![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Dance-is-life-DDNets-Visual-Novel-about.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nI personally added 30 of the 50 to my \u201cfavourites\u201d after playing each of them for around 20 minutes to get a feel for them. Think about that, though \u2013 more than half the collection were games that I want to play again and to completion. Just a small cross-section of my favourites within that favourites section includes:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Grimstone: A full scope JRPG from the 8 bit era \u2013 yes, really, it\u2019s a full scope JRPG.<\/li>\n
- Avainos: A variation of classic strategy game, Defender of the Crown, albeit with more depth in units.<\/li>\n
- Kick Club: A single screen arcade platformer in the vein of Bubble Bobble and Snow Bros.<\/li>\n
- Paint Chase: If you were to cross Pac-Man with Splatoon, it\u2019d play a little like this.<\/li>\n
- Rail Heist: A 2D XCom-style tactics strategy game.<\/li>\n
- Rock On! Island: A classical tower defence strategy game.<\/li>\n
- Valbrace: A first-person dungeon crawler with an action combat system.<\/li>\n
- Quibble Race: A \u201chorse racing gambling\u201d simulator where you bet on races, and can also invest in the Quibbles in the stable to take ownership of them and train them up.<\/li>\n
- Night Manor: A point-and-click adventure game in the vein of the Kemco titles of old. If you remember Shadowgate, you know what to expect.<\/li>\n
- Lords of Disconia: A tactics strategy game where your units are discs that you \u201cflick\u201d around a board.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Count them: That\u2019s just 10 titles in the collection. There are also Metroidvanias, puzzle platformers, arcade platformers, Roguelikes, A 2D golf game, \u00a0SHMUPS \u2013 side scrolling and vertical, brawlers, and more. So much more.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\nWhat is truly astounding about the entire collection is how consistent the quality is. The developers understand what makes a SHMIP kick as well as they have a mastery over various versions of RPGs. Their arcade games are as refined as their more slow-paced strategy titles. Just think about how much work must have gone into doing that? Most developers struggle to get a single game in a single genre out of the door, and there is this developer showing that they\u2019ve mastered just about all the genres.<\/p>\n
It’s not just that they play well, either. The art is gorgeous and appropriate to every type of game in the collection. The developers\u2019 take on the Ghouls \u2018n Ghosts formula looks different to their take on Mega Man. The auto-strategy game (where units continue to appear periodically on a screen and your job is to move them up and down in their \u201clines\u201d so they can attack an enemy\u2019s castle) is a very different-looking strategy game to the Defender of the Crown clone. Admittedly, some titles do look better than others, but you\u2019d never be able to accuse any of them of not looking authentic, and it\u2019s incredibly charming just how lovingly the developer has recreated all these different aesthetics from the pixel eras.<\/p>\n
The only downside is that UFO 50\u2019s multiplayer options are strictly for local multiplayer only. I understand why that is the case \u2013 supporting online multiplayer for the dozens of games that have multiplayer modes would have been a mind-boggling challenge, and the resources required would have been intimidating too. There\u2019s also a thematic reason for it, given that the fictional PC that is being \u201cemulated\u201d here wouldn\u2019t have had online capabilities. However\u2026 I could have seen Avainos becoming such a multiplayer hit for my circle, given how much we love strategy and board games. I would have loved to be able to add it to my weekend game club rotation.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\nI can\u2019t think of a game that I have played in years that has been made with as much love as UFO 50. It\u2019s the kind of project that could only come from people who love video games that much, and it does feel like a celebration of video games right down to its digital pores. I would have happily purchased 20 (if not more) of the games in this collection as standalone titles. Having them all in one package feels so generous I almost feel like we\u2019re all taking advantage of the developers here.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2030\/03\/5_stars-25404x-300x53.png\")
<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2030\/03\/DDnet_rating_graph-SW-295x300.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s intimidating to think how much work went into UFO 50. Most \u201ccollection\u201d games are one of two things: A retro compilation, or a selection of minigames that are typically over in a few minutes. UFO 50 is different. It\u2019s a collection of 50 genuinely new games, from just about every genre you could imagine. Almost none of them are duds. The premise of UFO 50 is itself delightful, with the library of games acting like a \u201cbest of\u201d collection of discs for a fictional retro PC, much like the Commodore 64 or the PC-98. When you first load UFO<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":69695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,28,17],"tags":[12769,12763,12764,12799,15867],"coauthors":[12758],"class_list":["post-69692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indie","category-nintendo-switch","category-reviews","tag-indie","tag-nintendo-switch","tag-reviews","tag-switch-review","tag-ufo-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69692"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69698,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69692\/revisions\/69698"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69692"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.digitallydownloaded.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=69692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}