bit out of hand and it took almost a month writing on and off to put my thoughts into words, but here it is!

I expect nobody will have the free time or willpower to read the entire post, so feel free to skip to specific game reviews using the table of contents above. If you're just here for the tier list, open the spoiler below!

Games Tier List

Games in lower ranks don't mean they're bad, it's just that I liked some games more than others. Even ones in D tier can be enjoyable for some time, so don't worry too much about your favorite game having a lower rating.

Finally, I'll preface my reviews by saying that I've only ever played these games singleplayer since there's sadly no online play, and my internet isn't stable enough for Parsec or Steam Remote Play. Half the games support multiplayer but I can only speak to the singleplayer mode of each one.

Quick note: in UFO 50, beating a game awards you with a gold border over it, while beating a specific challenge (such as getting the true ending or 100% of items) awards you with a cherry border. I casually refer to these in my reviews as gilding and cherrying them.

1 - Barbuta

Barbuta is supposed to be the very first game created by a sole developer in 1982, and boy does it feel that way. It's a classic adventure platformer similar to games like the old Prince of Persia. Explore a castle, avoid traps, find secrets, and reach the end without losing all your lives.

The most endearing thing about Barbuta, and possibly its most damning, is just how much it commits to the bit of being an ultra-retro game. Your movement speed is very slow, platforming is awkward since you don't have any control in the air, combat has zero feedback, and you're given NO guidance whatsoever. You don't get any direction for where to go or what you're supposed to be doing. Even picking up an item has zero fanfare or explanation; you're expected to figure out what a pin or umbrella is used for on your own.

There's no music and barely any sound effects save for some beeps and boops. Taking one step to the right after starting the game instantly drops the ceiling on you, making it clear what type of game you're about to play.

Of course, this is all by design. You're expected to play through the game a few times, each time figuring out a little more about where to go and where each secret is. Your first few times will be frustrating and have a lot of trial and error, but the sense of discovering and understanding the game is very satisfying. That doesn't mean the slow movement speed and constant backtracking isn't tedious, though.

While I wouldn't call my playthrough of Barbuta very fun, it's a neat experience that you'd never see in 2024. Barbuta made me appreciate just how much video games have progressed from those old days.

RANK: C

2 - Bug Hunter

Bug Hunter is a deceptively difficult strategy game where you need to defeat alien bugs as fast as possible before they evolve and take over the planet! It's very comparable to Into the Breach, which shares the same general aesthetic and randomly generated puzzle-like levels.

I bounced hard off of this game at first since I'm not usually a fan of these types of strategy games, but I ended up revisiting it and enjoyed it a lot more. Bug Hunter is really difficult, but it's so mechanically deep that it feels rewarding to lose and learn more about how it works.

The game starts by giving you a few abilities to move and shoot. Each move can only be used once per turn, but collecting enough energy allows you to buy a new move to replace another one and make it immediately ready to use. This can act as a way to refresh a slot and use it again, which is really clever because now you have to wonder when to buy abilities rather than just what to buy.

If bugs are alive at the end of the turn, they will evolve and become more difficult to deal with. Each type has its own gimmick, such as needing two hits to kill or shooting shrapnel on death. Once fully evolved, they turn into an egg. It's game over if a single egg hatches, forcing you to pay attention to every single bug around the map.

While collecting energy can be used to get better abilities, it also explodes when shot which is fantastic for clearing lots of bugs around the level - assuming you don't also blow up yourself in the process. It's a really good mechanic balancing whether it's worth killing bugs easily and missing out on long-term benefits. All of these risk/reward mechanics work really well together, and it gets exciting trying to push your luck and hoping you get away with it in future turns.

It also feels like a lot of elements need a bit of luck, like which abilities are available in the shop and which type of bug is most prevalent. Sometimes the skill shop can have a lot of miscellaneous abilities that aren't particularly useful, while some bugs like the orange ones are harder to take down compared to other ones.

Despite not being my type of game, Bug Hunter is a very well-designed game that I found myself playing again and again to try and get the gold. People who enjoy grid-based strategy games are going to love this one.

RANK: B

3 - Ninpek

Ninpek is an autoscrolling platformer that also has a very "early NES" retro feel to it. Despite having an arcadey score system, the goal isn't to get a high score, but to reach the end of the level without wasting all your lives.

Overall, it's a pretty good and simple retro platformer. There's a great variety of enemies and since the game itself is roughly 10 minutes long, it never overstays its welcome. While Ninpek is theoretically short, it is a bit difficult though, so expect to die a few times and restart at the beginning.

There are a few interesting quirks about Ninpek, like how your character moves with the camera, meaning that you're always being pushed to the right and need to be careful not to run into enemies and projectiles. On the other hand, dying lets you respawn as an invulnerable ghost that can shoot projectiles for a few seconds. That's awfully nice as it lets you clear enemies before jumping back in, and it's how I ended up beating the last section of Ninpek.

There's also a "2nd loop" where after finishing the game, you get to play a harder version of the level. The 2nd loop is neat, but it's surprisingly not as different or difficult as you'd expect. There are a few more enemies running around and some enemies shoot more projectiles than before, but Ninpek is really generous with how many lives it gives you, so you'll be fine if you gather enough score.

RANK: B

4 - Paint Chase

Paint chase is an action game with pac-man style movements where you try to cover as much of the screen with blue paint to win. Enemies run around covering their tracks with red paint, so you need to run them over to defeat them. As you progress the game introduces new enemies, new obstacles, and new powerups you can gain by painting over them.

Paint chase sounds a lot more fun than it actually is. The first few levels are fine, but the difficulty quickly ramps up and becomes really frustrating to play. Enemies will quickly swarm you, many of which are annoying like the spike car which can stun you if you touch it at the front, or the grenade car that will explode and cover almost half the map if you're too late to get him. Said grenade car can unfortunately spawn as far away as possible from you with other vehicles that can stun you in-between, making you feel powerless to do anything.

There's also a lot of elements that overcomplicate the game. Switches that turn on/off parts of the level can be hard to follow, especially with how chaotic the game already is and how little time you get to survey the map before it starts. Enemies can bounce off of bumpers and get a burst of speed, which is always kind of surprising and hard to follow.

The game being hard wouldn't be a problem... But it uses a lives system. If you fail 3 times, you have to start over from the very beginning. A full game can take ~20+ minutes, and what that boils down to is that you're forced to repeat the easy first 15 levels every time you want to take a shot at the very difficult last 10 levels. I think Paint Chase has too many ideas thrown in that makes it kind of tedious to play.

RANK: D

5 - Magic Garden

Ahh, Magic Garden! Now we're getting to the good stuff. Magic Garden is a score-chasing arcade game that at first glance looks like a mix of Snake and Pacman but manages to feel like something totally fresh. Don't let the deceptively simple and cute art fool you, there's a deep game here with a massive skill ceiling!

The goal is to pick up oppies (pink slimes) and drop them off in star tiles to save them. While doing so you'll be avoiding blue slimes and mushrooms that spawn over time. When you drop off half a dozen of oppies, a potion spawns in a random place that lets you run into evil oppies to defeat them Pacman-style.

It's a mix of being so easy to pick up and understand while being so cleverly designed that makes Magic Garden so good. You can just play it safe and try to save 200 oppies to win the game, or you could let as many enemies as possible spawn before picking up potions and go to town for huge score. It's a risk-reward system that really works.

There are even some risky moves you could do like jump over an enemy to stun them, or intentionally drop off oppies outside their zone to turn them evil, and therefore get more score. There are even a few unexplained mechanics that you'll get over time. Without giving too much away, did you realize that there are different tiers of potions?

Magic Garden feels like a long-lost classic that could've gotten the Snake/PuyoPuyo treatment of ports and sequels just because it's so neat. I instantly clicked with this game to the point where I accidentally got a cherry disk in less than half an hour of playing, and I still pop in to play a round or two to try and improve my score. It's that fun.

RANK: S

6 - Mortol

FOR MORTOLIA! Mortol is easily one of the best games in the collection, and I haven't found a single person to dispute that.

Mortol is a wonderful puzzle platformer where you have a limited number of lives and have to sacrifice them in clever ways in order to finish the level. You have a few abilities such as turning yourself into stone to make a platform to jump on, but there are a ton more interactions in levels such as turning into a plant or blocking pipes to remove water from an area.

It's already such a clever concept, but what ties everything together is that your lives carry on for the rest of the game. If you finish level 1 with only 12 lives, you'll continue on level 2 with only those lives! That means you have to really play smart and try to use each sacrifice as efficiently as possible to make later levels easier. Luckily, you can return to an older level to try and optimize it at any time. This makes the game very accessible despite being a bit hard. You can always jump in and spend 5 minutes improving a level with no consequences.

The level design is top-notch as well. Despite having quite a bit of content, the levels never slow down or get boring. Each level introduces something new that makes you think "Ahh, that's clever!"

Repeating levels that you barely managed to get through after understanding its mechanics and which sacrifices are necessary opens up a whole world of possibility. Suddenly you'll come out of that impossible looking level with +15 lives, and that's a testament to how well-designed it is and how it makes replaying levels very rewarding.

Mortol was a ton of fun. After finishing it I went back to get the cherry disk, and once that was done I felt sad that I was really finished. That's how you know a game is really special.

RANK: S

7 - Velgress

Velgress is a platformer roguelike where you climb the tower without falling down the crumbling platforms into the spikes below you. It's very fast, very hectic, and very hard. Hitting an enemy doesn't kill you, but it briefly stuns you and knocks you off to the spikes at the bottom.

This game is also really comparable to Downwell but rather than going down, you go up. That's not a coincidence since the developer of Downwell was part of the team making UFO 50, so there's a massive chance he's the one that worked on this game.

Anyways, what makes Velgress great is how quick and painless death is. You could die in only a few seconds into your run, and the game lets you instantly restart. It helps with the addictive "just one more try" nature of the game. Since each run is quick, this is also a really good game to play in-between all the other games in the pack.

The levels are all randomly generated and despite each level only having a few elements, like one or two types of enemies and traps, they're often put together in different ways that'll always keep you on your toes. You need to think fast on where you need to go and which dangers to prioritize. Each level also has its own distinct theme and level generation, so despite being a bit simple Velgress is surprisingly addictive and doesn't get old.

Speaking of random generation, there are coins all over the place that you can use at the end of each level to buy items. I love that this adds more flavor to each run and forces you to also go out of your way to get coins, but one of my issues with this game is that the powerups are a bit unbalanced. An extra jump and faster recovery are life-saving compared to other upgrades in the shop like a damage up, which is only mildly useful. You're always kind of hoping that you'd find one of those two upgrades in level 1's shop, or be ready to die much easier.

Velgress is an excellent arcadey roguelike. Despite being among the earlier games in UFO 50, it's quite modern and could easily pass as a cheaper indie title in 2024. I had fun cherrying it, but again there's a bit of luck needed to get the good upgrades early.

RANK: A

8 - Planet Zoldath

Planet. Zoldath. Where can I even begin? I guess I could start with WOW, I really hate this game.

This game is a top-down classic adventure where you walk around in random directions and find tools and resources on the ground. Your goal is to figure out how to use each of them to collect 3 treasure pieces and leave the planet. I hope you love walking though, because you'll be doing a lot of that.

The game is randomly generated, so every time you die you'd have to do laps around the map once again to understand what's going on and where everything is and run around finding resources to use later. The map is uninteresting but thankfully not that big, most rooms have a few walls and a few enemies at most, but most feel quite empty.

The worst thing about Planet Zoldath is that you can ONLY hold two tools (out of maybe, like, 6 that spawn randomly everywhere). Each tool is very situational, that means you will often drop a tool, go somewhere else on the map, and then realize you need to go back and pick up that tool again. This happened to me many, many times.

I walked into the dungeon and found that an enemy blocked my path, I went back to get the meat printer on the other side of the planet. I used it to lure the enemy away and go to the next room. There's another of the same enemy in my path but, uh oh! I'm out of resources to get meat! So I have to go outside, farm resource, come back, finish the two rooms again, and guess what? I was missing a specific item to enter the final room, and I had to go back outside, look for the where in the depths of Zoldath I've dropped it on the floor 10 minutes ago, and fetch it to go all the way back.

To top it all off, this game is surprisingly buggy (at least on launch). Many people in the Discord are reporting numerous ways you can softlock yourself, whether by having a bad seed or by getting an enemy stuck in your path permanently. I feel bad for the dev having to sort out this randomly generated nightmare.

There's an idea of a good game here. An adventure game that's fresh every time you restart it sounds like fun. But sadly, Planet Zoldath is a misfire in my opinion, and one of two games in the entire pack I actively disliked playing.

RANK: F

9 - Attactics

Attactics is a neat strategy game where troops automatically move forward every few seconds. It's your job to move them up, down, or backwards to get them in favorable positions to defeat the enemies in each lane and destroy the opposing castle.

There are a lot of different types of units. There are the melee ones that just move forward, horseback units that move two spaces at once, archer units which shoot in a straight line, ninja units which shoot upwards, etc. Most troops often have an advantage over other specific units, such as the shield unit that can block arrows. The strategy aspect comes into understanding which troops will counter enemy ones, and arranging your lanes accordingly.

The thing about Attactics is that you only get a few seconds before all troops move, so in reality it's more of an action game than a strategy one. You often know what you need to do and where troops need to be, but the challenge is in quickly ordering all your troops before they clash with enemies.

Each fight is very bite-sized, usually lasting a minute or two, which makes Attactics a very good game for quickly hopping in and playing for a few minutes. There's a campaign where each level gets increasingly difficult and chooses which units can appear, a ranked mode where you need to constantly win to increase your rank, and a survival mode (which is self-explanatory). There's surprisingly a lot of content and modes despite the game itself being fairly straightforward.

The way Attactics does difficulty is interesting. Your opponent can't move troops or control where they spawn, so the game compensates for that by spawning more enemies than friendly units. Sometimes the AI can spawn units almost twice as fast as you. This usually means that the longer the game goes on, the more you're at a disadvantage. If you fail to attack their base within the first minute or so, the enemies will outnumber you and quickly run you over.

I'm not sure how I feel about that because it means there's a lot of luck to it. Sometimes you can get lucky and a specific lane would be empty, and sometimes enemy placement would be genuinely good so it's not possible to win early (and therefore your chances of winning go straight down). Not to mention the type of units that spawn also being random.

Attactics is fun for a while, but it does get old over time from a lack of variety. Each round starts feeling like the one before it, and despite having a couple of other modes I don't feel compelled to go back to it after beating it.

RANK: B

10 - Devilition

Devilition is an interesting puzzle game. You need to lay down units all over the board and ignite only one unit to cause a chain reaction and blow up all the demons. Each unit has their own attack patterns, and you'd need to place increasingly complicated patterns while not getting confused about where everything goes. If there are more demons than villagers by the end of a round, you lose!

Devilition is really difficult since the challenge isn't just defeating the demons, but using as few units as possible since that number carries over to later rounds. You get a bunch of units per round but if you have too few leftovers from the earlier rounds, you'll quickly lose in rounds 7-10 due to a lack of attack power.

I'm a bit conflicted on Devilition's difficulty. I really enjoy playing it and it's such a clever concept but... It feels too random. I understand that improvising is the point of the game, but there are too many moments where you need specific units to win scenarios and the game doesn't give them to you. You only have 3 pieces to choose from at a time, and there's no way to re-roll or get new units aside from placing what you have and hoping the next one will be useful.

Take the screenshot above as an example of terrible luck. There are demons at 3 corners of the screen, and in order to get around there are units like frogs (which shoot 2 tiles away), units like the cannon which shoots in a straight line, and the best unit which is the rocket and can target any part of the screen. I haven't gotten a SINGLE one of those units until the VERY LAST TWO. The game insisted on giving me cross and fork shaped units which are abysmal for moving to other sides of the screen.

What ends up happening is I waste too many units since I'm forced to just make a line from right to left. This'll hurt me in the future, and if this were a later stage I might have just straight up lost. Sometimes the game gives you too many weak units like snakes and X shaped ones, when what you need to win is just one damn rocket. I spent a long time thinking I'm just terrible at Devilition, but I slowly realized that there really is a huge amount of luck to it.

Still... Devilition can be very fun when it's not trying to screw you over. The puzzle element is very well made, and I can't help but feel clever whenever I full-clear the board with a few well-placed bombs. I think if there was just a way to make it less RNG-heavy, like having a re-roll button that can use a unit for example, it could've easily been an S-tier puzzler.

Fun fact: Devilition is actually a remake of a really old game made by Derek Yu and Jon Perry, the people who worked on UFO 50. It's impressive how similar the version in UFO 50 ended up being to that 25 year old game!

RANK: B

11 - Kick Club

Kick Club is a platformer where you run around shooting a soccer ball at enemies to defeat them whilst trying not to die. You lose a life if you get hit once and each level is as big as the screen itself.

There's nothing particularly wrong with Kick Club, but it just doesn't stand out to me. The concept is simple and never really evolves. You'll dodge enemies, shoot the soccer ball at them, proceed to the next level, and repeat.

Kick Club is also deceptively hard. Unlike Ninpek, this game is stingy with how many lives you get, and it's really easy to get hit because the player is massive. Some enemies will unexpectedly shoot projectiles at you too, so in some screens you could suddenly die if you aren't paying attention. Compared to Ninpek, Kick Club is weirdly a lot harder and less forgiving. The fact that you start over from the very beginning when losing all your lives also stings because the game can be kinda long.

The ball can sometimes bounce in unexpected ways, and when it gets to an awkward position it can be tough to get it back with all the enemies running around. Stage transitions also feel like they take forever which slows down the game a lot.

That's about it. I don't have much to say about Kick Club, it just feels very meh.

RANK: C

12 - Avianos

🙏Praying to Rexodon for 1 trillion archers so I can run over the enemy army🙏

Avianos is a strategy game where you control an army of birds and what makes it really interesting is that the game is split into two parts: the world view where you can build structures and move units to acquire tiles, and the combat view where you can order your troops to do a specific action. It sounds overwhelming at first, but once you understand what's going on Avianos is actually easy to pick up and is fairly forgiving.

You start your turn by choosing an ancient dinosaur to pray to. This determines what moves you'll do in order. In the screenshot above, I'll gain resources depending on how many structures I've got, then I can build new structures, then I can use bones for miracles (which are basically spells). Some other ancients let you choose to move or buy troops.

Once you move your troops onto enemy troops, a fight begins. From here you can command your troops to FIGHT, HOLD, FLEE, and RAZE. This is great because it gives you more to do than just watching them kill each other. If you're definitely not winning you can flee and move your troops back a tile, and if the enemies are winning the fight you can RAZE to destroy your own structures so they don't get any benefits from them. Usually you'll choose one option and leave it there, but sometimes it's useful to quickly start running or chase enemies rather than hold.

There's a few other mechanics but I'll spare you from my yapping. I was a bit overwhelmed by Avianos at the start but the more I sat with it, the more I grew to enjoy it. It strikes a good balance of having a lot of depth for those who want to use spreadsheets and optimize everything, and those who just blindly play and just focus on winning.

One thing I'm suspicious of but haven't played enough to confirm is that the game isn't that well balanced. Some ancients seem better than others, like I mentioned Rexodon which when upgraded just lets you SPAM units and run over an army with 50+ swordsmen and archers. Brontor also seems essential for early-game farming and setting up your structures. I haven't cherried this game yet, but I often find myself focusing on one half of the ancients and ignoring the others. Some miracles like teleporting your units straight into an enemy fort can also be crazy strong in the right scenarios.

The AI can also be hit or miss. Sometimes it can be smart and use miracles and positioning very well, and sometimes it would have few troops in key locations making it somewhat easy to just grab 4 forts and win. Overall it's still a very fun time unless you're looking for the hardest strategy game.

RANK: A

13 - Mooncat

Mooncat is a wild one. It's a surreal platformer that feels like it was made by an alien that doesn't fully understand how video games work. I say this in a good way!

The first thing you'll immediately notice is the insane controls. Let me explain... Pressing any arrow key will move you to the right, while pressing any face button will move you to the left. That means you can press left and it'll still move you right. The way you move around is by combining these two buttons to perform moves.

Holding a direction and pressing the other direction will make you jump. Pressing that button again in mid-air will make you slam. You can double tap a direction to slide & run, and there's one or two more techniques you can do.

Everything about Mooncat is super charming. The art and aesthetic is this beautiful spooky halloween theme, and it has some of the best music in the entirety of UFO 50. The level design itself is fairly straight forward, usually boiling down to moving left to right and slamming on enemies, but the clunky controls makes the actual platforming much more challenging and interesting than normal games.

Mooncat is fairly short and forgiving. There's a checkpoint every minute or so and the game itself can be finished in around half an hour. That said, there are secrets and alternate paths you can take. Without spoiling much, there's more to it than just winning the game. The secrets can be very obtuse though, I fully admit that I read a guide to know what I need to be doing to cherry disk the game.

Mooncat won't be for everyone. There's a fair amount of people that instantly bounce off of it, but I think if you stick with it and understand how to play, it's a magical & unique experience.

Fun Fact: Mooncat was originally created in a 2015 game jam and was called "...and the mooncats". The theme of the jam was "two buttons". So that is how Mooncat's weird controls came to be!

RANK: A

14 - Bushido Ball

Now this is a sport I can get behind. Bushido Ball is a 1v1 arcade game that's heavily inspired by Windjammers. Your goal is simple: hit the ball and get it past your opponent to score!

Bushido Ball is a bit like Pong on steroids. The idea is simple, but you have tons of different moves that make it really fast-paced and exciting. There are curve balls, lob balls, and even special moves that are completely different depending on the character you're playing with.

Special moves require using a bit of your meter that you gain by simply hitting the ball back and forth. Playing as Kotaro, double tapping attack will shoot a shuriken which can bounce the ball back or stun an enemy. Ayumi can place caltrops on the field that can be used offensively and defensively, Tomoe can shoot a grappling hook that latches onto the ball, and so on.

Each character also has their own version of an ultimate move, which lets you charge a powerful attack to launch a super fast ball. Some of these attacks curve or try to juke you in some way.

I really appreciate that every character plays differently rather than just being re-skins. Some characters play completely differently than others, and it all adds much more depth and replayability to the game.

Bushido Ball is obviously meant to be a multiplayer-focused game, but the singleplayer is also pretty good. You fight each character one by one and the difficulty increases each round. The AI gets really challenging in later rounds, it was a lot of fun getting the cherry for beating the game without losing once.

One weird omission in this game is that there isn't any music in-game for some reason. The sound effects are satisfying enough, but I feel like I'd have more fun if there was some Street Fighter-esque tunes to go along with the battle.

In the end, Bushido Ball is a fun time and is one of the few games in the collection that really makes me wish there was online multiplayer. Whenever I do gather my friends to play locally, this will definitely be one of the first things I'll open.

RANK: A

15 - Block Koala

It's a Sokoban game. You can see the screenshot and tell exactly what you're in for: Lots of mind-bending puzzles about pushing blocks around, getting stuck, curling into a ball, trying not to cry, and miraculously figuring it out 10 minutes later.

Block Koala is a neat spin on Sokoban with the main mechanic of giving blocks numbers. The higher numbers can push lower numbers, but lower numbers can't push higher numbers. So, a 4 block can push a 2, but a 2 can't push a 4. The big twist though is that you can merge any number with 1's, so a 3 can merge with a 1 and turn into a 4, which you can then use to push weaker blocks around. This is a really interesting twist since now the game isn't just about pushing blocks out of the way like most Sokoban, but rather aligning them in ways to get the most out of your merges and open up new paths. To win, you need to move the star block to the end.

The game wastes zero time getting to the difficult part. There are 50 levels, and just two levels in you'll start spending a lot of time thinking about what to do. If you're already overwhelmed... Strap in. It only gets more complicated from here.

Later levels introduce mechanics like black blocks, which lose a number every time they're pushed, or toads that mimic your movements around the level. Many of the more subtle mechanics are also not explained, so you'll have to figure them out yourself.

My only real nitpick with Block Koala is that the difficulty curve is a bit all over the place. Some early levels are brutal, and some later levels are easier than the ones that precede it. Even outside its unique mechanics of merging blocks, Block Koala assumes you're already good at Sokoban in order to clear longer paths and understand how to move blocks out of the way without blocking yourself.

But anyways, you don't need convincing. If you like these types of games, you'll like Block Koala. If you don't, this won't change your mind.

RANK: B

16 - Camouflage

Camouflage is a sweet little puzzle game. You play as a chameleon that can change color to whatever floor you're currently on. If you approach any animal's line of sight without being camouflaged, you'll be eaten. Luckily, there is a button to see exactly where each enemy's line of sight is. The goal is to reach the end of the level and pick up collectables along the way.

Camouflage might be the easiest game in UFO 50 since there isn't really any consequence to losing. You can always undo to your last move which means you can die, undo, and try something else without having to repeat the level. There are no lives, once you beat a level you'll be sent to the map screen where you can go to the next one. It's a chill game.

Each level has a baby chameleon that follows you around after picking it up, but it makes things a bit more complicated since if the baby gets spotted, you also lose. Now you'll have to camouflage correctly on two spaces rather than just one. I usually found levels much easier if you pick up the other collectables first, then grab the baby chameleon and run to the exit.

There are 15 levels so it's not nearly as long as Block Koala, but it's good that Camouflage doesn't overstay its welcome since the main mechanic doesn't really change that much. It's a solid concept that decides to end rather than become overcomplicated.

RANK: B

17 - Campanella

This is the game in UFO50's lore that turned LX systems into UFOSoft, and where we start to see the popular Campanella ship in games to come. I love this fact because Planet Zoldath was actually the first game to feature the Campanella, and even the devs act like that game never happened.

Campanella is an arcade game where you fly the ship across levels while avoiding walls and floors, defeating enemies, and trying to reach the end without running out of fuel. Every level is only as big as the screen and luckily, your fuel resets every time you exit a level.

The ship controls are excellent. There's a good amount of momentum in your movement so you can hold the boost button to fly upwards and let momentum carry you up further to save fuel, or tap the button to hover and move left and right. Once you do run out of fuel, the ship will fall and crash.

Every time you crash the ship you'll lose a life and quickly respawn at the start of the level. Lose all lives and the game will restart. That isn't as bad as it sounds because Campanella is really generous with how many lives you get. At some point I even had over 20 lives. That doesn't mean the game is easy, you will still crash A LOT.

There's a tiny slash attack the Campanella can do to defeat enemies and hit stage obstacles for fuel and score. It forces you to get uncomfortably close to things without crashing into them, which I think is neat because of how unconventional it is. You'd expect a UFO to shoot laser beams or have rockets or something, but here you get a melee attack.

There's a lot of love put into this game. Each stage has a unique theme with its own obstacles, and there are a lot of secrets peppers throughout. I've found one secret exit that lets you skip ahead a few levels, and each level has a secret coffee cup hidden away. The coffees are challenging to find and make cherrying the game very difficult since you don't have unlimited fuel to search for them. I'll get to it some day.

Campanella is simple yet highly skill based that makes it very fun to play again. You'll lose a lot, but over time you get better at piloting and understand the mechanics of each level better. Which paths to take, where secrets are to make the game easier, how to deal with certain enemies... There's a lot of fun to be had if you enjoy difficult arcade games.

RANK: A

18 - Golfaria

Golfaria is one of the most creative games in the pack. It's an open world golf adventure where you play with a sentient golf ball and can roam around the world by shooting the ball similar to... Well... Golf! Aim in a specific direction and hold to choose the strength of the shot and you're off. Just try to avoid bad terrain like sand and water.

Golfaria starts you with only 20 strokes. Using them all up without reaching a checkpoint will result in a game over and reset you back to the previous checkpoint. So many people instantly bounced off of Golfaria because the 20 stroke limit is very restrictive considering how big the open world is, and it initially seems like a very trial-and-error game.

Finding golf clubs peppered across the world will permanently increase your stroke count, and over the course of the game you'll find other upgrades that make traversal much easier. Once you get over that initial hurdle of having very limited movement, the game improves a lot and starts opening itself up to exploration. Unfortunately, that does mean the start of the game is the worst part, setting a terrible first impression that drove a lot of people to skip it entirely.

The golfing itself is pretty solid. There are a fair amount of obstacles and challenging terrain but you don't really need to be good at golfing to get around. You can easily brute force your way through some of the harder parts once you have enough strokes, and at that point the game is less about golfing and more about searching for upgrades.

One thing I really appreciate is that getting any sort of upgrade resets your stroke count, meaning you don't have to constantly go back to the previous checkpoint. You can also find eagles and birdies around the world to replenish strokes and encourage bolder exploration.

There are other golf balls you can find and talk to. Some of them share very useful hints on where you should go, while others share a bit about the story of the world. That's right, they added lore to golf!

The first half of the game where you collect upgrades and explore the world is a lot of fun. The 2nd half of Golfaria is a sort of treasure hunt where you need to collect 4 pieces to win the game. My biggest issue is that you're given no direction on where to find these pieces. The world is quite big and my biggest fear of this game happened in my last hour of it: I had no idea where to go. I found 3 pieces just by wandering around randomly, but the last one had me stumped. I had to ask others on Discord which part of the map I haven't looked in properly and ended up being a bit miffed as I approached the final stage. It's easy to miss one small part of the world and not even know it.

Golfaria is a neat little adventure that's sadly held down by lacking much-needed guidance, especially in the 2nd half of the game. I get that the point is to explore and figure things out yourself, but being told to find something specific which could be anywhere is frustrating. Luckily, the rest of Golfaria is a lot of fun. It's an experimental and creative take on what an adventure game could be, and despite its flaws I think it really pays off.

RANK: B

19 - The Big Bell Race

The Big Bell Race is the only game in the entire collection that I would classify as filler. It's just Campanella but repurposed as a very short racing game that you'll play once and probably never again.

That's not to say it's a terrible game or anything, but it's just not exciting. It has the same controls and sprites as Campanella, and your goal is to lap around the stage a couple of times and move on to the next level.

The AI is really bad, which is actually a good thing because the mechanics of this game can be very frustrating. You still have the short-range melee attack but can only use it to bump ships next to you. At the start of the game when everyone spawns next to each other, you will constantly get bumped into walls and other players until you manage to get ahead and not be bothered again.

There are also Mario Kart-ish powerups that spawn randomly. Some of these are really OP, like this one powerup that lets you have two flaming balls circle around you and allows you to just run into everyone else to damage them. Your ship gets destroyed if it takes too much damage, and you'll have to repeat the lap from the start. Thankfully AI being dumb stops this from being too annoying because it's easy to overtake them.

The stages are all really basic. Occasionally you'll get a stage that has a risky shortcut but most of them are like the image above. There aren't any traps or special mechanics in each stage.

I guess in the game's world, UFOSoft creating a game like this makes total sense. A lot of video game companies would release a tacked-on racing spinoff of popular games even if people didn't care too much for it (see: Jak X). As an entry in UFO 50 however, ehh, I could've done without it.

RANK: D

20 - Warptank

Warptank is an adventure game where you play as a tank that can teleport to the opposite surface at any time. The game is a fun take on the gravity-switching mechanic, but now you can drive along any surface including walls.

It's a bit hard to explain Warptank and put it in a genre. The game is a mix of action and puzzle, often requiring quick reflexes to traverse the level and defeat enemies but at the same time forcing you to think about how to best reach areas without dying.

There are two buttons: Shoot, and warp. Shooting always shoots opposite to where the tank is standing, which is great because the bullets can be used as a guide to where you're going to warp. Warping instantly transports you to the other surface, whether that be a wall or the ceiling or whatever else.

What surprised me about Warptank was just how much content there is. The game is level-based, where levels can be accessed in a massive hub world that has its own hidden paths and secret levels. There's a really good variety in levels, often introducing new mechanics and enemies as you go along. The game shakes things up with pushable blocks, walls that appear when shot, magnetic floors that stop you from warping, and a lot more.

There's one thing that really bothers me and many others about Warptank... The camera. The camera follows the tank by snapping to a grid whenever you move, meaning the screen keeps snapping forward rather than smoothly scrolling. I got used to it eventually, but it's a bizarre decision that disorients me whenever I move too much.

Aside from that, Warptank is really fun. Each level is quite short at ~5 minutes or less, so it makes a good "play a bit and leave" game. The game is never too hard and has very lenient checkpoints, often placed right before a difficult section.

The levels aren't too difficult, but I swear to you the most difficult part Warptank is just finding the next level. The hub world is convoluted and expands every few levels. Sometimes it shows you a new area has been unlocked but no direction on where that is or how to get there. This does feel a bit intentional though, since having to explore the hub world means players will stumble onto secret areas and levels.

Warptank is one of the most original games in UFO 50, and a blast to play. It took me two hours to beat, and I'm still playing it on and off to uncover all its secrets for the cherry. Aside from the wonky camera and occasional lack of direction, it's one of the most accessible games in the pack, and an easy recommendation to anyone looking for a more casual game.

RANK: A

21 - Waldorf's Journey

Waldorf my beloved. Waldorf's Journey is a game where you play as a Walrus that jumps from platform to platform in order to complete his journey. My first impression was that this game seemed gimmicky, but when I spent more time with it I realized Waldorf's Journey is actually brilliant.

To jump, you aim in a specific direction and hold to charge. Once you release, you'll be sent flying in the air. The twist is that you can't control yourself in the air unless you use up your fish meter - a precious resource. That means you'd need to line up your jumps to land exactly on the platform while using as little of your meter as possible. If you fall, you lose and restart the game unless you've collected puffins which act as an extra life.

There are one-use items you can buy at the shop with clams such as a grappling hook that easily moves you to a close platform without any risk, or a beach ball you can launch to test your next jump. They're neat effects that can help you reach the end, although the game isn't too difficult without them honestly.

What makes Waldorf's Journey special is how well it executes on the idea. The presentation is superb with very atmospheric music and great visuals. As you progress, the sun will start setting and the weather will get harsher. Weather will push you to the left or right when you're in the air, so you have to take that into account as well.

The story is also simple but really well executed. Over the course of Waldorf's Journey you'll see signposts trying to tell Waldorf something. The ending is very much worth experiencing too, but I won't spoil anything about that.

Waldorf's Journey can be finished in around 10 minutes if you're good at it. If not, then maybe half an hour or so. The game doesn't waste your time or drag on because it paces itself really well. It's a magical game anyone can quickly enjoy at any time.

RANK: A

22 - Porgy

Porgy is... Very conflicting. I want to like it, but I'm not sure it wants to like me. Porgy on the outside looks like an inviting, fun underwater adventure that clearly had a ton of effort put into it. On the inside though, it's a tedious repetitive journey that seems like it enjoys wasting your time.

Let me explain. Porgy is a metroidvania where you control a fish-shaped submarine. Your goal is to find upgrades and return them to base without running out of fuel. These upgrades include things to increase your max fuel, things to increase your damage & range, and equipment that allows you to access new parts of the level. Luckily once you get any upgrade, the game saves and you keep it forever.

The problem is that this gameplay loop gets old. FAST. At the start you'll have very little fuel so you're supposed to straight down, grab a fuel tank, go back up. Then you go back down, go right, grab a fuel tank, go left, go back up. Most of the game is just you backtracking to return an item you collected.

If you fail to return it before your fuel runs out, you lose any items you're holding and have to go get them again. Since your fuel is also your HP, bumping into a few enemies could end your run and you'd have to reset at the top to have a chance of getting enough fuel to get the item and come back. There are bosses that roam around the level that are impossible to defeat early on, so if one spots you, you'd have to run for your life and hope it doesn't annihilate your fuel tank.

That's the early game; it's not that bad since the level you explore is fairly limited. Once you get into the mid-game, Porgy gets worse. Now your runs will be longer as you try to go deeper, and you could spend ~5+ minutes for just one dive. There's barely any direction for where you need to go to get the next upgrade, so you will OFTEN go the "wrong way", find a dead end or an area you need another upgrade for, and then die from a lack of fuel. It would be fine if you keep spending 5 minutes for one egg or one fuel tank, but sometimes you'll go down and accomplish nothing and still have no idea where you're going.

Porgy also doesn't seem to want you to succeed. There are a lot of annoying design elements that seem to exist only to frustrate me. For example, one upgrade opens up a path by shooting an explosive box. This would open up the path, BUT GET THIS, it also usually closes another path right after with no warning. In one scenario I was getting the upgrade that let you drop bombs under you and there was a blocked path at the top. I opened that path, and 2 seconds later it permanently closed on me, meaning that I can't go up anymore and ended up dying and wasting time just because whoever made this game thought it would be funny if I had to repeat that whole section again.

The map isn't too big, but it's big enough to be confusing. One massive wall people face is trying to find the first upgrade that breaks big stone blocks. It's hidden away in a far section in the 2nd ocean layer, and at this point in the game, almost every other direction is pointless. Porgy wants you to explore the level but doesn't give you any time to do so. You'll be replaying the same section of the map maybe 20 times until it becomes routine because there are only checkpoints at the top of the map. By the end game, you'll have to hold down and wait until you reach the 3rd layer so you can continue where you left off.

There is a dash that makes you move faster and could have saved Porgy from being boring, but using it takes more fuel than just moving slowly, making it useless to move around unless you're SURE you can get there without losing all your fuel.

Speaking of annoying design decisions, I also want to mention that you can only bring a limited number of items with you. This leads to points in the game where you need a specific item like the explodey rockets I mentioned before, but not having them would mean you can't get to some upgrade or reach some secret. Even in the late game when I'm gathering everything in the final layer, I'm being held back for no reason. Why can't I just grab everything I need with me without having to go back to base? Why???

I know this review was scathing, but many people do like Porgy. It has a very nice art style and finally getting that one upgrade you need to progress is satisfying... But Porgy doesn't respect my time at all. If it were half as long and less stingy with fuel, I think it could've been an A or even S tier game. As it stands, I just didn't like my time playing it.

RANK: C

23 - Onion Delivery

Despite playing Onion Delivery on and off since UFO 50 released, I'm still not close to beating it. It's a nightmarishly difficult arcade game where you need to deliver onions on time without crashing into everything like a madman.

I have a real love-hate relationship with this game. The driving mechanics are solid and it's very fun to drift around once you get good at it, but Onion Delivery is often really frustrating and punishing for no reason. It's similar to Crazy Taxi but you actually have to be careful not to explode by taking too much damage.

You can lose HP very easily by crashing into another car or falling off the stage, but luckily HP is regained by driving really fast for a prolonged amount of time or reaching a delivery spot.

One thing you'll instantly notice is the maze-like level design. There's a radar in the bottom left that shows the direction of each drop-off point, but the city often has a lot of dead-ends and large bodies of water that need a bridge to cross over. Some delivery spots are just harder to reach than others, and considering how little time you get in later stages, that means you need to actually memorize the map layout to win.

The goal is to win 7 days with each day having a random event that makes driving around harder. Some events are fine like having an enemy run after you, but others like rain are just so punishing. When it rains, it's harder to see and your car spins out of control if you touch a puddle of water. There are puddles everywhere. It's so frustrating trying to gather enough speed to regain HP only to spin out and crash into yet another car.

I have seen some incredibly impressive of Onion Delivery so I admit it's definitely a case of "git gud", but it really does feel too punishing at times. There are times when I'm having a great time driving around, but more often than not I lose thinking it's probably not worth playing this anymore.

RANK: C

24 - Caramel Caramel

Caramel Caramel is a sweet little Shoot 'Em Up where you control a sentient ship that just got a new camera and wants to take pictures of nearby planets. For some reason that also means killing everything in said planets but let's just ignore that part.

A lot of people dislike Caramel Caramel because it's very difficult. Taking two hits kills you, and rather than respawning where you were, any extra lives respawn you at the very start of the level. Dying without lives is game over, back to the start of the game. A successful run is under 20 minutes but considering how many people can't get past the first stage, your real playtime will be much longer.

Caramel Caramel is just a damn good shooter. The art is pretty, the soundtrack is banging, and the levels all have their own identity with a great amount of variety. I never felt too upset having to start over because each time I know the layout better and how to get past those tough sections and bosses. One thing I love about it is that it's not a bullet hell like most SHMUPs, usually there are less than a dozen bullets on screen which makes everything easy to read and never too overwhelming.

The big twist in the formula is the camera. You can snap enemies to freeze them in place and make them more vulnerable to damage. You get unlimited uses but it does have to recharge every time, making it a special move that's used often. The trick is knowing which enemies are tricky enough to warrant snapping in order to clear them easily.

My only problem with Caramel Caramel is the cherry requirement. You basically need to find a difficult to see secret in each level. Not ashamed to say I used a guide to know where to go.

Similar to every other game ranked A or S, I just wish Caramel Caramel were longer. The mechanics are solid enough that a few extra levels would've been great.

RANK: A

25 - Party House

Now it's a party! Let me de-mystify what this game is since it confuses everyone at first glance: Party House is a card game! You open the door to randomly pull out a party member from your deck, and after each party you get to buy new people to add to said deck. With lots of strategy and a big variety of content, Party House is unsurprisingly one of the most loved games in UFO 50.

I guess if I had to explain Party House to someone that's never played it, I'd say it's a bit like Blackjack. You draw a card that could be beneficial to you and increase your score (here it's popularity and money), but if you draw too many bad cards you bust and don't get any points for the day. It's essentially a game of risk/reward.

Popularity is used to buy new cards and money is used to expand your house's capacity, allowing you to do more each day. The goal is to buy four star units and host a party with them, which happens late into the game since they're so expensive to get.

Party House is a ton of fun if you're a fan of deckbuilder roguelikes. There are 5 different scenarios, each one having unique cards that force you to switch up your strategy. Most cards have a special ability such as being able to kick out someone, being able to see who's at the door, calling in a specific person, etc. Despite having a relatively simple concept, the sheer variety of people to choose from adds a lot of depth.

I wouldn't say this game is balanced, but that weirdly works in its favor. Part of the fun is trying the different cards and see which combo well together, and which ones can kill your run easily (looking at you, celebrity...)

There's also definitely a bit of luck involved. You could draw 3 troublemakers in a row and instantly lose the day, and sometimes it's too difficult to draw all four star cards in the final nights. Getting better at the game means you can get away with these failed days though.

Once you've finished all 5 scenarios in a few hours and got a good grasp of how Party House works, then the REAL game begins. The cherry requirement is to win 5 random scenarios in a row, which randomize the cards in the shop. Sometimes you get terrible cards, but the fun is in having to improvise and get away with random scenarios.

Party House is a certified classic. It took me 6 hours to cherry it, and I can see myself revisiting it every now and then. I'm at awe at how such a simple idea is so well-designed that it stays interesting for hours on end. Hopefully some day we can get new scenarios?

RANK: S

26 - Hot Foot

Hot Foot is clearly meant to be played with a friend, and since UFO 50 has no online multiplayer I unfortunately can only speak to the singleplayer aspects of the game. The singleplayer isn't fun.

Hot Foot is a dodgeball game where you control two people at the same time. Tapping the shoot button switches to your other teammate or picks up the item on the floor, while holding the button shoots. Aside from the fact that it means the teammate you don't control is a liability, it also means I'm always accidentally switching teammates and passing the ball when I meant to shoot my opponent that's right in front of me as soon as possible.

You get a jump button which makes both of your teammates jump, so the one you're not controlling isn't entirely helpless. It's still not great, since jumping won't save your team from being in a bad position, especially when the opponent is using an ultimate move. Sometimes the enemies can stunlock you for a bit by throwing multiple fully charged balls that stun you. Getting hit is inevitable, so the game is mostly about winning before they get too many points.

In fairness, Hot Foot isn't too simple. Every person has two ultimate moves and a passive perk such as being able to cross over the line or being able to charge faster. Most of the perks give you a small bonus but they aren't very noteworthy, and in the end every person sort of plays the same.

The fact that Bushido Ball exists in UFO 50 also isn't doing Hot Foot any favors. It's a much tigher sports game that's vaguely similar (well, you do shoot a ball) while also having co-op and versus modes. Even if I were playing multiplayer, I would probably play that instead.

Hot Foot is just boring to me overall. The awkward controls and annoying teammate makes it more annoying than anything in singleplayer. I'm sure that my opinion for Hot Foot will improve with a friend, but I doubt it will improve much. Nothing about it seems exciting.

RANK: D

27 - Divers

What if Porgy was a turn based RPG with a creepy atmosphere instead of a happy-go-lucky metroidvania? The answer is a strange and slow-paced game called Divers.

Divers shares a very similar system to Porgy, where you have to explore the underwater depths for riches then return to the surface in one piece. Because of this, I share many of the same gripes I had with Porgy here as well. I'm generally not a fan of having to go back and forth and repeat many parts of the game multiple times. Rather than copy-paste half my Porgy review, I would say read that for my more in-depth opinion on this extraction gameplay mechanic. Luckily Divers doesn't have any sort of fuel system, but you'll still need to go back to the surface often to save your progress and reset your HP & weapon durability.

You control 3 lizards that explore the ocean floor for whatever reason. There isn't actually any story or cutscenes, so you're left to figure things out yourself. You slowly swim around until you touch an enemy, then the game switches to a turn based battle where you can use your weapons to attack and defend. The RPG mechanics are fairly straightforward and there is no magic or special moves, you can only attack or defend using the weapon you're currently holding. I found that makes fights a bit boring since it usually devolves into spamming attack until the enemy dies...

One neat thing is that you can avoid enemies by swimming away from them, and some enemies will even shoot projectiles that damage you while swimming instead of jumping straight to combat. It makes the swimming sections more exciting than just trying to get from point A to point B.

Divers doesn't give you any explanation, which is a common theme here. The game starts with no dialogue or context for who these lizards are or why they're exploring this dangerous cave. This works in Divers' favor, as it adds to the ominous theme and leaves quite a bit to the imagination.

There are 3 different status effects for each weapon, with each one being effective against certain enemies. You'll have to use trial and error to figure out which weapons are better against which enemies. As with any RPG, you can also just farm XP to become stronger and brute-force your way through some of the harder battles.

If there's one thing I can hand it to this game, it's how amazing the atmosphere is. Divers makes limited use of music, with subdued sound effects that greatly enhances the tension of exploring this deep-sea environment with spooky creatures out to get you.

Aside from that, Divers is quite slow paced and not very thrilling. It's a simple RPG with a cool way of getting around, but the gameplay loop of exploring a bit, killing a few enemies, swimming back to the start and repeat got old to me very quickly. Some people may enjoy the simpler gameplay of Divers, but I was hoping for a little bit more to its systems.

RANK: C

28 - Rail Heist

Rail Heist surprised me on every front. Despite looking a bit simple, it quickly grew to be one of my favorite games in the entirety of UFO 50.

Rail Heist is a brilliant stealth platformer where you play as rootin' tootin' cowboys trying to steal money off a train before it reaches the station. Coming face to face with the law will instantly get you shot, so you need to use a bit of creativity to get around.

That includes shooting them from behind, punching them to stun them, shoving them off the train, smashing boxes over their heads, and more. There are tons of ways to get through a level, especially since most walls can be broken with your fists Minecraft-style, allowing sneaky entrances and exits to dangerous rooms. This makes Rail Heist somewhat like a puzzle game, where you'd need to figure out the best way to tackle each scenario.

What makes Rail Heist truly special though is how enemies work. When alerted by a loud noise (or in later levels when they move by default), a timer pops up that only gives you a couple of seconds to finish whatever you're doing. Once depleted, it becomes the enemy's turn where they move around for a bit while you're stuck in place. This back-and-forth goes on until all moving enemies are taken out or the level is finished.

This turn-based structure is very unique, and it encourages quick thinking so that you don't end up hilariously out of position and easy to find when your turn ends. The enemy AI during their turn are difficult enough that they'll follow sources of sound and instantly fire when spotting you, but they're still easy enough to outmaneuver with a bit of quick thinking. For example, ending your turn while ducking behind a box will have them jump over you and carry on moving. This system is also really fun because it leads to tense moments where I prayed the enemy wouldn't turn around or look up to see me hanging from a ladder.

Rail Heist's badges make the already deep game even more interesting. Each level has 3 stars you can get: one for not killing anybody, one for finishing the level quickly, and one for killing everyone. Repeating each level 3 times surprised me with how much I needed to switch up my strategy. Usually I'd try killing enemies in my path or using a gatling gun to clear a line of enemies, having to not kill anyone meant looking for alternate paths and focusing more on outsmarting them. Speedrunning the level meant having to book it straight to the cash without getting shot by the many guards roaming around, which is easier said than done.

The only badge I felt was a bit derivative was killing all enemies. Usually it's pretty easy to kill everybody and boils down to shoving them off the train one way or another, using stage hazards like gatling guns, or just shooting them straight up. I didn't feel like this challenge added anything to most levels and only served to make you spend more time in the level clearing enemies like a checklist. That's my only nitpick for this game.

Later stages introduce more complexity such as having two cowboys on the train at the same time, swapping between them each turn. I really enjoyed that aspect of having to play with characters on opposite ends of the level each turn, even if it did sometimes feel confusing trying to track enemies across the level.

I also want to give a shoutout to how funny losing in this game is. You can get juggled by multiple enemies before falling down to the ground, often getting two-tapped or three-tapped by different enemies that spot you as you're flying off the train.

Rail Heist is a fantastic game that's much more mechanically-rich than it looks on the outside. With a varied set of scenarios and many creative ways to reach the end of each level, it's easily an S tier game that I'd love to see an expanded version of in the future.

RANK: S

29 - Vainger

Vainger is what you get when mixing Super Metroid with VVVVVV. It's a cool Metroidvania (or Porgy-like if you want to be lore-accurate) where you can switch gravity at any time by pressing the jump button again in mid-air.

Anyone's enjoyment of Vainger really depends on one question: Do you want to play another Metroid clone? For me the answer was not really. I'm a big fan of Metroidvanias and some of my favorite games include Hollow Knight and Ori: Will of the Wisps, but Metroid clones have been a bit done to death. There are a lot of really good ones out there such as Axiom Verge and Gato Roboto, not to mention the hundreds of fangames and spiritual successors heavily inspired by it. My point is that despite being very high quality with fantastic art, Vainger initially came off as a bit generic and "just another Metroid clone".

That's not to say Vainger isn't a great game or doesn't have any unique things to it, it's quite good actually! The controls are tight and gravity-swapping is used to get through levels in a unique way. There's a good amount of variety when it comes to enemies and obstacles, with the game lasting a couple of hours.

Vainger plays similarly to any Metroidvania, explore the map, find new items that allow you to explore more of the map, and continue adventuring until the end. That said, Vainger does add some twists to the formula. For one, you have 3 different lives while exploring which get reset each time a checkpoint is reached. Dying while still having lives would respawn you in the same room with all enemies killed staying dead. This is great, because this game can get really hard and not having to go all the way back to the last checkpoint each time you touch spikes is great.

Speaking of spikes, there's a lot of them everywhere - and they instakill at the start of the game. The hazards in Vainger can be really frustrating because you actually can't see that much above or below you, so when switching gravity it's easy to just fall straight into an enemy or hazard with little warning. Usually there would be hazard symbols on really dangerous falls, but not always. I've died many, many times because of this.

The upgrades you get in Vainger also have a twist to them. Rather than being just upgrades that do one thing, they can be placed in one of three slots in checkpoints, with each one having a specific effect. They usually either enhance the weapon in some way, enhance the defense, or enhance gravity switching. While pretty neat, their effects in practice aren't that major or change the game in any way.

Another thing I'm not a huge fan of is that there's no way to check the map outside of checkpoints. The good news is that the map of Vainger is fairly straightforward, and sometimes even highlights points of interest to give you hints on where to go.

My conclusion for Vainger is that it's a pretty good Super Metroid clone. It doesn't stand out too much from the rest of the genre, but it's not trying to. Vainger is a familiar experience that doesn't shy away from its inspirations, and I'm sure lots of people will appreciate it for that.

RANK: B

30 - Rock On! Island

Rock On Island sounds like it would be the sickest rock concert on the planet, but it's actually a tower defense game where you run around to try and stop dinosaurs from taking over the village. Still exciting, though!

There are a few twists that makes this game a surprisingly different take on the genre. For one, you play as a character that can move around the level to place towers. You can also shoot like a tower and upgrade your attack damage and attack speed between waves, making the main character technically the best tower in the game. The bad news is that you die whenever an enemy touches you, so you can't just stand in lanes to shoot approaching enemies.

The whole aspect of having to handle enemies yourself while quickly placing towers reminds me a lot of Sanctum, an older game series I enjoyed. Dying just makes you lose a life and respawn at the start of the base, which doesn't sound too bad until you're trying to perfect every level for that cherry.

The player character is also fairly slow, so even trying to cross the road and place towers while a wave is running can be dangerous. I really love this, because it adds a whole other layer of strategy to make sure your positioning is good when starting a wave and which lanes require the most help from you.

The other twist is that you can only have up to 99 meat at the same time, which is the resource of the game. Any meat that drops from enemies or is gained when the level ends while you're full is completely wasted! You reach 99 very easily in later waves, meaning you'll have to be constantly spending it as quickly as possible so you don't waste money. You'll end up having to juggle attacking enemies, repositioning, and placing towers all while trying not to die or lose the wave. Talk about stressful!

In terms of how the actual tower defense part of the game is, it's quite straightforward if you've ever played the genre before. You have the usual archetype of towers such as fast but weak towers, AoE towers that can hit multiple enemies, towers that slow enemies on hit, and more. There aren't many types of towers, but they each fill their particular role well. It's a solid tower defense game that still needs quite a bit of strategy to clear.

Of course, there's a tower that farms more money: chickens. They add a little more cash after clearing a wave, but cooking them by placing a campfire next to them will turn them into 30 meat you can collect at any point later. Being able to collect it later means you can also bypass the 99 meat limit and just collect it when you're low on money. It's always fun to lose the game because I got too greedy in starting rounds, trying to focus too much on economy instead of just winning.

Anyways, let me wrap this up instead of just explaining mechanics forever. Rock On! Island is a great tower defense game that distills all the good parts of the genre into an easy to digest package. Fans of tower defense will love this one.

RANK: A

31 - Pingolf

Pingolf is a very straightforward game: It's golf with pinball elements! There are wacky stage stage elements like bumpers and flying projectiles you need to avoid in order to drop the ball in the finishing hole.

One twist that makes Pingolf much more unique is that after shooting the ball, you can "dunk" it and have it slam diagonally in order to keep bouncing. This is brilliant, because it elevates Pingolf from being "just golf" to something way cooler. Now it's not just about aiming your shots, but also timing your slams when the ball is in mid-air to get it to new positions.

The physics are fantastic once you get used to it. Dunking your ball on slopes sets it on fire and makes it go super fast, but that's easier said than done. At the start, you'll probably dunk away from the hole or straight into sand or water. It takes some getting used to.

The courses are all well-designed for this mechanic too. Some have obvious spots for dunking to bounce your ball higher or speed it to the right, others will punish you for bad dunks by placing water everywhere so you don't overshoot and dunk without thinking. There are 18 courses, and you must finish them all in one go with no way to repeat one if you mess up.

That's probably the biggest point of contention with Pingolf. All it takes is one bad course to mess up your score and make winning impossible, you need to be consistently good on each course in order to win. Even more so if you're getting the cherry which demands mastery of the game. Pingolf isn't that long, taking roughly 15 minutes, but I can see why it's so demotivating to play well for 10 minutes and then mess up a few shots near the end, forcing one to restart.

Once you get good at it, it's not as bad as it sounds though. After getting the gold and cherry, the only thing I really wish for is more courses! The mechanics are so solid that it's a shame there's only one tournament. There's so much potential here that I could've kept playing for hours. If there's one thing I need from the community trying to mod UFO 50, it's to add a level editor to this thing!

RANK: A

32 - Mortol II

FOR MORTOLIA... Again! I was very excited to see Mortol have a sequel when I made my way further down the collection, and while it's wildly different than the first one, it still has that Mortol spirit.

Let's start with the big changes: Rather than being level-based like its predecessor, Mortol 2 takes place in one giant level that you have to beat with 99 starting lives. This means you have the freedom to explore in many different directions and tackle the level in many different ways... but it does mean you can never earn more lives, and the whole aspect of repeating levels to make later levels easier is completely gone. It's a shame, because I loved that part of Mortol.

The other drastic change is that rather than have a Mortolian that can do everything, there are different classes such as warrior, scout, gunner, etc. Each class now has a regular attack that can defeat enemies, but they only have one ability on death. Returning from Mortol 1, warriors can turn to stone and bombers can explode. Unfortunately, nobody can shoot themselves like an arrow. A tragedy.

I'm a bit mixed on splitting the abilities to different people. On one hand it means you have to strategically choose which unit you need to get past a specific section, but at the same time it means you need to know which one you need beforehand. Often times I would pick warrior for example and then instantly reach a section where I need scout's double jump to get up somewhere, or gunner's gun to beat a very aggressive enemy.

Your first or second try of Mortol 2 will just be a lot of trial and error, trying to understand the map as much as possible to know where you're actually supposed to go and which units need to be used where. Sometimes it's obvious like having warrior turn to stone on a switch to hold it permanently, sometimes there are hard to miss secrets that need more creativity like using Engineer's ability: creating a pipe under you that goes through blocks. I expect some people would bounce off of Mortol 2 because understanding and remembering the map takes time.

That said, Mortol 2 does want you to succeed. Any enemies you kill stay dead, any paths you clear stay cleared, and you'll generally be making progress with every life used. I love the idea of slowly clearing out the massive level with a dwindling army.

There are a few other things I wish were carried over from Mortol 1, such as gaining lives by defeating enemies. Here, enemies drop nothing when killed. The only benefit is getting them out of the way (which is obviously important, but still). Also, Mortol 1 had a lot of clever level elements that can interact with you in different ways. For example, you could set yourself on fire, turn into a plant, or drown in water to use your corpse as a platform, all of which can be used to your advantage. Mortol 2 doesn't really have any of that. Each class has their respective ability, and there isn't anything in the level that changes how your character works. That's a bit disappointing.

I appreciate how different Mortol 2 is from the original, and as its own game it's quite a fun and satisfying platformer. As a sequel to Mortol though, ehhh, I prefer the original. The advanced mechanics and puzzling elements of Mortol 1 was traded for a more open-ended world that has to be finished in one go and a bigger focus on actual platforming and combat. Whether that's good or bad depends on you, but it's a great game regardless.

RANK: A

33 - Fist Hell

Of course a retro collection had to feature a Beat 'em Up. How could it not? Fist Hell is a very authentic take on the Beat 'em Up genre. Maybe a little too authentic, since it has all the issues that plague the genre.

First of all, the controls. They're not good. You have a jump button and an attack button but pressing them both at the same time (or quickly) will do a spin move to get enemies off of you. This move saps a little HP every time it's used, which sucks because I kept doing this move on accident every time I wanted to jump and attack quickly. Fist Hell also does the thing where you automatically grab an enemy when you attack while moving close to them, which got me killed a number of times because I accidentally grabbed one enemy while trying to attack multiple ones. This is one of the games in UFO 50 that suffers from having only two buttons.

Fist Hell is pretty difficult, which is also par for the course in Beat 'em Ups. Enemies often feel spammy and you'll often get stunlocked or blasted by projectiles if enemies manage to swarm around you. There's also the classic move of previous bosses appearing as regular enemies which I'm sure a lot of people will enjoy.

These things are probably by design, since it is trying to be a genuine callback to early Beat 'em Ups like Double Dragon and Streets of Rage 1, both of which are remembered by being notoriously difficult and sort of janky to play. That said, I do think Fist Hell comes off as derivative. It doesn't really do anything different that the genre hasn't done before. Most games in UFO 50 at least try to apply their own twist to things. The genre has a fairly big selection of great games too, including retro style ones like the recent TMNT: Shredder's Revenge. I didn't have a huge motivation to play Fist Hell when I could be playing a better one instead.

In terms of things I like, the soundtrack is pretty good and I love the spooky halloween theme. There's a good variety of enemy types considering the game is fairly short at ~25-30 minutes in a successful run. Despite the difficulty, dying does thankfully restart you at the start of a stage, which is really sweet of the devs, especially since there are infinite continues!

In the end, I don't really have any strong feelings about Fist Hell. It's an okay Beat 'em Up, and I'm kind of glad that it exists since it's a throwback to a very prevalent genre in the NES era. As an independent game though, ehhh. It's not great.

RANK: C

34 - Overbold

Overbold has you playing as Alpha once again (you know, from Velgress) in order to compete in a deadly tournament for the one thing anyone wants in life: cash money! It's a shooter game where you fight in an arena and defeat waves of enemies. Dying quickly resets you to the start of the game.

Overbold is surprisingly good for how relatively simple it is. You start the game being very weak and one hit away from death, but you'll slowly become more powerful by buying more upgrades in-between each wave. There's a big variety of upgrades, from simple ones that increase your HP and damage, to ones that amplify your abilities by giving you a dash or making bombs more powerful. I've seen people get the cherry with very different strategies, which goes to show how good almost every upgrade is.

The very fun part of this game is the risk/reward system. By default each wave is very short and very easy, but to gain more money, you can raise the amount of threats in the next wave as much as you'd like. The motivation for wanting to do this - aside from just getting stronger - is because the final level in the game is really difficult and has you facing 80 enemies or so before fighting the final boss. Since the default weapon is pitiful and HP is nonexistent at first, getting as much money as possible before then is necessary.

This system works so well! Raise too much and you'll quickly die, raise too little and maybe you'd be too weak to reach the end. Having the player be the one to decide how difficult each wave is allows for lots of experimentation and exciting moments.

Another small thing I really enjoy is how there's randomly an item on sale or an item that has its price hiked. It encourages the player to switch up their strategy rather than buying fire rate and medkits right after the first wave.

Overbold is really well-designed with just the right amount of difficulty. It's not too long or too punishing, but it demands focus and understanding of how to handle each enemy and situation. On one hand I would like more content, but on the other hand, its simplicity is part of the charm.

RANK: A

35 - Campanella 2

I wouldn't have complained if Campanella 2 was a more refined version of the last one, Campanella 1 was a fun little arcade game. What we have here though is... Wait... Spelunky?!

Yup, Campanella 2 is a brutal roguelike adventure that massively expands the scope of the series. You play as Isabell, Pilot's sister that explores huge randomly generated levels in hopes of finding and freeing Pilot after he was captured by evil forces.

The game is split into two parts: one part where you fly around in the grey Campanella and explore the big level, and one that switches the game into a 2D platformer after exiting the ship and entering one of many doors around the stage. Speaking of exiting the ship, you can now land anywhere in the level and walk around as Isabell.

Let's start with the ship part. The Campanella controls exactly as it did in the first one, which is great because it means your skill of avoiding walls and obstacles will carry over. There's still the melee slash attack and, sadly, there's still fuel.

The fuel system in Campanella 2 is brutal. If you run out of fuel, the ship will quickly start shooting every coin you own to facilitate an emergency landing or quickly reaching another fuel source (more on this later). If you then run out of coins, it's game over. The ship will instantly fall like a bag of bricks and explode. There are no lives or second chances, once you die in Campanella 2, it's back to the start.

There are a few sources of fuel, the main one being stars found throughout the level. The fuel system kind of sucks, because the random level generation can sometimes be wonky and stars can be hard to find or too grouped up into one corner of the stage. Your run can end simply because you can get unlucky and not find enough fuel while exploring. Some levels can have too many dead ends that completely wastes time and fuel, punishing you for trying to explore while not knowing where to go. These unfair deaths becomes very rare once you become better at the game, but I can definitely see why this turns off so many people from Campanella 2.

Things a bit more lenient after finding max fuel upgrades or the one necessary upgrade that grants fuel per killing an enemy. Still, it's annoying how stingy Campanella 2 is with its exploration. Trying not to die is a challenge entirely by itself, having fuel also be a rare resource that's expended quickly just feels overly punishing. I genuinely think this game would be way more enjoyable if, say, the ship required 25% less fuel to move.

As for the platforming segments, they're fun enough but are much simpler than flying the UFO. The only thing you have to worry about there is not getting hit, which isn't too bad since most enemies and projectiles are fairly slow. I've seen complaints that the platforming sections hurt the pacing of the game and... Yeah, I can see why it's divisive.

There's just such a huge difference in difficulty and scale between both sides of the game. In the UFO segment, you need to explore the huge level, manage fuel, avoid walls and fly carefully in order to land, dodge projectiles and tricky enemies, and do it all under a strict timer. The platforming section by comparison is very linear and boils down to walking left to right while shooting enemies along the way. This section also suffers from a lack of variety when it comes to random generation, I noticed repeating patterns in specific stages like The Burrows.

I enjoy the platforming part of the game, but it does get a little old after restarting the game for the 30th time. I wish it had more variety in the two starting stages considering that's what everyone will be seeing the most.

Every 2 levels you move on to a different biome that has its own theme, enemies, and hazards. There are even different paths you can take rather than going through the same series of biomes. There's a very impressive amount of content here, so even if early platformer segments lack variety, it quickly makes up for it by having different routes to take each run.

Campanella 2 is far from perfect, but I have to admit that it's still a really great game. Despite the rare unfair death and somewhat repetitive platforming, I kept coming back to play one more run. With some fine-tuning to the random level generation to have fewer dead ends and making fuel a bit less frustrating, I think Campanella 2 can easily be up there as an S tier game.

RANK: A

36 - Hyper Contender

Hyper Contender is the closest thing to a fighting game in UFO 50. It's a platform fighter where, rather than having to defeat your opponent, the goal is to collect 5 rings to win.

The combat is like a simplified version of Super Smash Bros. Each character has a block, a normal attack, and a sort of special attack. Hitting an enemy briefly stuns them and makes them drop a ring, allowing for a back-and-forth fight of desperately trying to steal rings to win.

The fun part of Hyper Contender is that each character is wildly different from one another, including how they move. One character can only switch gravity to move vertically, another one needs to rely on a grappling hook to move around, and there's a character that straight up spawns an elevator to move up or down.

The fact that every character has a gimmick is a fun idea, but it does mean that the game feels somewhat imbalanced. When the goal of the game is to collect rings before your opponent can, it feels like faster characters are just better by default because they can catch rings quicker and run away from the enemy when being close to winning.

There are some neat tricks each character can do, like doing a melee attack to dodge projectiles, or blocking melee attacks to stun your opponent. There's some depth here for those who want to stick around, and a lot of clenching moments where the opponent can quickly get 2-3 rings and force you to act fast.

Aside from that, I don't have much else to say about it. Hyper Contender seems like it'd be fun with friends, but I quickly got over it in singleplayer. You can gold it in under 10 minutes, with the cherry maybe in half an hour or so. I didn't feel any motivation to play it any further than that.

RANK: C

37 - Valbrace

Valbrace is one of the most popular and well-renowned games in the entire collection. Everyone loves it, and in the community poll it was ranked the 2nd best game in UFO 50 - right behind Party House. What I'm trying to say is... Get ready for a hot take.

Valbrace is almost an excellent game, but it makes a couple of blunders that greatly detracts from how fun it is. A few of its systems can be both overly punishing and infuriating. First, let's talk about the good parts.

Valbrace is an epic dungeon crawler where you walk around in a first-person view. You can flip levers, open doors, find loot, and manage your inventory space. The twist that makes it great though is that as soon as an enemy touches you, it switches to real-time combat that's somewhat similar to Punch Out meets Dark Souls. You can move left and right, dodge, block, and attack. Any action uses the stamina meter which comes back over time.

Enemies are usually invulnerable until after they attack, so usually it involves dodging an attack or blocking and then counter-attacking them. It's very satisfying and there's a good variety of enemies such as flying rats, shrooms that heal others, skeletons that can sweep a large area, and so on. The combat is easily my favorite part of Valbrace. The enemy art and animations are fantastic, I can tell so much effort was put into making each and every one very expressive when attacking and getting hit.

There's also magic in this game, which has a brilliant system. Spells can be cast by drawing a symbol in a short amount of time. This means that every single spell is available to cast as soon as you start the game, but most symbols are too complicated to guess. Some spells are very useful that the game honestly becomes a lot easier once you find them; they're etched into the walls of each floor. Be prepared to write them down or screenshot them, because they're easy to forget!

Despite being a classic dungeon crawler, Valbrace is NOT a roguelike. The game saves each floor and can be played as one continuous campaign. That's good because Valbrace can be very long, taking maybe ~5+ hours depending on how good you are.

Every 2 floors moves you to a new biome. The first one is a bit "generic fantasy" as you can see in the image, but I loved the aesthetic of later ones. Enemies and stage hazards become more creative as you continue playing, and it starts feeling more like its own game rather than a generic dungeon crawler with a twist.

Now, let's talk about what I didn't like... First off, the floors themselves. Each floor in Valbrace is very maze-like and confusing to navigate. This wouldn't be an issue if the map were actually useful, but it only shows you a small area around you and not the entire floor you've discovered. To add insult to injury, the map is a spell that costs mana, so you'll often waste mana just trying to figure out where on earth you are after hitting one of the 50 dead ends.

Often times I'll flip a switch and it'll say something like "A gate has opened" or "The floor has shifted"... But no clue as to where that is. This means clearing floors usually consists of walking in circles, opening the map, and hoping that there's a new path around you that hasn't been explored yet.

This again would be fine if not for the fact that enemies spawn infinitely. You will constantly be swarmed by enemies every ~10 steps you take, and there's barely any reward for defeating them aside from just being able to progress. Fighting orcs and slimes is fun for a while, but not for the 30th time in one floor. Combat quickly starts becoming tedious when you're lost, and you will get lost. Floor 4 is a prime example of just constantly having no clue where to go and vague levers that shift the level around with no direction.

Finally, that leads to my main issue with Valbrace: Floors are way too long. Most floors can often take half an hour or even more. You know what that means - there's no way to save & quit in the middle of a floor, and even worse, dying makes you lose HUGE amounts of progress, making an already sort-of repetitive game even more annoying. Valbrace is a difficult game, so not paying attention could quickly be the end of you.

Some floors have a boss at the very end. I spent maybe 35 minutes clearing the entirety of floor 2, from trading with the shopkeep, to solving puzzles, to finding some secret paths and new equipment. I died to the floor boss because I had no idea he can attack multiple times in a row. All my progress was gone, all those things I did and new equipment I found would have to be done all over again. That's. Terrible!

If floors weren't so long, if enemies weren't so numerous, if there was a way to quick-save in the middle of a run, then Valbrace would easily be an S tier game. As it stands, it's a good game with heavy flaws. I'd quit in relief after finishing a floor and play something else for a while. If Valbrace could hopefully get any patch to improve the gameplay loop, my opinion of it could improve dramatically.

RANK: B

38 - Rakshasa

Dear God... They added Ghosts 'n Goblins to UFO 50?!

For the uninitiated, GnG is a platformer series that's notorious for having clunky controls while being insanely difficult. Rakshasa is a spiritual successor to that series, a game tuned specifically to make you suffer... And yet, I kind of love it.

You play as Jangi, the village chief defending his people from the demons swarming the area. He's slow and can't control his movements in mid-air, leading to very often cases where you accidentally jump towards danger with no way to steer back. Not only that, but Jangi gets "stunned" for a quarter of a second every time he lands on the ground and can't move until the landing animation is finished.

Enemies spawn infinitely, and just touching any one of them will kill you. However, death is not the end! You respawn as a ghost, and if you can collect all coins around the screen without getting hit by the many flying enemies, you come back alive and continue playing! The twist is that every time you die, this minigame gets harder. If you do get hit, it's game over and back to the start. Dying a 5th time or so makes it practically impossible to win. This mechanic is both awesome and hilarious, because it means you have to earn your continues rather than just having a lives system, and it leads to insanely clutch moments where I'm fighting for my life while dodging 50 hazards on-screen.

Rakshasa is hard, but it really isn't unfair. It looked impossible at first since I died a lot, but after understanding its mechanics, memorizing the level and what to do there, knowing where important secrets are... I ended up beating the first two thirds of the game without taking a single hit. Rakshasa is a demanding game, but it's incredibly rewarding when you finally beat that one level after being stuck for a long time. The platforming and fighting might feel awkward at first, but the mechanics are actually really solid and encourages you to be much more careful than usual games.

The game is also not very long. A successful run takes ~20 minutes or less, although the crazy difficulty does mean it will probably take hours in reality. Rakshasa has some hidden mechanics and simple strategies that make it much easier than it looks, but I'll talk about it in a spoiler section for those who want to experience the game themselves.

I ended up loving Rakshasa and how tightly designed it is, but I can definitely see that it's not a game for everyone. Most people will no doubt skip it and move on to something less punishing, but I encourage everybody to give it a chance and try learning its intricacies. You may end up loving it.

RANK: A

39 - Star Waspir

You know how I gushed about Caramel Caramel for being an excellent Shoot 'Em Up with well-built mechanics, great art, and reasonable difficulty? Star Waspir is not that. Star Waspir has none of that.

Ugh, where do I start? Star Waspir is a vertical shmup that is very difficult, very fast paced, and insanely chaotic. Get ready to have no idea what's happening on screen due to the fast-moving background and terrible color choices.

Let's start with just the screen. Visibility is awful and there isn't much contrast on enemy bullets. Bullets are always pink which blurs with the other moving things on screen. The first stage has a blue background which makes pink a bit hard to see, but stage 3 is even worse. In stage 3, there are dark purple meteors on a black background and I often bump into them when I'm looking at a different part of the screen. I haven't seen many people complain about this though so I admit the color thing could be a me issue, but usually dangerous things are highlighted clearly in SHMUPs.

If you're a vertical shooter fan you may have already noticed something odd with the image above. Despite the fact that you're flying upwards, you can't actually see up that much. The 16:9 aspect ratio and zoomed-in camera can make it hard to see enemies coming up and almost impossible to prepare for an upcoming enemy. The best way to get rid of annoying enemies is memorizing where they spawn on the screen, because you won't have much time to slide from left to right in order to defeat everything.

The shooting mechanics are fine. You can hold the button to shoot straight ahead or rapidly tap shoot to fan out your bullets. There are 3 different ships, each with their own weapon. I found that the default one is the easiest one to use by far so I bet most players will just ignore the other two.

Since the game isn't hard enough, getting powerups is also a hassle. Enemies drop E and G blocks, getting 3 will either trigger a power or do nothing at all depending on the order you get. GGG will provide you with a bonus ship, and EEE will increase your attack power for roughly 10 seconds (yes, it's very limited). Specific combinations like GEE will trigger special effects such as wiping bullets from the screen.

Of course just giving you letters in a row would be too easy. Enemies are guaranteed to never drop 3 of the same letter in a row, so you will end up dodging powerups as much as you dodge bullets in order to get that EEE without accidentally picking up a G. Spoiler: You will accidentally pick up a G often.

I could keep going but you get the point. I don't like Star Waspir. It's a nuisance to play and feels like it only exists because UFO 50 had to have a vertical Shoot 'Em Up. Not every game can be a winner. Let's move on.

RANK: D

40 - Grimstone

Praise Biggan! Grimstone is the obligatory JRPG of the collection, but with a unique western theme rather than your typical fantasy. It's also the longest game in UFO 50, lasting 20-30 hours apparently!

I say apparently because I'm probably never going to beat it. I enjoy Grimstone, but it seems way too long for what it is. It's a slimmed down version of a classic JRPG, streamlining some of the more annoying parts but still missing a lot of what I enjoy in the genre. Let's get this out of the way: Grimstone isn't as good as most JRPGs you can find nowadays. Don't expect anything mind-blowing here.

The gameplay loop consists of leaving the town and grinding random encounters until you're strong enough to move to the next area or town. Combat of the game is straightforward and very similar to most others in the genre, with the biggest change being that attacking an enemy has you play a timing minigame to land a normal hit or get a critical hit.

Grimstone is grindy, but luckily it's lenient on how death works. Dying takes away all money that isn't stored at the bank, but lets you keep any XP gained on all characters. This allows you to just keep retrying difficult areas and dying without any real consequences, slowly getting stronger each time. It's a great quality-of-life feature that makes the game less tedious.

The game starts off with a group of adventurers meeting in a tavern in order to listen to a mysterious character called Lily O' Mule. Someone sets the tavern on fire and an angel swoops in to try and save the people inside. There are 8 characters to choose from, but you can only save 4. Whoever you save at the start will permanently be your party members, so choose wisely! I'm mixed on this idea, it's really cool that you can choose which party members get to live, but on the other hand it frontloads a massive decision that could harm you later. I've seen people complain about choosing the worst characters, or not choosing a healer like Umbra which is incredibly important.

I really like the world of Grimstone. It's a fantasy western game where angels and demons crawl this land literally called "Hell", where the currency is teeth. Everyone's out here trying to survive in this gloomy wasteland. The game doesn't take itself seriously and there's often a lot of silly NPCs in each town.

There's a lot that I don't like about Grimstone though... Most notably, there's barely any story. Characters don't speak, and the overarching plot of finding out who burned the tavern and driving the demons away just isn't very interesting. The NPCs found in towns are also really one-note and rarely have anything interesting to say. One of the defining things to me in the JRPG genre is having fun characters and a great story to reward people for progressing, Grimstone has none of that. That may be a good thing if you're specifically looking for an RPG with no cutscenes to drag down the pace of gameplay, but I found it very disappointing.

I'm also not a big fan of the grind-die-repeat loop of the game. Grinding is a bit par for the course in old RPGs, but I was hoping that Grimstone would have more modern design and focus more on the adventuring aspect sort of like Chrono Trigger. I was weary when I heard this game was ~20 hours long, and after playing it I can confirm that most of that will just be fighting enemies until you're stronger.

Despite all of that, I do still think Grimstone can be a fun game to aimlessly wander and shoot varmint in. I also like it a fair bit more than Divers, the other RPG in UFO 50. Compared to others in the genre, it's nothing special. As one game in a 50 game collection? I could see myself spending some time in it in-between other games.

RANK: B

41 - Lords of Diskonia

Lords of Diskonia is one of the most unique games in the collection. It's a game where you strategically move in the overworld to amass an army of disks before going into combat, where you can fling units onto enemies in order to defeat them.

This game is a mix of strategy and action. Combat is turn based; each turn, you shoot one of your units similarly to a mini-golf game. Set the direction and strength, and send them hurling into into enemies to damage them. There are lots of different types of units, each with their own set of moves. The ogre is big and tanky, but can only move once. An archer can move and shoot a tiny arrow disk that's great for long-range fights. Rats are small and weak but can move 3 times a turn, and so on.

I really like that Lords of Diskonia isn't just a simple idea, but a fully fleshed out game with a relatively long campaign with a good amount of variety. Matches start in an overworld map where both players take turns to move around. You can collect gold, acquire upgrades such as increasing your troops' HP, and visit barracks to buy new disks for the next battle. Once you cross paths with the enemy, a battle begins.

Bumping into other disks is a lot more complex than it sounds. Positioning matters a lot, and lining up trickshots to hit many disks in one turn is key to win. Most disks drown instantly in water, so you also need to be careful about where you land so enemies don't just tap you in. Throughout combat, there's a bunch of resources that can be gathered by going over them like gold and extra HP.

It's all conceptually awesome but I do have a few bones to pick with Lords of Diskonia. The AI is all over the place. Sometimes it shoots units straight into hazards and dies hilariously, while other times it lands a perfect trickshot that takes out 1/4th of your army. The AI isn't too tough but it is very inconsistent with how hard it wants to be.

My other issue is that matches tend to last too long. Winning a fight doesn't end the game, it sends the losing team back to start where they can buy troops again as long as they have enough gold. This often leads to times where you clearly already won, but still have to do a battle against a few weak units to actually end the game. Even in combat, the AI sometimes likes to shoot their last unit away from troops and waste time when the battle is already decided. Please, just let me win faster!

Lords of Diskonia feels like billiards turned into a strategy combat game. It's a brilliant idea, but the execution tends to be more slow paced then I'd like. Fights sometimes drag on, watching the enemy constantly think before moving can get old fast, and the battle music gets grating after a while. It's a fun game, but one with too many issues to be in A tier.

RANK: B

42 - Night Manor

Just in time for Halloween, Night Manor is a spooky point-and-click adventure where you explore the titular manor in search for a way out. Just watch out for the monster constantly looking for you...

You start off in a small grim room with limited tools. In standard point-and-click fare, you'll slowly acquire more tools and items in order to solve puzzles and unlock more areas. The nice thing about Night Manor is that compared to older point and click games (which I usually hate), the puzzles here are fairly straightforward and all make sense. The only part I thought was a bit dumb was needing to use a key on a small easy-to-miss box in order to find another key. As always, just be sure to interact with everything you see.

The atmosphere in Night Manor is incredible. The art is fantastic all around and makes great use of the limited color palette to portray the dark and grimy house. The music is creepy and atmospheric, and the whole package just screams "old school horror", straight to the dramatic lightning that's always occurring outdoors. I've played a couple of gorgeous horror games this year like Alan Wake 2, but there's something very charming about retro horror you can't find much elsewhere.

The story is kind of simple for this type of game, you find notes giving some context as to what happened before in the mansion as well as some hints for puzzle solutions. I found that the notes were a bit predictable after the first few, but they're few and far between that it didn't feel too redundant. I would have preferred a few twists and turns, though.

If there's one thing I'm not a huge fan of, it's the chase sequences. A monstrous person pops up constantly throughout the game and force you to run and hide. It's fun the first few times, but in the mid-game it starts getting very annoying when you're trying to solve a puzzle but the killer just pops up and wastes your time, forcing you to run away and hide in a different room and come back later. He's not even that scary, just more of a nuisance really.

Despite my minor nitpicks, Night Manor is a really good adventure game that does exactly what you want it to. It's creepy, atmospheric, puzzling but not overly cryptic. Night Manor can be finished in around 2 hours, and I highly recommend it even if you're not a fan of horror.

RANK: S

43 - Elfazar's Hat

Elfazar's Hat is really slept on for some reason and I can't figure out why. I just haven't seen much discussion about it at all since UFO 50 released, and in a community poll to rate every game, it got below-average ratings. That's crazy, because I think Elfazar's Hat is a great game!

Elfazar's Hat is an arcade shooter where you control a rabbit that escaped from the esteemed magician Elfazar after being trapped for... Some reason. The story doesn't really give a lot of context for why Elfazar is imprisoning animals, but it's up to you to put a stop to him!

The gameplay consists of running down a linear level and using your magic wand to shoot enemies along the way. Defeating enemies and breaking obstacles drops cards that activates an upgrade every 3 cards. Getting 2 of the same card gives you a minor effect, while getting 3 of the same card gives you a more powerful upgrade. This includes things like shooting projectiles in a spread, dropping bombs when you dash, etc. The nice thing about these upgrades is that they last until you lose your life, which is very forgiving.

Being very forgiving is a common theme in Elfazar's Hat. When you lose a life, rather than restart the stage you just respawn right where you were. When you lose all your lives, the game surprisingly doesn't send you to the very beginning. Instead, it restarts the level and grants you another 3 lives. How uncharacteristically nice of a game in UFO 50!

The gameplay overall is really solid. The levels have a good amount of variety in terms of scenery and enemy variety, and the bosses are also very creative and fun. The soundtrack is also a certified banger with lots of variety between each track. I also enjoyed how the game starts off being cute and fluffy but slowly becomes more sinister as you go along.

My biggest issue with Elfazar's Hat though is the weird difficulty curves. The game randomly gets harder or easier at certain points. Aside from some bosses being harder than others, falling into a hole completely wastes a life rather than just dropping your HP, so parts of the game like stage 2 can feel weirdly harder on first try than stage 3 because it's so easy to fall off. The final boss was also fairly easy with slow bullets and simple patterns. The cherry requirement was a fun one, though.

Aside from uneven stage difficulty, powerups also have a varied amount of usefulness. Dropping bombs on dash is rarely useful, if ever. One of the card effects heals you on collecting only two of them, which feels very overtuned and makes the game a breeze since they always drop everywhere.

Elfazar's Hat is still a really fun time. It's not the best designed game in the pack, but I think it's easily among the top 20 games. The game is relatively short at roughly 30 minutes, and I would've liked more levels. The decision to go for quality over quantity is a welcome one though.

RANK: A

44 - Pilot Quest

I was a bit scared when I realized that Pilot Quest's real title is "Pilot Quest: Return to Zoldath", but despite being a sort-of sequel to Planet Zoldath, it's actually really fun!

Pilot Quest is two games in one: An idle game where you earn resources over time, and a Zelda-esque adventure game where you explore an overworld and dungeons looking for parts of the Campanella. This is also the 4th game or so where Pilot crashed his ship, I'm starting to think he's not very good at his job.

Pilot Quest starts with the idle section. The mechanics here are very simple and straightforward: Hit a crystal to gain moon drops, spend moon drops to gain more over time, get moon ingots that cost 1k moon drops, etc. The real game starts when you get meat, which allows you to explore outside the starting area with a timer. More meat means more time to explore, and you must return before time runs out. Taking damage lowers your time remaining.

So... Yes, it is another fuel system of sorts. That said, I think it works really well in Pilot Quest because the time it gives you is very generous (2min/meat), and it's easy to avoid damage from basic enemies. The idle element also helps condition you into not rushing the game, since you know there are upgrades and materials you still don't have that will make things easier over time.

Speaking of time-gating content, the reason Pilot Quest works so well is that it's the palate cleanser of UFO 50. Whenever you're bouncing between the many games of the pack, often times you'll jump into Pilot Quest, play a bit, manage your resources, and come back in half an hour or so since resources increase even while the game is closed. It's a game meant to be played in-between games, and it does that well.

In terms of actual gameplay it's quite simple. You explore the world and bop enemies with Pilot's yo-yo. The world has some random generation elements like randomizing which caves have which rooms and which parts of the map are closed and force you to go around, but for the most part the actual map and dungeons luckily aren't randomized. The dungeons are maybe a little too basic, consisting of rectangle rooms that have some enemies you can ignore as you move up to the boss (which is also fairly simple). I guess having locked rooms and keys and whatnot would be frustrating when you're on a timer, so I at least respect the simplicity of the core gameplay.

The only thing I can really knock Pilot Quest for is the cherry requirement, which I thought was tedious and takes unnecessarily long.

Overall, Pilot Quest a good Zelda 1 clone that's fun to revisit often despite not being the most exciting game in the pack. Exploring the map and slowly getting stronger with upgrades was satisfying enough, and I ended up finishing the game in roughly 5 hours (with a bit more for the cherry). It was also very wise to give this game a fantastic soundtrack since you'll be hearing it a lot.

RANK: A

45 - Mini & Max

Mini & Max is the most ambitious game in UFO 50, and easily one of my favorites! It's a very extensive adventure platformer where you play in a small room and can shrink anywhere to explore the tiny worlds living in this closet. The picture above is Mini on one of the house plants.

The story starts with Mini (and her talking dog Max) getting trapped in the closet by her antagonistic big sister. That's when they discovered that they have the power to shrink down in size, and use that power to interact with all the weird little denizens of the house and find a way out of the room!

Right off the bat, Mini & Max is an incredibly charming game with a lot of imagination put into it. In a nutshell, the story is about trying to reach the King Mittens, a cat and self-proclaimed king of the room living in the room's doorknob, and trying to convince him to open the door for you. The doorknob is initially out of reach though, so you'll be exploring the entire room and getting caught up in quests and side-adventures that all have their own rewards.

These quests can be as simple as a sick bee needing some honey or helping a mouse concoct a potion, while the larger scale stories include a deadly war between red ants and termites, or King Mittens' parasites trying to take over many different parts of the room. The lore of Mini & Max gets hilariously convoluted later on, and they did an incredible job fleshing out the world that expands on its ideas. Not only that, but this game features a bunch of references to UFOSoft's other games, so expect to see some subtle nods and familiar faces.

Anyways, the gameplay consists of being able to shrink and grow at any time. Growing lets you quickly move around the room and acts as a sort of fast travel. You can just walk over to a shelf or power outlet and shrink back down to explore that section of the world rather than walking for 5 minutes when shrunk down.

While in the mini-world, you can explore to collect shinies (this world's currency) which are spread throughout the entire world. Aside from general exploration, you'll also be meeting NPCs that have quests and give out hints for secret areas. The game doesn't have a quest log or anything, so you'll have to track who needs what yourself.

The mini-world has tons of variety, from large houseplants, to caves behind walls, to a model train set, etc. There's a ton to explore and a lot to discover in (almost) any order you'd like. I've seen some comparisons to Zelda: Breath of the Wild in how the game is structured, which is pretty accurate.

Throughout your adventure you'll collect permanent upgrades that allow you to do new things, such as jump higher or control insects while on top of them. There's 39(!) total upgrades to find, so there's no shortage of cool powerups to find. Most of these can be found simply walking around the world, but some are quest-specific rewards, and these usually end up being the most important - so keep an eye out.

In terms of platforming mechanics, Mini & Max is pretty simple. You can walk around and grab items under you to throw or put down elsewhere. Early on in the game you'll get a backpack to store an item in, which is super useful for storing away quest items rather than having to carry them around all the time.

The world design is brilliant and very dense despite not having that huge of a world. Mini & Max never wastes your time in its ~5 hour runtime and I was always engaged with how many different places I could go and explore. After finishing the game I spent a few more hours getting the cherry, and even then there are a lot of secrets I never found and quests I never finished. Of all the games in UFO 50 that could be their own 10-15 dollar Steam game, I could totally see Mini & Max being well worth the money alone.

That said, it's not for everyone. Some people won't have the patience to explore and walk around without knowing exactly where to go, or having to remember what each NPC wants from you at any given time. Solving obscure quests yourself is very satisfying, but I have seen some people over on Discord just ask for solutions after getting fed up.

Anyways, Mini & Max is a lovely adventure that's best experienced yourself. Even though I did explain much of it, there's a lot I purposefully left out... Which I'll talk about in this next spoiler section!

RANK: S

46 - Combatants

Oh boy... Going from possibly the greatest game in UFO 50 straight to the worst gave me a lot of whiplash. Combatants is rated the WORST game in UFO 50 by the community, and I've had morbid curiosity on whether it actually is that bad ever since. Now that I've played it, let me tell you... It really does suck.

Combatants is a painful Real-Time Strategy game where you lead an army of the most useless ants that have ever been conceived in this god-forsaken universe. You walk around (very slowly) around the level, shouting commands to the ants around you to do something specific like follow you, stay put, or follow their instincts. Combatants reminds me a lot of Tooth and Tail in what it's trying to achieve with having a leader run around with the troops rather than a typical RTS.

It would be a cool idea if it weren't so miserable to play. Ants move way too slowly and constantly get stuck on walls, or often walking straight into enemies and dying whenever you're not there to babysit them. What's worse is that enemies are generally stronger than your ants, down to the AI being smarter and automatically placing soldiers in front of workers, something that takes me a long time just to set up.

There's actually very little "strategy" to this strategy game. The only resource is food, and the only thing you can do with it is pay 1 for a worker to move more food or pay 2 for a soldier which is a stronger unit that can shoot tiny projectiles. That's IT. No buildings, no resource management, no real twists to the formula. The game is more about micromanaging your units, dragging them away from trouble, and trying to cheese the enemy AI.

Giving commands is incredibly awkward, by the way. Your only way of controlling troops is shouting commands to all units or only shouting commands to soldiers. You can't just drag to select specific units to guard one area like a normal RTS. This leads to so many moments where I don't have the flexibility to just say "soldiers, stand here, everyone else, move food". It feels like I'm playing a piano of commands to unresponsive children.

I think Combatants is fixable. If the AI weren't so stupid and instinct meant they would actually do their damn job without roaming around randomly, Combatants could be bearable to play. As for making it fun, I think micromanaging ants has to be easier and snappier. As it stands... I dread just thinking about having to finish this game.

RANK: F

47 - Quibble Race

Hey, kids! Do you like watching funny cute animals run to the finish line? Do you like gambling? Do you like hiring thugs to cripple the competition with a wooden bat so you have a higher chance of making money? If you said yes to any of that, you'll love Quibble Race!

Quibble Race is a horse-betting game where the horses are little creatures called Quibbles. They're clumsy and trip all over the place, but that's part of what makes each race very exciting to watch.

This game is also a fun satire of corrupt gambling organizations. The only way to win is by constantly breaking the law. This includes giving your Quibble performance-enhancing drugs, crippling other people's Quibbles, and even poisoning them to death to take them out of the competition. It's a fun dark comedy that doesn't take itself seriously at all.

Of course, pulling the strings isn't free. You can only do one of these actions per race and the better ones are more expensive, so you'd need to balance the risk/reward of your actions and try not losing all of your cash. Luckily, losing all your money isn't game over, since there's always an option to borrow money from the loan shark and pay your debts in the future.

There are a few other actions such as paying for information on a specific racer or sponsoring and training a Quibble to get more money if it wins. These many different mechanics one can interact with makes Quibble Race much more than just gambling. The great thing is that all these different side-activities work well together, and you'll often be interacting with all of them in your game.

The risk/reward systems are also excellent. You get more money by betting on Quibbles that lose more often, so rather than betting on the best racer and getting 1x your money back, you can bet on a garbage Quibble and get 8x your bet back. Then the idea pops in your head - what if I kill the best racer and bet on the worse one?

All sorts of shenanigans ensue because you're not the only one plotting. The two AI you're facing can also commit acts of boosting their Quibbles or harming other ones, so sometimes your Quibble can also get killed and all your plans get ruined. Players can also be caught breaking the rules and get fined instead.

The only problem with Quibble Race is that it feels like your final earnings really hinge on the final race. All other races have a hard cap on how much you can bet, so if you're actually aiming for a cherry or high score, you'll probably end up betting everything on the final race to make some real money. The first couple of races in comparison are very inconsequential because the cap on betting is very low.

What I'm trying to say is this: Quibble Race is an excellent gambling game. There's obviously a bit of luck to it, but the systems in place make it exhilarating. It gives the player just enough agency that a few smart moves and risky gambles can make you win the game.

Fun fact: Just like Devilition, Quibble Race was actually an old game Derek Yu & Jonathan Perry created. It's awesome to see the similarities and differences between this ancient version and its new polished remake in UFO 50.

RANK: A

48 - Seaside Drive

Grab some good vibes, crush it into fine powder, and distill it video game form. That's how I feel about Seaside Drive. It's a lovely Shoot 'Em Up with a fantastic soundtrack and distinct visual style.

Seaside Drive has you driving a car on the bottom of the screen and shooting enemies above. There's also an alternate firing mode to shoot in front or behind the car to take out occasional enemies that appear along the road.

The twist is that there's a meter at the bottom of the screen that determines how powerful your attacks are. It quickly depletes, and the only way to increase it again is to drift by sliding left. This is a fantastic mechanic because rather than standing still and shooting enemies, you're encouraged to constantly slide left and right to not lose power. This leads to a lot of fun moments where you'd have to slide in-between bullets and get uncomfortably close to danger.

The controls and shooting mechanics are very solid and never get old. One thing I also love about Seaside Drive is how distinct each level is. Level 1 has you facing helicopters and military trucks and such, while level 2 is more abstract and has you facing shapes like cubes and spheres. Each stage has a creative boss as well with a unique twist, ensuring that the game is never boring.

There's just one small issue: Seaside Drive is way too short! The game isn't particularly hard, and a successful run is roughly 15 minutes long. I ended up beating AND cherrying the game in my second try, meaning I was done with it in roughly 20 minutes! It's too bad, I would have loved a few more levels.

Seaside Drive is an excellent score-chasing arcade game that anybody could enjoy. It excels in being continuously engaging and tightly designed, even if it is on the shorter side.

RANK: A

49 - Campanella 3

Campanella 3 abandons the roguelike adventure aspect of its predecessor and goes back to the series' arcade roots. Rather than being a game about carefully piloting a ship though, Campanella 3 is a psuedo-3D Shoot 'Em Up!

I've never been a big fan of Star Fox or games like it since they always seemed finicky to play. Campanella 3 on the other hand is really tight and well-designed, with a few creative takes on the genre.

Enemies approach from the background in front of you, which you can defeat by flying around and shooting forwards. However, rather than flying past you when taking too long to kill them, they stop at the foreground where enemies can crash into the ship. When enemies reach the foreground, they have to be cleared using your alt fire which can shoot in four directions around you.

It sounds more complicated than it is. In reality Campanella 3 is about shooting as many enemies before they reach the foreground, then switching attacks to clear the foreground as quickly as possible before they disappear to get the highest score.

There are a couple of different stages but most of them don't really have a clear identity, often feeling like a harder version of the one before it with one or two enemy types added to the mix. Each stage has a new boss, but the first couple felt very similar to one another. That's kind of a theme in Campanella 3, it's really fun but it all blends together a bit as opposed to some other arcade games like Seaside Drive, which had unique themes and enemies every stage.

With 3 lives and multiple continues, Campanella 3 is actually fairly easy to clear. Not only did I beat it on my first try, but I also got the cherry for it while still having multiple continues. The cherry requirement is so easy I would be surprised if someone beats the game without getting it. That's honestly really disappointing, because this game has a pretty high skill ceiling that I wanted to explore.

Now obviously I'm not playing these games for the story, but I wanted to talk a bit about the ending.

Overall, Campanella 3 is a pretty fun & quick arcade game with an interesting take on Shoot 'Em Ups. It's not quite long or varied enough to be A tier, but it's super polished and definitely worth playing, especially with its short ~20 minute runtime. Think of it as being in a sort of B+ tier.

RANK: B

50 - Cyber Owls

This is it! The final game UFOSoft has ever made, and what a fitting goodbye it is. Cyber Owls is an anthology of smaller games that act as parodies of popular and influential retro games of the time.

The evil H.A.W.K. have gotten their hands on nuclear weaponry, and it's up to the Cyber Owls to once again save the world! Everything about Cyber Owls is a fun spoof of late 80's/early 90's saturday morning cartoons. The Cyber Owls themselves are a riff on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, with each protagonist having their own game referencing classics from the era.

• Octavio's section is a platformer brawler with heavy Megaman influences as you progress.
• Guin's section is a stealth game that's very much just Metal Gear.
• Huxley's section is a vehicle arcade shooter, parodying Battletoads.
• Engle's section is a retro third person shooter inspired by similar segments from Contra or Operation Wolf.

A lot of games in UFO 50 are inspired by classics, but they all put an effort to make their own spin on things. Cyber Owls is the only game that directly copies and references other games, acting as one final love letter to the arcade/NES era. Having the final game in a 50 game collection have multiple games inside of it is a nice gag as well.

The goal here is to beat all 4 games in a row in order to access the final level. Each section is relatively short, usually lasting ~5 minutes. It isn't game over if you fail a section, but in order to get another chance you have to beat yet another minigame that's sort of similar to Rogue. It's a one-room dungeon crawler where you need to grab the key to free the hero that failed the last mission. The thing is that minigame is so hard that you'll often just fail anyways and restart the game. I still haven't the slightest clue how to dodge grenades that drop right next to me when surrounded.

This does mean that losing the game means having to restart and re-do all these missions you already won at. This gets really annoying for multiple reasons...

First, the levels are exactly the same with no random generation, meaning that you'll likely do the exact same thing again. Second, the difficulty is all over the place. The Metal Gear stealth sections are the longest and most difficult parts BY FAR. Nailing the other 3 games and then getting lost and losing all your lives in Guin's part is annoying. Finally, the last level of the game is one long marathon with a harder level for each section.

The final level acts as a 2nd half to the game, maybe even longer than the first four sections combined. Dying here will instantly game over you rather than give you a second chance behind a minigame. Guin's section here is really long, and the threat of having to repeat the game all over again on losing will turn off a ton of people.

Honestly, I don't take much issue with the difficulty of Cyber Owls. It's not too tough, but my issue is mostly with how uneven everything is. Huxley and Engle's sections are fairly easy and very brief, Octavio's section is a bit longer and trickier, and Guin's part is over half the game on its own and well-agreed to be the trickiest. Why should I have to do the easy parts again to get to the one part I'm having trouble with? This is a bit of a hot take, but the game would be better if there was a checkpoint upon reaching the final level. It wouldn't make the game easier, just less tedious since I already proved I can beat the first half of the game and shouldn't need to do it again.

If I had to rate the games, I'd say Octavio (platformer) > Huxley (vehicle combat) > Guin (stealth) > Engle (third person shooter). Each one has its own qualities, but I found Engle's minigame to control a bit awkwardly and was generally simpler than the other ones.

Issues aside, the four games are pretty fun and I loved the very cheesy quips each character had. Lots of love and effort was put into Cyber Owls and it really shows, but the general imbalance and having to repeat content hampered my excitement for it.

RANK: B

Outro

Whew! Sometimes when you're working on a larger project, you forget that it will ever end at some point. It feels surreal finally getting to the outro, and at this point my brain is too fried to write any more thoughts. Anyways, here's the final tier list of every game:

Games Tier List

When writing this post, I expected it to be a quick writing exercise that'll take a week or so. 5 reviews in, it dawned on me that there are forty-five reviews left. This post became so ridiculously big that I had to re-design parts of my blog, adding a spoiler button, a go-to-top button, and some minor changes for people on phones!

UFO 50 is a fantastic love-letter to video games. I don't have too much to say about it that hasn't already been said, but it really is an amazing package made by very passionate people over the course of almost a decade. Despite being critically acclaimed and having a budding fanbase, this game seems to have gone under the radar for most people. This post is my way to celebrate it, give it a little more attention that it deserves. My hope is that it blows up in popularity when it recieves the inevitable console port, since I know a lot of people are waiting to play this on their Switch or big TV.

Anyways, shoutout to Mossmouth and co. for making this lovely thing. I can't wait to see the inevitable speedrun where somebody finishes all 50 games without sleeping.

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