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UFO 50, the faux-retro compilation from the creators of games like Spelunky, Air, Land & Sea and Downwell, is finally releasing after a long development process. Which, well, makes sense! There are 50 games in here, and it didn’t quite take them 50 times as long to make, so perhaps they can take that as a victory. And it seems like it was worth the extra effort, because it’s largely a delight to play.

UFO 50’s titles are, the developers insist, not minigames! And they’re right; this isn’t Mario Party. What they do offer, though, is a more concentrated experience than most games that would launch by themselves. The lengths vary, but if you like the process of learning a game more than what comes after, you’ll enjoy that in UFO 50 every few hours.

Since it was made by a collective of folks used to creating their own stuff, they can feel very different in aims. Having a primarily-analog designer, Jon Perry, on board means a lot more tactical play, which we do love around here. Downwell creator Ojiro Fumoto’s brief involvement with the release shows through in some super-quick action. These sorts of different minds add both to the variety of fun you’ll have and to the feeling that it’s a compilation of disparate releases from within an old game company.

It’s important to note that this isn’t a Retro Game Challenge sort of release. There are ideas that only work within the fictional retro context, for sure! But these are generally original game ideas, rather than straightforward ‘80s homages. They’re all built for a fictional retro computer, which in practice means they share a color palette and resolution and a two-button control scheme. We do like the simplicity! There are a few of these games that would have benefited from in-game start button functionality for a menu or a third face button to keep from overlapping controls, but they stuck to their guns on that point and it does mean that these games are as tight and streamlined as it feels they could manage.

An example on the more conventional end is Grimstone. It replicates the grind-heavy feel of NES-era RPGs, implementing a timing-based battle system but otherwise sticking with the restrictions and ideas of the era. As a standalone game, it would be frustrating and generally lacking, but here it serves as an important part of the game’s fictional fabric.

On the other end, you have games like disc-flicker Lords of Diskonia and deck-builder Party House, which clearly have their roots in the more modern analog game scene. But they handle them in a very video-game-like way. In Lords of Diskonia, for example, the opponent never misses. Bank shots? Wild combos? They can absolutely do it every time. The key is in exploiting the factors they don’t take into as frequently, like ending their turn in fog or leaving themselves vulnerable after their moves. This is very different from playing a human (which you can still do here, by the way), who can absolutely consider all the factors but won’t necessarily keep 360-no-scoping you the whole time.

Many of the action games in the collection are what you'd call “Nintendo hard,” the punishing sort of difficulty that many games of the era had to extend play time through repetition with limited resources and storage space to make new worlds. Though we're sure this will vary from person to person, we found the difficulty to vacillate somewhere between “totally doable” and “I might be able to beat this first level with enough practice, but that doesn't sound like a fun time.”

In addition to “Nintendo hard,” there’s also sometimes “Spelunky hard,” not afraid to be punishing and wipe progress away in an instant. This makes sense given the dev team, of course! And myriad factors make this an okay approach. The shorter included games and the quantity, in case you just want to bounce around and find what you like without feeling too bad about what you don’t. A generation of players raised on Demon’s Souls-like games. It does mean that, well, we’re not beating some of these ourselves. But we’re sure others will.

True to its retro feel, UFO 50 is a game that could really benefit from something like an instruction manual. As it stands, it’s more like sifting through a collection of ROMs: you’ll get the button commands in the menu and a one-sentence descriptor, but a lot of context or explanation you’d get in the documentation ephemera of the past just isn’t here. We’re sure there will be a lot of resources for players very quickly after the game releases and fans create them! But they weren’t there for us in the pre-launch review period.

The selection of games feels primarily tuned for a great two-player experience, and it’s here that you’ll find some more easily explained games. Kick Club is Bubble Bobble with a ball-kicking attack. Bushido Ball is a samurai Windjammers. Fist Hell is River City Ransom with zombies.

Two of our favorites: Hyper Contender and Quibble Race. The first is a TowerFall-style quick battle game, with each character having a movement and attack function, but they can be very different. Is your attack a linear missile or a Castlevania-style axe throw? Do you have a jump, or do you reverse your gravity? The various matchups all play out in different ways.

On the complete opposite end of the action spectrum, Quibble Race is a hidden-information pseudo-horse-racing betting concept. You can sponsor Quibbles for a payout of their winnings! You can scout the participants of a race and make an honest bet! Or, hey, we suppose you can try to poison the favorite? Reading opponents and holding out for some luck makes this a lot more fun than we’d expected.

We’ve called out a few examples, but we’re making a point not to explain absolutely everything, because a lot of the joy of UFO 50 is stumbling upon and exploring a new game. It’s best approached as a goodie bag, with discovery and learning through playing as its key tenets. The difficulty is perhaps a bit higher than we’d like in spots for some of the games, but overall it really is a can’t-miss release.

UFO 50 launches on PC on September 18, 2024. It’s published by Mossmouth, and developed by Derek Yu, Jon Perry, Eirik Suhrke, Paul Hubans, Ojiro Fumoto and Tyriq Plummer.

The post Review: UFO 50 Is Absolutely Worth Your Time appeared first on Siliconera.

It's been a while since there's been an update on UFO 50, a game with contributions from developers like Derek Yu. However, now there's an update showing that it is still in development. Yu took to Twitter to share a new screenshot from the project. That was accompanied by a confirmed that that the designer is "still working on it."

Here is the tweet from Derek Yu showing his contribution to the game.

Still working on it. #UFO50 pic.twitter.com/knUlcmtGp6

— Derek Yu (@mossmouth) December 30, 2022

The draw of the game is that it will feature 50 8-bit games. It originally had a 2018 launch window, which since ed. In addition to Yu, Eirik Suhrke, Jon Perry, Ojiro Fumoto, Paul Hubans, and Tyriq Plummer are making titles for it. In addition to single-player games, there will be multiplayer ones.

Here’s the 2017 announcement trailer, which shows some of the games people will see in the finished collection.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wqZi1smZOg&ab_channel=MossmouthGames

While this is in development, Derek Yu did finish another game. Spelunky 2 came out in 2020, eventually hitting multiple platforms. Following its launch, Yu worked on updates to address issues and improve the online experience.

UFO 50 is in development for PCs. The un-updated Steam page is still live, as is the official website.

The post Derek Yu ‘Still Working on’ UFO 50 appeared first on Siliconera.

Spelunky 2, the long-awaited sequel from Mossmouth and BlitWorks, does a lot of things right. Instead of building mountains of new things atop the existing formula, it seeks to replicate the original experience by varying up elements. Instead of adding a bunch of new moves and messing with the controls, it maintains what worked so well the first time. It's intentionally comfortable. And that's great.

Well... it is when you don't play online.

Launching today on PlayStation 4 and headed to PC via Steam on September 29, Spelunky 2's initial PS4 release is, simply put, not ready. It seems like the team knows it, too. For much of the game's review period, all online functions (including multiplayer and daily challenges) were totally disabled. As we're writing this, headed into launch day, the game's received its fifth pre-launch patch. They know. They're frantically working. By the time the Steam release drops, it will probably settle down into working shape. But if you're excitedly picking the game up now, we thought it'd be irresponsible not to tell you what to expect.

And what to expect? It's practically unplayable. You can check out the short gameplay clip below for a sample of what we experienced:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2Ut1FSgWKg&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=Siliconera

 
The clip captured just one side of our chat audio, but you can see Jenni's view of things: sometimes I'm standing still. Sometimes I'm zapped across the screen. I fall. I... un-fall? None of these things were actually happening, and I was having the same sorts of problems on the other end.

Throughout our staff testing with solid connections that could handle other games just fine before and after our gameplay sessions, other characters would constantly shake and teleport across the screen. They'd regularly show their positions in different spots than we actually were. The game would constantly attempt to catch up. At any time, you can't be sure where things are and how you're moving. Spelunky players know that, well, those are the two bedrock elements upon which the gameplay is built.

Of course, "the online's rough at launch" has become something of a given in recent years. What makes Spelunky 2's situation different is the severity of the issues, and that their presence before launch day suggests it’s not about overloaded servers that aren’t ready for the traffic. The game’s reliance on precision — and global conditions making more people dependent on online multiplayer for social interaction — just makes these troubles more troublesome.

If you're not interested in using the online multiplayer functions of Spelunky 2, all of this may be less important to you. The daily runs and leaderboards function well enough. The solo experiences remain largely intact. You can live and die by your own skill in the main adventure, playing as one of a number of endearing characters and encountering new foes that serve as fresh puzzle pieces to solve levels through calculated risk and make it through alive.

In an effort to make Spelunky 2 feel like the first Spelunky, creator Derek Yu and the co-development team at BlitWorks have built a world that's more treacherous. Of course, making a game with the difficulty of the first game wouldn't feel like when players first discovered Spelunky. Instead, the sequel both subverts that game's ideas and swaps in different ones, to make you just as hesitant and unsure when encountering new things as you once were. It's not entirely unapproachable to newcomers, though. Without that knowledge to subvert, it's more of a traditional learning process. It can be punishing. It can be exacting. And it really makes you earn progress through practice and growth. For both vets and newbies, it nails this signature feel.

But for now, just don't play online.

Spelunky 2 is out now on PlayStation 4, with the Steam port dropping on September 29, 2020. Hopefully, the team will get things fixed soon.

The post The Game’s Good, But Don’t Play Spelunky 2 Online Yet appeared first on Siliconera.

On March 11, 2020, Spelunky 2’s Derek Yu shared some updates and new screenshots for the game via the PlayStation Blog. The Spelunky 2 team has been hard at work polishing the game down to every detail. Additionally, thanks to fan , Yu feels that Spelunky 2 has a better balance to make things vibrant, dynamic, and distinct, all without being too caught up in the details.

In of content, one of Yu’s major goals for Spelunky 2 was to make it feel more like a personalized adventure: 

Of course, players of the original game created a lot of their own stories through their choices during the game, and in my opinion those are still the most meaningful. We want to keep ing that kind of creativity by adding more variety to the game.

Part of this personalization will include new items and a vibrant community of new and old NPCs designed to help make the world of Spelunky feel more rich and flavorful.

Also, another element that will be designed to help people get into Spelunky 2 is its atmosphere. Each area will have its own unique musical theme. Additionally, every creature, item, trap, and surface will have its own sound effect. Yu noted:

Landing on grass in the Jungle will sound very different than landing on a conveyor belt in Volcana, for example. It’s perhaps a more subtle change but adds a lot to the distinct feel of each area.

Now, here’s a look at some of Spelunky 2’s new screenshots:

[gallery size="full" columns="1" ids="827919,827920,827921"]

Spelunky 2 is currently in development for the PlayStation 4 and PC.

The post Get a Better Look at Spelunky 2 With New Screenshots appeared first on Siliconera.