Internal UFO 50’s fabulous 8-bit lag

The IGF (Independent Games Festival) aims to foster creativity in game development and to highlight emerging game designers pushing the medium forward. This year, Game Developer interviewed the finalists for the IGF’s Nuovo and Grand Prize nominees ahead of GDC to explore the themes, design choices, and tools behind each submission. Game Developer and GDC are sister organizations under Informa.

UFO 50, nominated for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at this year’s IGF awards, is a compilation of fifty games spanning various genres created by several different developers. It explores the 8-bit aesthetic, drawing from contemporary design while narrating the tale of a fictional video game studio that produced them all.

Game Developer connected with Derek Yu, one of the creators who collaborated to develop this collection of games, to discuss the guidelines and boundaries they established to ensure that the efforts of many different developers would cohesively feel like part of a unified whole, the approaches taken to link all these works through a fictional game studio’s catalog of titles, and creating a sense of exploration for players through this eclectic assortment of games.

Who are you, and what was your role in the creation of UFO 50?

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I’m Derek, and I was one of the indie game developers involved in the creation of UFO 50.

What is your background in game development?

I grew up designing games on paper and eventually used Klik & Play to create freeware games. My first commercial project was Aquaria, followed by Spelunky, Spelunky 2, and most recently, UFO 50.

How did you come up with the concept for UFO 50?

The idea for UFO 50 originated from attempting to create a game with my friend Jon Perry, whom I’ve known since we were teenagers. I was inspired by how we used to make little Klik & Play games together under the name “Blackeye Software,” as well as my gaming experiences from the 80s and 90s. I spent considerable time collecting games on floppy disks, CD-ROMs, and websites, along with experiences in arcades.

What development tools were used to create your game?

We utilized GameMaker Studio 2 to develop the game.

UFO 50 gathers many diverse games from multiple creators into a single cohesive (yet varied) collection designed to simulate the history of a fictional game development studio, UFOSOFT. What hurdles did you encounter in ensuring all these varied works could function seamlessly together? What types of constraints or design guidelines did you implement to make everything truly feel like the output of a single studio?

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It was crucial to find suitable guidelines that were flexible enough to provide direction while allowing us the freedom to work swiftly. For a project like this, it’s easy to impose too many restrictions or not enough. Early on, we decided, for example, that we would adhere to a 32-color palette and a few basic color rules but wouldn’t be too stringent about the number of sprites on screen. We aimed for a consistent authentic “vibe.”

In an interview with PC Gamer, it’s stated that adjustments were made to Barbuta, the primary game in UFO 50‘s timeline, to make it truly feel more like a developer’s initial game. How did the overall narrative of UFOSOFT influence the design of some of the other games? The presentation of the collection as a whole?

For the most part, we refined the designs of our games into the right place as we progressed without needing to make drastic changes throughout the development. Barbuta already had an old-school vibe to start with, but once we decided it would be UFO Soft’s first game, we amplified that original feeling even more. We gradually began with games that we simply…
wished to create for ourselves.

What obstacles arose from crafting a comprehensive epic encompassing all of the works? How do you unearth the narrative of an imaginary developer across their various creations?

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We drew inspiration from numerous references for UFO Soft’s narrative, including real-world online game history and our own design experiences. It was a topic we discussed and kept in mind throughout the process, and we made efforts to incorporate similar themes and recurring motifs as we progressed (like overlapping characters and locations, for example). However, we truly unified the narrative towards the final stages when we had most of the pieces (the 50 games) in place. Jon, in particular, did significant work weaving the story together during that concluding phase.

How did you choose the games you wanted to create for this project? What ideas contributed to developing such a variety of gameplay experiences? How did you ensure each game felt unique in its own way?

We—Jon, Eirik (Suhrke), and I—started by brainstorming game ideas, and we all had many concepts we wanted to explore. Later, we were joined by Paul (Hubans), Tyriq (Plummer), and Ojiro (Fumoto), who brought their own ideas to the table. Everyone on the team has their own stylistic preferences, and we embraced those variations—so it wasn’t difficult to make each game truly feel distinct from the others. There was a natural inclination to pinpoint what set each game apart and to emphasize that quality.

Gathering these games into one collection feels a bit like downloading a library of ROMs for an old console – that sense of potentially being overwhelmed by an abundance of games and perhaps casually browsing through them, discovering what interests you through titles, screenshots, and play. What captivated you about capturing a journey of exploration within UFO 50? About portraying that particular experience of delving into the unfamiliar territory of a game studio or console?

That sensation of exploration is something everyone on the UFO 50 team values greatly. For me, it started with my curiosity about video games, and as I aged, I became increasingly fascinated by the history of video games and their development. It has turned into a passion that I enjoy as much as playing or creating games, and I wanted to encapsulate that within UFO 50. However, it wouldn’t feel appropriate if we merely guided players through the collection and directed them at specific elements. Genuine exploration needed to be at the heart of it.

UFO 50 took an extensive amount of time to develop (8 years) and required numerous developers to craft many individual games. How did you maintain your motivation and drive over the years it took to create the game? How did you preserve creativity and mental clarity while working across multiple distinct games and ensuring each one felt like a complete, standalone title rather than just a minigame?

It truly helped to collaborate with creative individuals who share a similar passion for the art form. We also circulated our games frequently, and with 50 games, there was always something new to experience. I might be working on design and programming for a game I was directing one day, and the next I might be playtesting someone else’s game or helping them refine their graphics. Or, someone might send me a design for a game that I hadn’t