It may seem unusual to suggest that a game packed with challenging twitch mechanics, thought-provoking arcade puzzles, and even a fully-fledged narrative RPG lacks nostalgia, but UFO 50, a collection of 50 retro-inspired games of various scales, is filled with unexpected delights. It draws from its influences, after all. Magical Garden draws inspiration from Snake. Valtress resembles a cross between Little Icarus and Downwell. It genuinely aims to look and feel like games from yesteryear. However, UFO 50 also heavily references the 2000s game jam culture as much as the NES era. Rather than merely evoking retro games, UFO 50 possesses a keen sense of imaginative limitation. Each game’s straightforwardness encourages both expansion and depth, aspiring to extract as much creativity as possible from every pixel. UFO 50 engenders a sensation of openness, suggesting that games can be anything. This perspective has primarily flourished in the margins of gaming, making it somewhat unrecognizable as mainstream nostalgia. While big corporations want you to believe that the latest trends define what games can be, it is refreshing to engage both backward and forward as we create.
In my view, UFO 50’s retro aesthetic serves two significant purposes. Firstly, it keeps the games resource-light. Each game is stripped down to its essence, often lacking detailed tutorials. Most games involve just six buttons to operate. It retains the enigmatic nature and variations of arcade games, minus the quarter-guzzling business model. Each game can be extensive but not overwhelmingly so, ensuring that nothing overshadows the rest. Hence, the primary focus is on gameplay density and complexity, emphasizing the kind of replay value stemming from careful design rather than endless arcs of content. The experience feels more akin to assembling an emulator stocked with cult classics rather than reminiscing about receiving an 8-bit console for Christmas.
Secondly, the retro atmosphere accentuates each game’s individual choices and mechanics. Some games in UFO 50—such as Campanella, its sequel, and The Great Bell Escape—have evident connections to each other. In contrast, others—like the surreal Waldorf’s Paddle and the strategy-rich Avianos—appear to originate from different realms. Nonetheless, all the games within UFO 50 seem to share the same core elements: pixels, code, and a few buttons. Yet, there is vast potential. The simplicity brings forth the range of possibilities, making each unique mechanic feel remarkable.
One of UFO 50’s most striking games is Mooncat, a platform puzzler controlled with two buttons. Much of the gameplay, especially during the initial attempts, is about discovering how it functions. You control a bipedal creature, presumably the titular mooncat, which moves in combinations and timings dictated by the two buttons. There’s a jump, a ground pound, a slight run, and the essential left-to-right movement, but none of these actions unfold in the traditional way; all prior knowledge of how games are “supposed” to function disappears. The art style is quirky and unique, yet distinctively vibrant. Green fields inhabited by small critters transition into ancient ruins intertwined with massive skeletons and fierce deserts under a crimson sky. It’s the kind of game hard to classify as a bona fide commercial product, even back in 1985. Its juxtaposition with simpler games illustrates that UFO 50 is avant-garde. Sometimes its elements conform to genre norms, yet at other times they deviate significantly. Appropriately, UFO 50’s meta-narrative revolves around uncovering an obscure catalog rather than revisiting established classics. Its introductory “cutscene” shows members of the UFO 50 team discovering the game’s fictional console in an old storage unit. It’s not something revered in gaming’s historical record or the type of item you would easily find in a nearby retro shop. It’s overlooked. That’s why the game begins in a storage unit instead of a quaint shop or a well-preserved collection (contrast this with retro collections like The Sega Master Collection, which features a main menu designed like a childhood bedroom). The primary menu of UFO 50 emphasizes the games themselves, displaying cartridges. However, instead of being neatly organized on a shelf, they are covered in cobwebs. Selecting a game you haven’t played yet brushes the dust away. It’s whimsical, indeed, yet evokes a sense of archives rather than basements. All of this suggests that UFO 50 presents itself as an excavation rather than a return to the past. It invites you to explore, not just rediscover. There is no past to revert to. Even in UFO 50’s own fiction, you engage with these games in the present, not in some imagined 1980s. The focus on discovery yields a dual impact: it makes these games feel vibrant and encourages you to approach them based on their unique merits, not merely as echoes of history. It is refreshing, dignified, yet still playful. I’ve referenced a number of UFO 50’s strengths, but it is also exceptionally…
