The Games of 2024: UFO 50 (Patreon)

Come for the 50 cool “pretend-retro” video games, stay for the melancholy story of the fictional company behind them all.

UFO 50 is a cool collection of cool video games. But it’s the care given to establishing a universe behind those games that makes it feel like so much more. The 50 games in the collection are initially presented in chronological order, from 1982 to 1989. You see bits and pieces of credits in many of the games. Recurring names start to pop up. Themes carry from game to game. Sequels try to greatly iterate on the ideas of the original without just retreading the exact same ground like some kind of level pack (which, to be honest, isn’t really how it always worked back then or now). You see growth as the company chugs through the years, culminating in a beat-’em-up called Cyber Owls that kinda turned out to be my least favorite game in the collection, I think.

Warptank is probably my favorite. Wait, maybe it’s Pilot Quest. No, it’s Vainger. Hmm. Party House? No, it’s Warptank. Definitely Warptank. Or Mortol II. Anyway, in addition to the games evolving over the “years” of the developer’s existence, you also see a lot of genres and ideas thrown at you. Each game is different from the last, and my first time through the collection was a series of amazing surprises. Even the games that I didn’t latch onto still had interesting ideas that felt valuable and worth exploring. It’s a really impressive feat and an astounding effort from the (actual, real) developers who made this thing.

They also tie it together with a series of secrets. A code entry field initially seems like it’s just there for you to enter Game Genie-like codes, which can launch altered versions of the games. But you may just stumble upon the 51st game, a bunch of bits and pieces that form an unfinished version of “Miasma Tower.” This game, coded by (fake) employee Greg Milk, tells the tale of the studio behind all those games at a time when they’ve seemingly been acquired and a bunch of shitty middle managers have come in to really ruin the process of just sitting down and making a good-ass video game. It hit home for me in several ways while also providing a reason for why the games stop at 1989. It also gave me another reason to dislike Cyber Owls, but that’s a story for another time.

The quantity and the quality of the concepts on display here firmly plant on any sane list of top games for this year, but the framing around it and the mysteries surrounding that hidden 51st game are what transform it from a rad collection of indie games into something much more affecting. By the presumed end of it all I couldn’t decide if I felt happy for Greg for his escape or sad about… well… everything else going on at this fictional company. It’s really neat, it’s really touching, and it’s a really special package.