Aja on 29/1/2025 at 15:33
My favourite part about UFO50 is that I find myself getting sucked into games in genres I don't normally care about. For example, Bug Hunter, which at 20 hours is now my most played game in the collection by a long shot. The genre is tactics, I guess? As the eponymous Bug Hunter you show up for work every day with a limited number of moves and attacks on a grid full of bugs, and you need to economize your turns so that you kill the most bugs possible without allowing them to evolve. At first I found it frustrating, but then I realized I needed to treat it more like a puzzle, and instead of charging ahead with some half-conceived strategy, I started planning out my entire turns in advance, staring at my screen for like 15 minutes at a time before pressing a button. Anyway, I got the gold by beating jobs in a row, but I felt like I hadn't mastered it yet, so I spent a few more evenings for the cherry, which is six consecutive jobs. Now I'm Hunter of the Year, and I can move on to something else (maybe Into the Breach?).
henke on 3/4/2025 at 19:19
I thought underwater RPG Divers seemed cool first time I tried it, but not my kinda thing. Never cared for its style of turn based combat, and it seemed really hard. Glad I decided to give it another shot as I got really engrossed in the exploration aspect of it. The leveling up does get compelling as well, tho in a very grindy way. I did have to look up some gameplay hints about the combat system before it really clicked, and I'd advise anyone else wanting to try it to do the same. Anyway, it ended up being my 3rd most played game AND my 3rd Cherry!
After that I went back to their other underwater game Porgy, which I'd previously played up till the final boss before losing interest, and finished that.
And then I decided I was finally in the mood for Night Manor's creepy adventure. A straight up horror adventure game. The adventure puzzling seems easier than most old point n click adventure games, but it's fun when you can make progress quite rapidly, and the small game world makes it easy to keep all the threads in your head. Unraveling the story is fun, but I'm not a fan of the jumpscary nature of how the monster works. I made it to the (bad/easier) ending in about 1.5h. Night Manor still holds many secrets. Perhaps I'll go back some day.
With that, I've now played 100 hours of UFO 50. Dunno if I've mentioned but I friggin love this collection.
henke on 5/4/2025 at 11:33
Now playing Rail Heist, which might just be the most TTLG-coded game in the collection.
[video=youtube;xO1ZSBL7RjI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO1ZSBL7RjI[/video]
A western-themed stealth heist game with turn based action and gameplay systems colliding with eachother in almost immsim-ish ways. Sounds like my dream game, really. But it's also a mess. I'm constantly amazed by how MUCH these games do with very little, but this is perhaps the only game in the collection where the ambition is too much for the limited 6-button controls. When you've figured out the optimal route through a level, and everything goes right, like in the clip above, it's fun. But the path there is littered in trial and error and things constantly not working how you expected or wanted. It's very chaotic. But also full of the neat little details I've come to expect from these games. When I landed on the horse at the end of this level and the chicken came along for the ride I laughed out loud. :D
Oh, I also took a swing at sports-betting game Quibble Race and not only beat it but somehow Cherried it as well.
Aja on 7/4/2025 at 14:28
Rail Heist needed a better tutorial, but I'll probably give it shot eventually. Even after a few levels (and watching the demo over and over) I still found it pretty confusing. I haven't played UFO50 in a while, but I imagine I'll come back to it eventually. I remember back in October, henke, when you said you were finished with it.
henke on 8/4/2025 at 17:25
Quote Posted by Aja
I remember back in October, henke, when you said you were finished with it.
I say all kindsa things! I did need a couple month break from the collection to re-ignite my love for it tho.
Rail Heist continues to be confusing even
after you've figured out how to play it. Even towards the end levels are a string of "damn, I mean't to pick up the concrete block, not the barrel! RESTART!" "damn, I meant to crouch before the timer stopped! RESTART!" So much trial and error. I've made it to the final mission but kinda got sidetracked with
Rock On! Island instead. It's a pretty neat caveman tower defence game, but not the most compelling tower defence I've played. It's no
Rats, Bats n Bones.
Listening to Bennett Foddy rave about Rail Heist's multiplayer versus mode in the latest Eggplant Show ep did make me wanna try it tho. It sounded very Worms-esque.
Aja on 8/4/2025 at 21:44
Maybe it's sacrilege to say this on TTLG, but when it comes to imm sims, I think what I like best is that they usually give you lots of room to explore at your own pace. Strip away the exploration and atmosphere down to pure mechanics, and suddenly I'm not so interested.
demagogue on 9/4/2025 at 00:02
Oh man, it's funny that me & henke had a little discussion about just this (what Aja is talking about), and I was already thinking about it when he mentioned Rail Heist. But that was for me playtesting a thing of his. Actually it wasn't on this directly, but indirectly in talking about just other details and mechanics of the game, but this kind of thing is what I was thinking.
I'm not going to talk about that at all, being behind closed doors and all, but it overlaps with what we're talking about with Rail Heist anyway & I can just give some general thoughts around the topic.
Also, the thing is while I'm on Aja's side on this, I also get what henke was/is thinking too.
I could probably write a long essay on this. I'll try a short version.
In my vision of imm-sim-ism, one of the core parts is that there are all of these open & unbiased or neutral systems that are just doing their thing that don't care about the player, but the player can game them to make progress. Part of that ethos is there's also a bigger world happening doing its thing that also doesn't care about the player. But the idea is that there's something that feels much bigger than the player, and the player is immersed in it.
For some things it's minimalist, like parts of the game that cater only to the player or game-as-such and/or are necessary for gameplay reasons, the big example being GUI elements (for Thief/Darkmod: the light gem, frob highlighting, inventory icons). The classic imm-sim ethos is that those are minimalist. You want just enough for them to do the job and be aesthetically elegant, but otherwise you want them out of the way of the rest of the world that's not supposed to be caring about the player being there.
But for the world itself, you want it rich with things you can interact with, e.g., in Thief/Darkmod: the way you game space and paths, narrow and broad paths, run and sneak, side & z-axis paths, shadow and light, different material sounds, the way tools change the safety/risk of space, etc.
So that's the way I think having a big world that invites open exploration with lots of systems you can game in open ways is important to the whole imm-sim ethos.
But again, I get henke's attraction to having a really sparse game world & systems that are whittled down to a few core mechanics that you can game, like the way Gilligan's Island can be this tiny metaphor or microcosm for all of society (a character is an entire social class, etc.), a very sparse game can be a microcosm of a bigger imm-sim. For that kind of game, it's great when they don't have any fat on them and capture their mechanic in a really tight but still open way. (I'm playing an old C64 game on my phone for breaks these days called Rags to Riches where you're a hobo trying to become a millionaire that's really pared down like this, & I love how much it does with such bare mechanics.) I don't think I'd call that style of game imm-sims for the same reasons I was talking about above that me & Aja are mentioning. But if someone did call them a kind of imm-sim, I think that's still fair, or not unfair. They're at least imm-sim adjacent.
I like both, but I'd just say that both have a different ethos & speak to a different mood you may have going into a game, whether you want your world and gameplay really rich with interaction and possibility or very pared down to very bare and tight mechanics.
Okay, maybe not such a short version. I tried. =L
demagogue on 9/4/2025 at 22:49
Thanks. It was actually a little irresponsible of me to pull that out here, so it's good you moved it to a better place.
While I'm here, I haven't gotten bit by the UFO 50 bug yet. I was playing through a good number of the games, and some of them are fun for what they were. I think the reason it hasn't stuck with me as much is it could is that these days I'm playing a lot of emulated games on my phone for breaks, mostly C64 but a some Atari 2600, NES, & Genesis games. But I'll keep coming back to this sometimes. I think some of them will stick if given a chance.
I've played the first I think two rows of games, but the first one with the underground platforming is still the most memorable for me. It reminds me of a C64 game I played a lot back in the day, and I like the mix of exploration and puzzle.
