UFO 50 has an experimental spirit that goes beyond a mere evocation of the past.
It has its influences, of course.
Magical Garden pulls on Snake.
Valtress is something of a cross between Kid Icarus and Downwell.
It has a steady dedication to looking and sounding like games of the past.
However, UFO 50 draws as much on 2000s era game jam culture as the NES itself.
Rather than a mere evocation of retro titles, UFO 50 has a longing for creative constriction.
UFO 50 creates the feeling of wide-openness, that video games can be anything.
To my mind, UFO 50’s retro aesthetic serves two purposes.
First, it keeps games resource-light.
Each game is bare in construction, often lacking explicit tutorialization.
Most games have a mere six buttons to play with.
It maintains the mysterious workings and iterations of arcade games, without the quarter-munching business model.
Each game can only be so big lest it outscope the rest.
Second, the retro vibes focus on each game’s individual decisions and ideas.
Yet there is so much possibility.
The simplicity draws out the span of what is possible.
It makes each new trick feel remarkable.
One of UFO 50’s most-striking games is Mooncat, a two-button platform puzzler.
Most of the game, at least on the first run, is found in learning how it works.
The art direction is whimsical and odd, but with no small amount of menace.
Its presence among more straightforward games showcases that UFO 50 is experimental.
Sometimes its offerings will fit into genre conventions, but often they won’t.
Fittingly, UFO 50’s meta-narrative focuses on unearthing a forgotten catalog rather than revisiting classics.
UFO 50’s main menu focuses on the games themselves, showing cartridges.
But they are not arranged on a shelf; instead, they are covered in cobwebs.
Selecting a game you haven’t yet played dusts it off.
It’s cutesy to be sure, but it conjures the archive more than the basement.
It wants you to discover, not to rediscover.
There is no past to return to.
It is uncloying, dignified, but still playful.
I’ve made a lot of UFO 50’s reduction, but it is also excessive.
It’s 50 whole games!
It would be possible to write at length about any of them individually.
But its excess is found in the wealth of its experience, in the diversity it presents itself with.
Open worlds have codified into Ubisoft bloat.
Live-service games chase the brand integration of Fortnite or the expansion of Genshin Impact.
Call of Duty has been the dominant first-person shooter for well over a decade.
Mainstream games have lost their experimental edge.
UFO 50 is perhaps the biggest scale that an experimental game can operate in.
That’s still pretty small.
Nevertheless, UFO 50 is worth celebrating.
I have often lamented the lack of Martin Scorceses in video games.
UFO 50 is a small but confident and exciting step in that direction.
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