UFO 50: A Retro Adventure Overwhelming Even Its Creators
When you open UFO 50, you’re greeted with a grid of 50-pixel art thumbnails representing 50 different 8-bit games. Deciding where to begin is almost overwhelming: do you start with the first game on the list, pick randomly, or dive into the last game, perhaps imagining it as the creative peak of the fictional studio UFOSoft?
The truth is, it doesn’t matter where you start—because there’s just so much to explore. One game can easily pull you in for days, like the point-and-click horror Night Manor, which has absorbed me recently. But when I first launched the collection, I found myself captivated by Barbuta and Bushido Ball, completely neglecting the other 48 games for a while. Then there was my Walforf’s Journey phase, and more recently, I’ve made some headway in Camouflage and Block Koala. But have I completed any of these games? No, not even close.
And you know what? That’s okay. Even the developers of UFO 50 haven’t completed all the games yet. During a recent conversation with the team at Mossmouth, I discovered that finishing all 50 games is an almost impossible task, even for the people who created them.
“No, not at all,” said Eirik Suhrke when I asked if he or anyone else on the team had managed to complete every game. “It’s too much. We all played each of them a bit, but I’ve been watching stuff on Twitch and just seeing new things constantly. No one has the full picture.”
Paul Hubans, another member of the team, admitted he hasn’t even played past the first level of Campanella 3, despite spending “hundreds of hours” testing the collection.
Suhrke explained that to make real progress, you need to focus on one game at a time. “You’ve got to just black out the other 49 games for a bit. Whenever I thought about the whole thing, I’d get dizzy and overwhelmed. I’d have to take a walk and then block out as much of it as I could. It’s only now that I’m seeing the full power of the whole thing come together.”
Tyriq Plummer added that early players’ reactions mirrored his feelings when he saw how everything finally came together. “Even though it’s such a large, broad project, it still feels more than the sum of its parts,” he said. “Everyone else is saying now there’s way more to this than I even realized. It’s super cool.”
Derek Yu agreed. “I think that’s always the best when you’re surprised by the game you’re working on. That’s partly why it’s been so enjoyable to work on it for all these years. We’re constantly surprising each other.”
According to reviews, UFO 50 is a “superb retro-style smorgasbord.” And after spending some time with it myself, I wholeheartedly agree—it’s a massive collection of hidden gems, each deserving your undivided attention.
