UFO 50 Reviews
A collection of new-old sports games, RPGs, platformers and puzzlers: what is all this sweet work worth?
A superb retro-style smorgasbord in real danger of drowning out its own consistently good work.
Sitting down with this collection is stepping into an alternate timeline, and having 50 timeless 8-bit gems dumped into your lap. The level of variety, and the incredible quality of each game, make UFO 50 an absurd value. For anyone looking to experience the magic of video games, I can’t stress enough how excellent UFO 50 is. It is an out-of-this-world collection.
UFO 50 is a masterful compilation of retro-style games that invokes the sense of delightful discovery at the heart of the 8-bit era.
It’s not the biggest budgets or the most polish. It’s creativity and experimentation, a willingness to try new things and keep pushing a young medium forward. With any luck, we’re just getting started.
The 1980s reimagined as a collection of 50 "small" games, ranging from arcade racers to full-blown RPGs.
UFO 50 is a celebration of retro gaming, full of wonderful modern ideas, sensational video games and a whole lot of content.
UFO 50 is like stumbling across a time capsule and discovering a wealth of lost knowledge inside. And yet, it’s entirely a singular work of fiction. That by itself is deeply fascinating and makes this thing worth playing. Even if you pass over most of the games and only find a few that stick with you from a fun perspective, the depth on a conceptual level is absurd and gratifying to simply think about. We’re living at a time in which older games are vanishing from both physical reality and our sort of collective cultural well at an increasing rate, when remakes are seen as replacements for original work and curiosity to seek out history is dwindling unless there’s a purchasable remaster. UFO 50 is fun to play and take at face value, but it also highlights how age really isn’t a detriment to having a great time and engaging with games.
A staggering achievement in indie gaming that offers almost too much value for its own good, with 50 superb indie games – many of which could be standalone games in their own right.
UFO 50 will remind you why you fell in love with video games in the first place.
This bundle of 50 new games from the creator of Spelunky offers an electrifying range of retro genres rebooted, from point-and-click horror to Pong
UFO 50 may be inspired by an era that's several generations ago, but an incredible amount of imagination and work went into making this collection of games more than just about evoking nostalgia. The collection also manages to feel fresh and innovative, delivering thrills and the feeling of discovery at nearly every turn. It's unlike anything I've played, and represents a passion and love for the medium in such a special way.
You’ll occasionally come across signs bearing dreamlike musings: “the sea shells form a bridge between us,” “there is a dark shape on the horizon,” and so on. As you travel further, the wind changes direction and the evening sky shifts from orange to purple. Platforms get sparser and require leaps of faith or hope. And when you inevitably miss and Waldorf falls into the sea, he wakes up on an ice floe, surrounded by sleeping walruses, waiting to dream again. It’s the clearest example of UFO 50’s willingness to experiment paying off in something as fun to play as it is interesting conceptually, but in a crowded field, it’s far from the only one.
UFO 50 is, in other words, a game that trusts you, the player, to find the fun—with the promise that there is a lot of fun to be found in this odd, massive toy chest. We should note that the game does have a few curation tools—if you scroll down to the bottom of the collection, you can filter games by whether they’re meant to be more reflex based, or cerebral, for instance, or focus in on the title’s large number of same-screen multiplayer games. (Breaking free of the chronology is a good idea in any case; although UFO 50 doesn’t pay as much attention to the “complexity increases as fictional time passes” conceit that powered Retro Game Challenge, you’ll still tend to find more robust experiences closer to the end of UFOSoft’s fictional lifespan.) We’re sure we’ll soon see a cottage industry of guides and wider critiques pointing out hidden gems buried in its library. But honestly, we recommend just doing what the game itself advises: Scroll through until you find a title that sounds cool, blow off the fictional dust, and take a gamble on the chance you’ll hit something that’ll be one of your favorite games of 2024.
UFO 50 is an impressive achievement with a strong love for the medium while also understanding numerous genres on a deep level. A true masterpiece and resounding success on every level.
Review in German | Read full review
I may not think that UFO 50 fully succeeded at feeling like an actual compilation of 8-bit games released for a long-lost console in the early 80s, with pretty much all of its titles feeling actually like modern indies covered in a retro coat of paint, but when a good chunk of these titles is so much fun, that’s just anecdotal.
Faux retro compilation UFO 50 is a can't-miss release.