I feel like I have hit a few games that are definitely not for me, but I have yet to hit one yet that felt half baked in any way. I don’t think they really rushed this out the door or anything
10 Likes
Barbuta, Mooncat, and Divers are vaguely connected. I love them as a dark, inscrutable trio.
5 Likes
The soundtrack just got published on Bandcamp, if you’re into that sort of thing
6 Likes
It’s not only that there is an extra layer with the scoring system, the game becomes an entirely differently thing once you start trying to figure out how to max score while also juggling the rescues.
I had an absolute blast getting the cherry on this one, ended up going crazy and doing bonkers superplay stuff like this. Definitely one of my absolute favorites of the whole collection.
10 Likes
Are there known parameters for how the music was created? Like, we know the color palette and game engine used for all of the games. That would be cool knowledge for future fan games.
4 Likes
really loving mini and max so far
2 Likes
About the metagame (heavy spoiler discussion): game 51 suggests, at least as far as anyone’s found, less intrigue and more mundanity than people might be hoping for when they first stumble into it. It definitely looks like there’s more that hasn’t been uncovered, but things end on something of an anticlimax. I appreciate the depiction of UFO soft as a place where morale is cratering under narcissistic mismanagement, 'cause that’s the story of this era. The people who made games but did not own their own studios were frequently seen as disposable and were disposed of, and the ones who did own their studios often made ill-considered sales to larger firms who would then bring the narcissistic mismanagement, layoffs, dissolution, etc. The industry is in an acutely terrible place now but the dynamics and underlying causes don’t change much over time because people don’t change much over time. Collateral damage comes in the form of shrunken imagination because everyone’s energy has to go to maneuvering around unwise business school dudes at the exec level who lack understanding of or curiosity about the thing they’re trying to make and sell. This collection, to me, is partly saying: all this is terribly dysfunctional, but games are still a place where you can just try stuff and maybe succeed if you don’t put $100 million on the line every time.
2 Likes
Feeling pretty let down by Mooncat. I read it’s supposed to be the spiritual successor to Barbuta, but it’s nothing like Barbuta! They share some thematic elements, yeah, but Mooncat is linear, it’s super short, and the secrets are (in my experience) way too easy to find. Just really blows cuz I was expecting another big world to get lost in, and all I got was Mario with extra steps.
2 Likes
I had the opposite experience with those games. The most compelling thing Barbuta did was make me wonder whether the title was a portmanteau of barbiturate and Zelda. I thought Mooncat was relatively breezy, and the slight brain friction created by the controls elevated the whole weird/trippy/alien vibe of the game making it the most cool and unique experience in the game.
5 Likes
I was coming in here to jokingly post about the ethics of intentionally turning your oppies blue and feeling a little bad whenever I don’t quite get all of them into the star tiles. Seriously out of the box play here, all my oppies are about to have a real upsetting day.
2 Likes
When you really get into a nice little stretch of movement in mooncat it really lights your brain up imo. Chaining together divebombs feels excellent.
4 Likes
The later eyeball stages–whew nelly!
2 Likes
Mooncat is very deceiving, it looks linear but there are some wild shenanigans involving the secret warps you can find. It’s not as non-linear as Barbuta but it’s not exactly a straightforward platformer either. It’s unique in the sense it ends up working like the way routes do in Outrun and Darius, you can take several paths that lead you to different outcomes, and the way that synergizes with the mysterious and interesting atmosphere is really cool. Mooncat is deffo one of my favorite games in the whole collection!
5 Likes
Yeah I would agree on all counts. The letdown for me is just that after two runs, the stats screen showed I’d found 2/3 eggs and 35/42 levels.
2 Likes
After a pretty tense time getting to the frontier of civilization and going through the Moonside-inspired dungeon, I was convinced the Obelisk was going to be the final dungeon… lo and behold defeating the dungeon’s “four horsemen” unlocked the Airship in a very funny twist. Now that I have unlocked the whole world map, I appreciate what they did with it.
In hindsight, one pitfall was that I held onto a lot of resources (emerald, ruby, etc.) that I thought could be used for something, so it was taking up space that root beers could have. I also got the Abyssinian as soon as I could afford it, which was very dumb since I could have used the money more wisely and it took up a slot in my inventory. I only now realized I can teach everyone in the party Focus which is a game changer, especially for Anne who was dual-weilding Peacemakers making it very hard to hit anything for damage. I’m in the real final dungeon now, and all of these dungeons are such a war of attrition that the bosses are pretty simple. I wonder if the final boss will be like that.
Ending Spoilers
I ended up beating the game, and overall I’m happy I did. The ending was exactly what one would expect from a classic JRPG inspired game. In the end, Malus being a pushover and Biggan’s atrocious hit rate definitely made it an easier battle than it could have been. Unfortunately Biggan hit me during the same round as I killed him, so I didn’t get the Cherry, but I’m ok with that.
I decided to check out a few other games in the pack. Hearing Ninpek was a Psycho Soldier-like, I had it high on my to-do list… it’s very readable and clever, but it’s quite hard! I feel like to move up the leaderboard I really have to dedicate myself to it in the same way I did with Grimstone. this highlights to me the difference between UFO 50 and the SNK 40th Anniversary collection. With SNK I could be a tourist, using rewind and save states liberally to get the feeling of the classic games without really needing to master it. But UFO 50 wants you to engage with all layers of the game design. I respect it though I forsee myself losing interest more quickly than a game I’m emulating. For example, I discovered in under 5 minutes that Onion Delivery and Rakshasa were not anything I want to bother with.
On the other hand Rail Heist and Pingolf are very cool! They aren’t quite capturing my attention as much as Grimstone did. I think I’ll probably drop this as my primary game, and return to it when playing something easy (like the new Zelda) and looking for some variety or challenge. I am quite impressed with what they did even if the friction of these games makes it feel a little uneven.
4 Likes
Whoa! I never picked up what was going on with the over world map.
1 Like