The Big Catch & its Tacklebox have Lured me in

 I want this blog to be a pleasant, positive place where I can also be harshly critical of things. My last two blog posts have been very critical, so I feel like making something incredibly upbeat, and a little bit timely, too! After all, where's the contrast in only making negatively-slanted blogposts? I'm a fully rounded human. I'm going to talk about The Big Catch for a bit. I don't expect this to be a particularly long blog post, but that is also good contrast with the rest of these tall, tall, text towers.

"Tall towers, you say?"

I am lucky and blessed enough to have backed The Big Catch back in 2022. The game's graphical style, music, presentation, and hypothetical gameplay shown in the trailer sold me on it immediately. I had little reservation about backing it at the tier that got you a demo early. Then known as "The Toybox". Little else happened on my end of this bargain until the glorious summer of 2024 where said demo released... To literally everyone. This was a controversial move at the time, but really smart. Because otherwise right now I'd be talking about how fun it is to live in CuthbertLand and ride all the cool rides that you can't go on because you didn't back the game.

After all, I still got to play it.

Considering the developers are currently showing the game off at Pax East (AT TIME OF TYPING), this is the perfect time for YOU, the reader, to play the demo and if you enjoy it you won't have to wait a crazy amount of time to experience the full game. I love this god damn demo. You may also wonder why you should even bother with the demo if the game's coming out soon. With most demos, they'll just let you play about 5-10% of the game and cut you off before it gets really good. The Tacklebox demo has entirely unique levels and structures, and hell, you don't even play as the main game's protagonist. 

I can't believe the game actually looks like this. It makes me so damn happy. Just LOOK at it. It's like a magazine screenshot for an unreleased title.

Beneath sunny orange mornings and pale blue evenings, you'll be collecting a bunch of fish. 26 fish, to be exact. There's also almost 700 coins to find. But it's not collectables that makes something good. The game's gameplay is the only reason that 100%ing this demo was one of my favourite game experiences of 2024.

Obviously, from this point onwards, my writing is kind of like spoilers for the demo. I consider discovering the hostile and evil world of The Tacklebox to be one of its greatest assets. Considering it's entirely free to download. Why are you still reading this? Go download the thing already! Okay, I see. You've already played it, and didn't enjoy it as much as I did, or you want to know more about it before you spend your hard-earned time on something.

Okay, so the primary thing I really dig about this game is how brutal it is. I think it will surprise people considering they referred to the game as being "expressive", which it is, but not in the way people expect from a 3D Platformer. You hear "expressive" and your mind conjures up the image of Mario in Mario Odyssey crossing any wall he feels like by throwing and bouncing off of his cap. Which I do agree, is a rather fun style of play. I like it. 

The Big Catch does NOT play like that. It's expressive because you have a lot of movement options and methods of approach, but the game still really wants you to nail the platforming before you're allowed to pull any fancy tricks. You are given a lot of tools that give your little reptile/bird/rabbit/creature a lot of length in jumps, but few that give significant height. Most of your height is gained via the environment around you. Wallrunning/jumping, swinging, spinjump-groundpounding into angled slopes, etc.

Eventually, you will fall. When you lose minutes of progress in a single failed jump; Will you shut off the game or focus up for your next attempt?

That's the thing. The game's actually a game about freerunning and parkour more than traditional platforming. It aligns it closer to Mario 64 than Odyssey. But the actual tone of the game is something else. Straight-faced and mysterious. The incredibly weird world of the game is played completely straight. No tongue in cheek "Why are we looking for FISH in a DESERT?" type dialogue. You are here to earn your damn scales. 

It's quite refreshing to me, because I swear to god most of the indie 3d platforming revival have been a bunch of quippy jokers. I don't hate quippy jokers, because at the end of the day I am also a quippy joker, but just because A Hat In Time did it, doesn't mean everyone had to. Not to say the full game is gonna be entirely the world's most serious game ever, because I reckon it'll probably have more writing than this, but the currently established tone is very much up my alley.

The scale of this world is beautiful and intimidating. You're gonna have to climb those for fish, soon.

I mean geez, I spent 12 hours on my first 100% playthrough. I've played it through a few times since. A couple of all fish playthroughs. Tacklebox has eaten more time than many, many games I actually bought with real money. But, with the full game (seemingly) on its way later this year, I've been thinking about how similar to the demo the game is actually gonna be.

This might be complete speculation, but I feel like the Tacklebox's towers (some of them are really, really, hard) were designed to test the limits of what new players would find enjoyable. Each area tests something slightly different about the game, hailing to the roots of the demo as a backer exclusive tech demo thing. Not dissimilar to what we used to get at E3 back in the day.

I know for a fact they used the Tacklebox as a way to test out performance, and seemingly patched optimizations in to both it and what will become the main game simultaneously. I actually didn't notice this, but the game ran super badly at launch. Hell, it struggled on Steam Deck. Doesn't anymore. But that's neither here nor there. I'm not fuckin Digital Foundry. I don't care about framerates. I'm wondering what pieces of the demo's design are gonna end up in the final game.

One of the rare times the fish is found in water. I like how rarely this game is actually about fishing.

A lot of people complained about the game's high difficulty, but truth be told, most of the game's areas aren't actually that hard. The thing is, a lot of people are instinctively going to head directly towards the tallest structures they can see, and the issue is the game never lies about how large a thing is. Along the way, they likely pass by many smaller structures that'd actually give them an adequate place to practice. Is this the game's fault, or the player's fault.

I reckon the final game's gonna give you a map, and some character will likely recommend a good starting point after the tutorial. I'm hoping for a vague, Shadow of the Colossus-type map. The lack of fast travel (Something the full game will definitely have) makes the exploration of the Tacklebox have a similar feel. You want to explore a place again? You have to go there. I like that for the size the Tacklebox has, but I reckon the full game's scale will make that unwieldy and annoying...

For most people. I probably won't use it.

The island where a central enemy bombards you the whole time you're on it, so you have to move incredibly quickly or die is probably my favourite area. It's quite tucked away, so you might miss it!

I hope the final game still has an abundance of evil towers to climb. I'd be happy enough if the full game is exactly like tacklebox with 3x the number of locales. I hope the game keeps the mysterious vibe. See, I have a lot of hope. I'll probably be overjoyed to see any new part of this game. Look at Yo Noid 2.

Hell, just look at how good the damn game PLAYS. This game just lets you fucking MOVE. The backflip, wallrun and spinjump are like utter crack cocaine to the system. Surfing the sands between locales is swift and satisfying. You can kinda just book it in and out of anywhere as you please, which gives the game a lot of energy. Finding my own skips and ways around the landmarks of the map has been a joy.

It's also interesting that this game is so Zelda-y. It's a 3D platformer game with a lot of tonal hallmarks of the Zelda series. The most obvious is the Wind Waker/Spirit Tracks sounding sand surfing music. It's a very on-the-nose homage saved by the fact it's genuinely so pleasant in it's own right. I cannot lie; first time I played the demo and it kicked in, I felt goosebumps. It was the moment I knew for sure it was going to be a memorable experience, so I suppose it has some sentimental value already. I'm a sucker for nostalgia. Especially 2024 nostalgia.

No loading screens, just LOD models.

If you come away from this article, try the demo and hate it. Fair enough. Not all of my friends actually gelled with it that much. Some people found the game too loose for the precise platforming. Some people didn't like how punishing it felt to fall. Some found some of the music too repetitive for areas you spend a long time in. Some just didn't find the main character's appearance appealing. Interestingly, some of their critiques I agree with.

In the game's tutorial, there's a part where you have to nail a relatively precise wallrun twice in a row. You have to do this in order to get out of the starting area. I spent a not-insignificant amount of time falling down, failing, and I was getting annoyed. I think about the fact I could've shut the game off in anger at any moment. Writing off The Big Catch as a waste of my kickstarter money. But I didn't. I pushed through, nailed the wallruns (a valuable skill in the literal whole entire rest of the game), and went on to enjoy the rest of the game's world.

Yeah, I got a little annoyed when I fell, but I quickly realised that each time I got back up it took me less and less time. Because I didn't quit, falling being a knife's edge became part of the appeal. Risky jumps became fun jumps. Then, just today, as I finish writing this...

I have no more space to play. On and off, across the last 10 months, I returned, did a few 26 fish runs, but I refused to delete save files that were 100%ed. I want to go back, but it only feels right to leave the game here, with 30 whole hours of total playtime. That's my original save file on the left. I'll leave the game like this and wait patiently for the full thing to release.

I think it's about time somebody else played this damn game, anyway. You up?

The Zelda Series Needs to go Back to go Forward - A Far Less Adaptable Formula

The Legend of Zelda is my favourite video game series of all time. Not exactly a controversial or particularly "out there" choice, I know. But most of my favourite videogames are standalone games, specific entries from a series, or don't have enough titles to be considered a series. But what sort of Zelda fan am I? If you've been on the internet long enough, you'll know there are many different types of Zelda fans! You can't just put em all into one box.

This art is so cool. Putting this here so that this is the embed thumbnail. 

Some of us love the 2D games to death, some think the series died at Twilight Princess. Some really like the Zelda Timeline and think it's the coolest thing since sliced moblin. Good thing that a modern man like myself is easily able to compress a lot of opinions into one convenient image. Introducing: The Tier List! 

Yeah, I'm a "Majora's Mask" type fan. I'm a bit of a "Zelda Boomer" because I don't tend to like the remakes/remasters. Especially not MM3D & WWHD. But that's a topic for a different blog post. (They make the game worse and/or uglier!)

So, yes. I like the Zelda series both old and new. So what's the deal with "formulas" here? No game series really starts out with a formula. The first two Zelda games march to the beat of their own drum, but you explore an overworld, and get items that allow you to explore more of the world. Link to the Past ends up setting the first "Zelda Formula" in place, by having a more involved story, and a slightly more linear structure. Interestingly, Link's awakening makes the dungeon structure even more linear, and the story is the most involved story yet. Still, side activities in the open world gradually reveal themselves to the player the more progress has been made, similar to Link to the Past.

Then, the series goes 3D for the first time. The fifth* Zelda game! It continues to have a heavily involved story, going for a much grander and less cerebral tone than Link's Awakening, but opening up the dungeon order a little. At various points in the game, the next dungeon you do can be whichever you happen to stumble into, which feels suitably adventurous and dynamic. Not like Navi's gonna let you forget what the developer intended next dungeon is, though.

Some people call Navi hate forced, and to an extent, I can see what they mean, but is is annoying when she tells you about something you were already doing.

For the next 19 years, that's basically what A Zelda Game was like. Of course, each has its own individual permutations, but "What OoT and LttP Did" really stuck. Zelda games were a consistent mix of action, adventure, puzzles, and combat. One of the things that sticks out to me about the series is how it doesn't really excel at the stuff it does, but is more of a jack of all trades. You can find better action, better stories (usually), and better puzzles in other games. But the way the series manages to tie all these gameplay ideas together into one clear adventure is so effortless that it's easy to forget how difficult it is to design!

But that's why the Zelda series is most associated with "Adventure". That's the primary feeling and function for everything else. After the release of Skyward Sword, which, I'm going to be honest, barely feels like an adventure because the overworld is all corridor, seems like Nintendo wanted to reexamine what Zelda games were really doing. They'd not done anything seriously different in a while, and the Wii U still hadn't had its own real Zelda game. Time was running out.

Somebody! Anybody!! Goddess of Time, help us please! We need more time!

Long story short, after a delay from 2015 to 2016, and then another delay to 2017, we were blessed (or cursed!) with Breath of the Wild. The most popular Zelda game of all time. No items, micro-dungeons spread across the map, physics based gameplay systems, the entire world is open to you from the very start. Interestingly, they claimed the concept was a return to Zelda 1's gameplay structure, but I don't think that's even close to accurate. Zelda 1 actually stops you from going to certain places if you don't have the right items.

Breath of the Wild is a new formula entirely, don't let that little NES thing fool you. Chopping down trees? Not something that happened in Zelda 1. What even was that thing, anyway? When will someone leak it? 

Breath of the Wild's main tie back to previous Zelda games is its emphasis on adventure. That, again, is it's strongest point. Exploration and experimentation. Of course, it wasn't long until they added the Motorbike to the game. Probably one of the most fun things in the entire game. I love the motorbike. One of the things I liked most about the game was how you could combine its systems together to solve problems in bonkers ways. 

Wasn't long before a sequel was announced. One of the few times in the Zelda series where they actually create a direct sequel with the same art style. In BotW tradition, the game was delayed multiple times until 2023 where it finally released. It's a very polarizing game. It's designed around a very specific way of playing, my way of playing. So I adored my time with the game.

Seriously. Tears of the Kingdom is some of the most fun I've had with any video game. A twisted, science experiment adventure, allowing me to fuck around with every single element of the game's engine. Creating whatever I wanted, using as many zonai parts as I could. Fusing and combining the weirdest stuff possible. It was a dream come true. I could truly do anything I wanted. A sorta-structured-sorta-not-magical-techno-swordsman-adventure. I adored it.

Of course, my enjoyment of the game was entirely pure. By the way... Have you met my husband?

But of course, I have to look at the game outside of its vacuum. It was not released as a standalone title, it's a sequel to Breath of the Wild, but it doesn't care about the story of that game in the slightest. It seems entirely uninterested in what sequels normally offer, instead doing the fresh start type thing typical of other Zelda titles.

It's even further away from what the series is. It's batshit insane. It's respectable that it's one of the best functioning physics sandboxes ever coded. They leveraged the opportunity to use Breath of the Wild to create a truly unique experience. But they also didn't want to talk about Breath of the Wild at all. The game forgets its meant to be a sequel an awful lot. Almost as much as it forgets to be a Zelda game. A truly once in a lifetime game.

You see, that's the problem. Once.

I don't want another game like Tears of the Kingdom. I feel like we have stretched how sandboxy you can make an adventure like this before it all becomes meaningless. The only further step you can take is to allow the player to alter the game's code, and at that point the game is even more "as only as fun as you make it". If you want to play a game that's like that, Double Fine's "Hack 'N' Slash" exists. 

It's not very good. Interestingly, it's also a Zelda parody. Did they know?

Tears of the Kingdom has better dungeons than Breath of the Wild, but they're not exactly masterpieces. The dungeons of OoT, Wind Waker, Etc have generally been more compelling to me. The limits you have as a player create more interesting puzzles. You are too free to do whatever you want in TotK. You can skip all the dungeons in the game and go straight for the final boss. Combining ascend, a box, and recall gives you the ability to bypass most heights and ledges in the whole game.

The issues with a game with no limits and no intended order is that it's hard to craft a a good story around that. You have to make a story that truly bends to the player's will. Very hard to craft an epic tale that can meander like that. Nearly impossible. But Nintendo is not committed enough, and just uses the linear story structure anyway. TotK takes so many risks, and so few at the same time.

With all this, it's obvious that the next Zelda game wasn't going to be what we expected at all. Honestly, the fact the final Switch 1 Zelda wasn't TotK is still pretty wild to me.

Echoes of Wisdom released in 2024 to a polite applause. But the choices it decided to make are very interesting to me. It has pieces of heart, linear dungeon order, items in the dungeons. It's far from the best that the series has to offer, but it represents something important. They went back. Less freedom, more linearity. It's not perfect, though. You can use a combination of Water, Beds, and Guay to solve basically the entire game.

"Hey guys! It's me, Guay. Cuthbert's Favourite Zelda enemy. Only appeared in OoT & MM, TP (with a crusty disgusting design), and Skyward Sword (with a bad design) until a truly magical re-appearance in Echoes of Wisdom, where my amazing flight ability allowed Cuthbert to skip many of the game's trials, tribulations, and puzzles. Caw!"

There really appears to be an attempt to marry the old Zelda fundamentals with the new, Create YOUR solution gameplay. Was it successful? Kinda. I don't think it was a particularly well received game but I enjoyed it. It's just interesting to me that the first game they made after Tears of the Kingdom is a game that retreats back to old elements. If I had to guess, Nintendo attempted to design a game more open and free than TotK, but ran into the brickwall of that being impossible.

This is where the inevitable Switch 2 Zelda is so interesting to me. Of course I'm sad that it is inevitably going to cost 90USD, but Mario Kart fans have dug everyone else's grave and I don't wish to derail this post into pricing concerns. We could be getting a game far closer to OoT, or we could end up with Breath of the Wild 3. 

If it's the former, I think the series is saved. The game is going to sell well regardless of what they do, so they'll take the lesson of whatever they put out as "What they should do from now on". This also means that Breath of the Wild 3 could release and, even as a fan of the gameplay format, I will not be interested in anything remotely like that. I want a NEW artstyle. A NEW gameplay style. I know Nintendo's thing is meant to be innovation, but sometimes their "innovations" are really not super innovative.

Like, the worst part of Echoes of Wisdom are the Echoes themselves. They're not as engaging or as fun as Dampe's creations or activating the sword mode. They're also not as interesting as it's very hard to combine them, and you're usually best served by just doing what works. Unlike making crazy contraptions in TotK, it just isn't as dynamic. And, Unlike the OoT style of game, it doesn't make you use your brain.

But I don't just want them to make exactly what they made before. There is no more damaging adage to video games than "If it ain't broke... Don't fix it!" This is something that holds best for functional things like screwdrivers and cupboards. Not video games. There's a lot of value in games feeling different. If you don't like Tears of the Kingdom, it's likely because it's too similar to Breath of the Wild. Aonuma said that Breath of the Wild was the series standard going forward, like what Ocarina of Time was. 

In retrospect, the 25th Anniversary feels a bit like a goodbye.

Now, maybe I'm just unimaginative. But I feel able to imagine new games in the Ocarina of Time format. I can picture new items, new dungeon themes. I can picture where I would personally take a game afterwards from Skyward Sword's release. I can't imagine making something interesting in the Breath of the Wild format after Tears of the Kingdom. Like, what? Do you want a game about digging for dungeons underground with Minecraft-style digging? Is that how sandbox you want to go? Seems that Donkey Kong already stole that thunder. Nothing I can think of is as interesting to me as something more linear.

In a way, it's basically time for a new formula already. If they don't want to go back to OoT, that's fine. (It's not. I'll miss that type of game!) But we need a worthwhile replacement. Mario's here doing a great job innovating on what people loved about Mario 64. Never feels like any new Mario thing treads on the toes of something that came before it. I love 64 the most, but Sunshine and Odyssey are also superb. I don't think the Zelda team needs to fear losing the novel aspects of the series.

This game will probably be good. But will more freedom make a platformer more fun? Is maximum freedom actually fun?

If a game doesn't present any friction to a player; A faultless game that exists entirely as a toy to be messed with. What is the point of the game design part? I love making my own fun with a game, but I need some collaboration from the game's side, too! Imagine a Dungeons & Dragons dungeon master who just let you do whatever you felt like, even to the logical extreme. Just lets you pass any gap, any crevasse, any combat encounter at your will. That's what the Zelda series could become. Does anyone actually want to play a game like that?

Or, are people going to enjoy a game that hands them puzzles they can't cheese, unlocking new items and ways to interact with enemies/the world across the whole playthrough. A story that progresses the way the developers intend instead of requiring you to get lucky with the order in which you locate story pieces. A game that encourages the player to enjoy the world they're playing in. To care about the characters along the way. Give people a truly unforgettable experience. Maybe even go harder on the combat. I don't know, I'm not Nintendo.

And for FUCKS sake, man. Don't have the characters ask "Demon King? Secret Stones?" 4 times in a row. 

demise? amber relics?

Hades II: A Pre-Release, Post-Purchase, Pre-Mortem. I Still Don't Like the Game.

Hades II, or Hades 2, as I will type it from now on; is the most disappointed I've been in a game for a while. That's a zinger of an opening line, I know. But it's true. It's definitely improved over the development time, don't get me wrong! It's improved a LOT. In fact, a number of complaints from my Early Access launch Steam Review have been fully addressed since. I can't stress this enough. In fact, I'm going to structure this entire post around the topics listed in my review from last year. Today, we're gonna talk about  about which parts of this review are still dead on, and which are wildly inaccurate.

5.3 hours was all I could stand at a certain point.

Is there still grinding? Yes. Plenty of it. Do I still hate it? Yes. Enough said.

They added a LOT of different currencies, and I was MAD!

As you can see, at launch you were only able to gather 1 type of material (seeds, minerals, etc) per run. This was excruciatingly annoying and I'm very glad you never had to deal with it. Equally, BOOM, BAYBEEE, I WAS RIGHT ON THE MONEY WITH THE SECOND HALF! They didn't change it until the first major update of 2025, but better late than never! Now all the materials appear on every run, and my Stockholm Syndrome from the previous glacial pace allows me to enjoy the modern day tortoise pace.

I was very proud of coining "Dust or Toilet Paper" at the time...

Dust or Toilet Paper fortunately doesn't exist anymore. They literally removed the thing I called "dust" from the door item pool, and the item formerly known as "Toilet Paper" has had a value increase, and doesn't seem to appear as much. Though, I think this ties into another aspect of the game's twisted progression system. I mention that tier 1 boons and centaur hearts are rare commodities, and when I play the game now, sometimes I don't get too many, but they're just not as rare.

But I don't actually think that's the game adjusting the way it handles rewards. I think the game slowly gives you better stuff the longer you've played on a file. In middle 2024, I watched a friend of mine, who we'll call Blake, play a LOT of Hades 2. Even back then, Blake seemed to get better door rewards than I was getting. He had about 15 extra hours over me. Nowadays, because I have much more time on my file, I feel like I get rewarded properly now. 

Do note this is not backed up by actual statistics but layman observation.

They also sped up the default dash startup, and character movement's in a pretty good spot. The game also has more aggressive weapons in the game than available at this point, and aspect upgrades which allow for better offensive play. Generally, the weapons in 2 are far more about ranged play, which was why the dash was weaker, and the cast is designed to hold rushdown enemies at bay.

I'd say the main caveat with designing the game this way is that careful ranged play isn't quite as gratifying as going all in. Because the player has access to so much range so consistently, enemies often have their own ranged moves, because they have to!

I often find the best way to clear a room is to spend a lot of time charging up your longest range attack, waiting for enemies to approach, dropping the cast to hold them in place, then going to the other side of the room and charging again. This is the fastest way to clear a room, but it also has the downside of being the one where you are likely to take the least amount of damage. Wait that's an upside. It's also the one that uses the resources the game gives you the most effectively. That's also an upside... Hmm... Omega moves are easiest to charge when you are as far away from enemies as possible.... Also an upside. 

You can't see it, but there are some projectile shooting guys off screen to the bottom left.

The downside is that the camera is more zoomed in than the first game, meaning you are often attacking enemies and being attacked by enemies that are offscreen. I cannot stress how bad of a choice it was to give the game with so many ranged attacks a SMALLER field of view! They clearly can tell it's suboptimal, because there's fights where they pull the camera back a bunch!

Is it too late to say "Full Spoilers for Hades 1 & (what's in) 2"? Because that's all I'll be spoiling today.

If you're having trouble seeing the difference, I have your back.

I hope Hades 2's HUD is a work in progress. It's so bulky and ugly in comparison!

It's a tad muddy due to the overlap, but look how much smaller Zag is than Mel on the screen. Yes, she's doing a standing up animation, and he's crouching a bit, but you can just see so much more of the game. Want that to be clearer?

FIXED Hades 1 for you, Supergiant. Hire me?

Here you go! On this one I zoomed the Hades 1 screenshot to match the viewport of 2, with the Hades 2 screenshot just SLIGHTLY faded in so you can see no foul play. Okay, yeah, the Hades 1 screenshot IS being taken during a boss fight. Let's have something more comparable in scale to Hades 2's boat. Like... another boat perhaps?

Hades 2 brings back GBA style screen crunch. A #y2k throwback we can all appreciate!

No matter how you slice it, it would be nice to have a wider view of the game about reading enemy tells and dodging projectiles from said enemies. The enemies all have exaggerated tells on purpose, this is so they're readable at any size. People comfortably played the first Hades portably on the original switch. Readability was clearly not an issue with the first game.

So, in short, I don't think the moment-to-moment gameplay is an improvement over the first, and changes are either sidegrades or downgrades, in my opinion. Back to the format!

This is something they've improved upon. Many of the game's boons have had changes to names and descriptions to make them clearer. I definitely feel more confident in what I'm picking, even when a new god shows up. I also wish to use this time to shoutout Hephaestus and the rework to make him more defense oriented. They managed to make a "Forge Metalworking" themed guy's upgrades feel substantially different from a "Fiery Hearth" themed lady's upgrades. That is worthy of praise! Speaking of them...

World 2 (Underworld, not surface) is still my favourite area in the game for the same reasons. Scylla and the Sirens is a superbly presented boss fight. I don't like all of the game's music anymore, though. Outside of the first world, I think the surface worlds have incredibly weak music. It's unfortunately too normal sounding but I know what they were thinking. The idea since Hades 1 was to give the Surface a very different and more traditional orchestral sound, compared to the bardic techno metal of the Underworld. This makes the 2 or 3 surface songs in the game hit incredibly hard in the context of Hades 1's ending.

This stark difference unfortunately stops working when very literally half of the game is on the surface. I'm not even gonna talk about how the surface being an area you can just go to now undercuts the first game's story... Yet.  None of it is actually bad music. It's not badly composed at all. It sounds great. Doesn't fit the game, nor do much for me personally. Am I a good enough music guy to articulate why I feel this way? I just used the phrase "good enough music guy". Do you really think I'm qualified to properly critique the Hades 2 OST? Let's consider this my biggest nitpick and move on.

I already mentioned I like the new characters. This is still true, basically. I don't really hate any of the new characters currently, and believe that most of the missteps come from the return of older characters. To put it frankly, I don't like the design direction they were taken in. Nor the general rendering on the portraits. Let's take Zeus as an example.

Taken on its own, the art at the bottom is wonderful. It shows an expert use of lighting, reflections, texturing, etc. It's all proficient. I like the top art so much more. It's far less busy, the pose is more dynamic, there are sharper lines, and quite frankly the personality conveyed by the first art is far more accurate to the type of guy Zeus is. Even though he's dealing with an all out war, he's still pretty peppy. The grumpy, aristocratic face of the sequel's art feels like a mismatch. Besides, the look of characters in game looks a hell of a lot more like the top art.

Some of the art added in during early access I really really liked. This one is one of them. I was watching Blake play the game at the time, and when we saw an assist door in the final world, we couldn't contain our excitement. I saw this art and was like "WOW! This is so cool!" What does it look like now?

It just isn't quite the same. There's a raw edge that's lost with the excessive lighting. Strong shapes hidden beneath the blur and the rim lighting. But I'll concede, the lighting around the torso on the final one looks great. I mainly wish they kept the coldness in the face. I loved how hollow and empty he looked. But okay, you definitely shouldn't mix art styles on the renders. One more.

Okay, I'll be real. I thought this one was finished when I first saw it. This is Echo! Contextually, this character is a wisp of some kind. Forever lamenting, the only things she's able to say are things that Melinoë has said to her. I think the way she twists the meanings of previous phrases to create responses is quite novel! She's an enjoyable character. I think this original artwork creates a really strong impression. It looks just the right amount sketchy to really sell Echo as a unique being, but without looking out of place amongst the fuller pieces of art.

I feel like I'm going crazy here. Does this look awful to anyone else? I know this is mean, and a cruel thing to say about a piece of artwork, but I'm pretty sure the person who drew this one also drew the work in progress. The subtle pink lighting to add a bit of volume has turned into a Barbie Blast, making part of the image hard to read. The general lack of colour contrast makes it harder to read at a small size, and hitting it with the ol "black and white" test paints it in an awful light.

"it's really fucked up man" - Blake

This was the positive section of the review, originally. How times change!

"Back to negativity!" Whew! Was starting to get worried.

This part's interesting. So, near the start of the game the game has a litany of annoying interruptions. Small things that exist to disrupt or outright end runs. In retrospect, these clearly exist as pieces of storytelling to demonstrate what our Heroine is up against. I'll call it a bad first impression, eh? Eris was especially frustrating, and her little interruptions are still in the game, for some reason. Hades 2 is clearly very concerned about having to actually write reactive story dialogue if the player gets to Chronos fast enough.

Yes, theoretically somebody good enough to do a hitless Tartarus/Chronos fight could beat them, but by that point they don't actually have to plan any dialogue around it. That's someone who's breaking the game's storyline. In general, the game is very determined that the player experiences stuff in a specific order. Even moreso than the first game. I think trying to insert a linear style of story progression into a game genre with random elements is a miss.

I think having random story events in a roguelike that doom your run that go away when you've played more is a lame fucking way to gatekeep your final boss from being seen too early and undermining your story. Unluckily for Hades 2, I beat the final boss pretty quickly, to the point where I got dialogue about Melinoë being unsure of her ability to win against Chronos. Which she fuckin shouldn't be! She's done it! A similar thing happened to me in the first game, where I managed to beat Hades so fast that the hub dialogue pool had to catch up, and I was still getting dialogue where the characters were acting like I hadn't succeeded yet.

But I suppose this is the sort of topic for the final section of the review.
 

Hades 2 is gonna need to pull some big tricks for 1.0 to nail the story.

For their 4 pre-Hades 2 titles, the story has been built around the gameplay. Potentially "Gamey" elements were always part of that game's world. The story is improved by the gameplay. A symbiotic relationship. In Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre, a blunder where dialogue comes up that contradicts gameplay would be inexcusable. They keep it airtight 100% of the time.

But then Hades 1 isn't. However, I feel a tad merciful because it's their first try at a game this long, with this much dialogue. There's much more upkeep to deal with in a game with SO much dialogue and SO many characters and SO much player skill diversity. But it's the kind of thing you'd want expanded upon or fixed in a sequel. As of now? It's worse for it! I hope they do make dialogue and story more reactive to your choices.

Everything I said about the story back then, I still agree with. Melinoë's main personality trait is that she's Dutiful. When I was watching him play during a recent update, Blake mentioned that Nemesis would be a more interesting protagonist because she's more disorderly, she's a underdog compared to Mel, who's basically just doing what she's meant to be doing. I feel more compelled by every character outside of the main one, thus far.

Actually, might have to make an exception for Odysseus. All he's done the whole game is give me reports on shit I just saw. I thought he was hot at first, and yeah! He is. But alas, his actual story purpose currently seems to be a very handsome waste of time. 

yeah alright buddy how about me and you go "make some reports" if ya know what i mean

But no matter how I feel about it now, the narrative is the one that could change the most. Yes, currently it is the least interesting Supergiant game as a narrative to me. But these developers aren't stupid. Supergiant is a team full of greatly talented people; Even if I think they made a huge error making a sequel to Hades instead of something new. Despite my digressions, I have some trust in them!

The main part of the game's story missing at this point seems to be the endgame to the story, but there's a chance they pull some TRULY unbelievably cool stuff after you defeat Chronos/Typhon. They could turn this story around 180 degrees, completely re-contextualizing all the events leading up to now. 

Sticking point. How are they gonna let you keep replaying the game? It'd be cool if they had a definite, canon ending and a non-canon way to replay the runs if you found them fun. But that'd be lazy for Supergiant standards. They always make their mechanics tie into the story. A time loop, perhaps? You wrap around to the start of the game again? But with all your old unlocks? It'd be the same twist as the first game's THERE IS NO ESCAPE, where the game over text informs you the true nature of the world. Hades 2's game over says TIME CANNOT BE STOPPED. So if that's the case with this one? We might be in for a timeloop.

My friend Blake thinks it's going to be a similar flow to the first game's ending, saving one frozen character at a time, bringing them back to the Crossroads, and ending with saving Zagreus. Probably requiring you to defeat the final boss about 10 times, give-or-take, and ending with all the characters in the crossroads, and Chronos still mad about it. We both agree that if they went this direction it would be incredibly boring, but I cannot deny this is exactly how it is being set up as of now.

Allows you to replay the game, get more postgame conversations in with beloved characters, Chronos and Typhon can still be bosses, but nowhere near as much of a threat! With Mel's task now being to keep going around, defeating them to keep them weak. A bit like a less intelligent version of the first game's genius justification for postgame.

Speaking of THERE IS NO ESCAPE, I genuinely think one of my biggest issues with Hades 2 is how it kind of makes the first game's story worse in retrospect. Like, what do you fucking mean there was a way for Zagreus, hell, even Hades! To make long trips to the surface and nobody fucking told them. Their curse, binding them to the underworld made for some of the most emotional, heartwrenching parts of the first game's story, and now it's completely undercut because now there's a cure in a witch's cauldron that requires some flowers. 

It would be cool if the game's ending was evil, and locked the player out of playing the game again on their file. Personally, I'd be impressed and enthralled by an ending of such brash caliber. Because I genuinely DO NOT expect them to do it. Even as I write this down here. I think it's impossible. It would annoy too many people to be unable to play their game again. But when you kill time? When everyone is safe? They'd surely all be frozen in the crossroads! Perhaps it's something bittersweet that I'm not ready for.
 

The game that hands me dialogue like this? Do I really trust it to stick the landing? I suppose I did complain about Odysseus telling you things you'd already seen, but that was because I wanted him to do something more interesting! I don't want characters to actually spoil me!

It seems very unlikely. But I like to believe in Supergiant! It'd just be nice to have this out here as a bit of a time capsule.

In the end, all I want is Supergiant to make a new setting again. I loved their other settings. Hades 1 & 2 have my least favourite stories out of their games. I know that statistically their most played game of all time is Hades 1. I get the feeling a lot of people never went back to play their other games. This is why I have avoided talking too much about Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre. If you have only played Hades 1 or Hades 2. Play Supergiant's other games. I cannot stress how important they are. Okay, Blake likes Hades 1's story more than some of their other ones. But the point is that I forced him to play all of Supergiant's games after he beat Hades and he loved them. You will probably love them, too!

This is the end of the article. But like all good games, you can keep going into the post-article, if you so wish. Sure, the writing isn't quite as good down here, and it's a lot more scattershot than tightly refined... But it's more content, right?

i just really, really hope they don't keep making metaprogression roguelikes based around different global mythologies. every time i see someone request it i feel confident they only played hades. why's hades 2 even called that. surely it should be called chronos? pull a "riven: the sequel to myst". it's not like they'd have trouble selling it. or anything at all for that matter! hades was such a huge success that them doing an immediate sequel is a bit of an innate dissapointment. i really wouldn't have minded if there was a 1 game gap between hades 1 and 2 because i feel like there would've been a nice break from the series and it would've been nice to see the characters again! As it stands, the original Hades is so damn long to actually complete that most people who are playing 2 don't have the "One For The Ages" achievement for completing the post game story. The people who have actually exhausted everything that can be seen in Hades 1 is pretty minuscule. I'm sure some people were still working on it (it takes a fucking LONG LONG LONG LONG TIME TO DO) before they dropped a sequel which naturally will take attention away from the postgame because it's a whole new game.

also this is petty as hell but does anyone else feel like melinoe's design is just not quite there? like it has just a few too many colours and shapes upon it to really feel cohesive in the same way that zagreus was. i have to ask because i'm into men and zagreus is like mega hot to me and i'm wondering if that's swaying my opinion. blake understands my dilemma. blake's a pseudonym for one of my friends and my favourite thing about it is that it's exceedingly obvious who it is provided that you know him. when he was playing hades 1 for the first time, i felt like that shrek 4 rumplestiltskin gif because he promised to play pyre next. is hades 2 going to have a moment as cinema as hades letting you past for free on your 10th victory? because that's probably my favourite moment in the game. i wonder if supergiant will ever make a short game again. a short game with an ending. for what it's worth, In The Blood is absolutely incredible, but the pyre credits theme Bound Together will forever make me weep. i literally can't keep myself together on a full listen. it's their least bought game, man! why? why must i live in a world where everyone's played hades but nobody played pyre!

i didn't want to make this a main point in the article because hades 2 gets really frequent patches. (good! they're bein true to their word!) but the chronos fight has forever had terrible visibility issues. it's a whole lot of gold and black upon gold and black. they did actually try to fix them, but that second arena being that huge ass clock is the most unhelpful thing i've ever seen for making it readable. it's so messy! the first game's final boss was genius because you were playing as red/black characters on a white snow background. at no point did i ever think "oh man i can't see what's going on!" because it was always clear. Phase 1 chronos can attack you from off screen sometimes which kinda feels like bullshit but i did enough camera complaining earlier. phase 2 also has that one attack where it's a few rings going inwards and it's unclear whether you should be on the rings or off because it's pasted over a clock background and possibly has other hourglasses and golden projectiles soaring over it. it's a gold ring, by the way. he also has an attack that 1 shots you if you're hit by it and you have to get to a circle in time. it's not usually that difficult but they recently changed the circle to red to make it easier to see but now it looks like you shouldn't go in there. Remember when you couldn't pause the fight? you used to be unable to pause the chronos fight. if you had a delivery or a family emergency of some kind you had to either let your baby crawl off the counter or forfeit the run. all for a mildly amusing joke. they've since kept the joke, but not the unpausing. good! i am shocked they ever thought that was a good idea. 

i hope the "post-article" joke carries my sentiments on the weird endless summer hades 1 has (and hades 2 will INEVITABLY have because the game feel allergic to a real formula mix-up). i have so many unorganized thoughts on both games that i really couldn't find the right place for. like, for instance, how annoying i find the keepsake level up to be. it takes SO long in both games! i could talk about how ugly and hard to read the arcana menu is, but the reason i didn't is because there's no way they're putting that shit in the final game. it looks terrible and makes choosing and upgrading cards hard to read. it was literally better back in the earlier beta, and it was bad there, too! i suppose it matches the ui in hades 2 which i'm eagerly awaiting a 2nd pass on as a whole. it's huge, chunky and made out of rounded corner squares. it's the most boring hud in a supergiant game! oh and how much i hate the chaos redesign in hades 2. it's so lame. you know what makes me think of chaos? expensive fitted suits. good one guys. where is my unknowable flesh pile? he's too knowable now.

i was thinking recently about what i'd want a hades 2 to be, and i came to the conclusion that i'd honestly want it to be a completely different genre to the first game. imagine that! it continues the story, but isn't just the same type of game as the first game. a bunch of this game's bosses would hit a lot harder in a game structure where you only fight them once a playthrough. I feel like the first game had better ideas for bosses that feel right fighting them over and over again. They're eventful but not overdramatic. They're trying to bring out a huge feeling of awe with Typhon, but i know that eventually i'm just gonna be back to back loop-killing that motherfucker and that really takes a lot out of the moment. the cerberus fight in the underworld feels stupid after a bit because you aren't having to "put him down" or something that might make the fight actually important, but basically just clearing fleas off of him. this is why scylla works so well for this game! she and her sirens are eventful and fun, and it feels like they'd have good reason to return and fight you again. does make me wonder if hecate is some sort of twist villain... why is she going out of her way to disrupt mel on every run? she gives her reasonings but they feel mega contrived for the roguelike format. like yeah no shit i can beat your test at this point! this is the type of boss that works really well in games with linear progression!

with all this said. i wish supergiant the best. i also wish them smooth development so that they can complete hades 2 and then make a game for me again. like, a 4-15 hour game? that'd be the dream! i don't want them to feel pressured to make longer and longer games forever. i just want them to try new things, take some risks... and consider using the scribbly art style from the beta portraits! i hope people dont hate me for this article

UFO 50 was ROBBED of "Best Narrative" Awards. I'm Serious.

Hi! Welcome to the first and, if I get very bored very quickly, possibly last, blog post on this account. If you've clicked on my post, thank you very much! I hope the deliberately kitschy theming of the blog hasn't instantly put you off. I find it rather nostalgic and cosy, personally. Perhaps it needs more beige? Maybe a Frutiger Metro background? Though, I always found those far too visually noisy and unpleasant to read over.

Hey, here's an idea! Maybe I should host all the images used on this blog on TinyPic! That'd give everyone the authentic "browsing an old area of the internet" experience.

They say a picture speaks 1000 words. A TinyPicture? Well...

Anyway, to get back on topic, it is remarkably fitting that my first blog post (on a blog attempting to replicate decades old internet writings) is about a game that replicates the experience of video games that are decades old.

UFO 50? Narrative? 

Yes. No kidding.

In case you missed it, my Game of the Year 2024 was a retro video game compilation of almost 50 fully original video games. The few that aren't fully original are a remake of a 2004 flash game, a spiritual successor to a 2000's PC title, and one that's a greatly expanded sequel to a game jam game. Realistically, they're still original. I'm splitting hairs. It's a magnificent collection. An insane work of game design artistry. I could say a LOT about the confidence this game has in creating great ideas and even greater games. Mini & Max alone could be it's own purchase. 

But people have already talked about that side. I'm here to spill the beans on the other side. In short, UFO 50 has 3 "Layers" to it's narrative. These layers intertwine and interact with each other constantly as you play the game. 
Layer 1: The Game You Are Playing, Standalone.
Layer 2: The Collection of 50 Games, Referential.
Layer 3: The People Who Made the Games, Development.

For example, if you were to think about Game 1: Barbuta.

• Standalone reading is that it's an old school adventure game with cryptic puzzles, where a pint-sized knight saves a castle from evil with the use of obscure items.
• Referential reading is that egg related motifs are frequent throughout later games, such as the letters in Star Waspir and directly in Campanella 2. Also, enemies and areas from Barbuta appear in Mooncat.
• Development reading is that Barbuta was the game that convinced LX Systems to start making video games, and it is Thorson Petter's first ever game.

The "Scatological" reading of  Barbuta is this skull scares the shit out of me.

I suppose I should issue some sort of spoiler warning, as the most interesting way to experience the narrative is by playing the game yourself. Well, I'll issue increasingly larger warnings as we truck along. Not like the story is the only thing to enjoy in the game, right?

The Opening Act

Upon startup, the game is already telling you a piece of the story. Try not to get distracted by the incredible chipchune beat, and focus your attention to some of the on screen information. "UFO 50 RECOVERY TEAM" is one of the first pieces of text. On the right, there is a slideshow of lovingly compressed images showing them opening an old storage container, filled with meaningless items.... And a LX-III console in middling condition! What a steal! The team quickly set to work on getting the console to boot and function, and in just 7 short years, they have a working emulator set up.

This is the "fantasy" that UFO 50 sells. It asks you to set aside what you know in real life about Derek, Tyriq, Jon, etc. The LX-III is a forgotten console from the 80's. UFOSoft created these 50 games. If you are able to play just a little pretend, you can enjoy the story of UFO 50. As soon as you go past this screen, there is no further mention of these developers. No winks.

After an adorable intro cutscene with no later implications whatsoever, the player is taken to the game selection screen. It's quite an intimidating sight. Each game is it's own disc that must be undusted.

You're gonna need a few hours. I'll grab some snacks!

The sheer scale of this game is no joke. The largest part of the narrative is your own. Your personal experience playing these things! The first game in the collection, Barbuta, embodies many aspects of the experience as a whole. Being the first game was no accident. It's an intelligence test!

An intelligent player understands that the game is the oldest of the 50 via easily readable context clues, and also is able to comprehend that this, being a collection of genuine retro games, isn't going to give you games full of modern style sensibilities. A lot of people seem to wrongly attribute "retro" to exclusively graphics. Failing to understand these important and obvious facts often leads to reviews that look like this:

Let me guess... Falling ceiling trap?

Realistically, you cannot accurately review this game without putting some serious time into it. This is also true for very old games. 
The trick is that the later games generally are more advanced, and that UFO 50's games are generally a hell of a lot easier than actual 80's games. You have to be able to pass the gamer literacy test before you really earn the chance to truly enjoy UFO 50.

You don't even have to beat Barbuta to understand its importance in the collection. The way the game is built primitively is narrative through gameplay. Hopefully, you continue through the collection, experience more games, and enjoy most of them. But, early on, a couple of peculiar things will have stuck out.

Firstly, a "Garden". A cute house with no tutorial or context. Built directly into the game select menu. A small pig-like creature walks around an empty establishment, but it seems like you can help! Each game in the collection has a "gift" listed. What a fun little thing!

This little piggy stayed home.

Secondly, an eerily silent terminal. You can input 4 characters either side of a dash. Garbage data is printed on the right, alongside a filename. Maybe I'll try CUTH-BERT?

This little piggy saw something he shouldn't have.

Each game in the collection has 4 steps of completion. Dusting off, getting the gift, gold completion, and cherry completion. Imagine a Cherry completion as either a challenge run or a "100%" completion compared to a gold's "any%". Some reviews of UFO 50 will have you believe that that collection as a whole is insanely hard. This is not true. Some of the games are very hard to gold, some of them are easy to gold, hard to cherry. Some of them take a long time, some take a short time. Some of them are even dependent on what the individual player is skilled at. Each gold/cherry is equally "valuable" to the game, and the game tracks how many the player has achieved on the save file screen.

This is not the only form of progression the game has.

The player will likely open up the information panel for a game, which tells them what they must do to get a gift, and reveal a brief history tidbit about the game's fictional creation. quickly find gifts for the garden, filling it out at their own pace. By completing games, they may be able to spot terminal codes. These codes can be anything. Cheats, extra modes, fun additions. So, after a certain point the player feels confident they know what's really going on with the game. 

This is part of the narrative progression. The game slowly feeds you information about how the collection works by encouraging you to poke around. Hell, maybe you even found out how to change your file name and background theme. Anyone who's familiar with games from the 80's know one thing's for sure; They don't tell you anything about anything, but the player is conditioned to poke around themselves. This will be used later.

From 'Systems to 'Soft

Of course, I mention GAMES. A subtle way that UFO 50 tells a surprising amount of its story is through gameplay mechanics. I said I wasn't going into game design earlier on in this post, but that was a bit of a lie. Talking outside the game for a moment, it's interesting what Mossmouth decided to keep modern, and what they decided to deliberately draw from the past in order to portray different things happening in the company at the time.

Bug Hunter, the lesser talked about 2nd game of the collection (everyone's ALWAYS talking about Barbuta!) Is as primitive as primitive gets. Very limited animation, mostly no music. It's kind of like a singleplayer board game. Though, you can actually play it as a versus 2 player board game, and it works in a similar way.

At this point, you may as well let the bugs have it. They won.

Bug Hunter is very simple to make on a functional and visual standpoint. But, where it shines is in the gameplay design. As far as turn based strategy games go, It rules. A simple to understand, hard to master style of game. It could've been made on the NES. It is one of the most convincingly NES games in UFO 50, and few will consider it a miss or a waste of a slot. But, at the same time, it re-enforces the idea that UFOSoft weren't pushing the boat out on what the console could do.

The game doesn't follow a "quality of game design curve" as the games get newer, but instead follows a "complexity" curve, that sometimes has it's own dips! Take the 46th game in the collection: Combatants. This is one of the least popular games in the collection. A seemingly deliberately abrasive real time strategy game. Slow ally AI, overpowered enemy ants, and a weird control and command scheme. The 2 player's actually pretty fun, for the record.

Follow Me! Okay! Follow Me! Okay! Wait!

I speak as someone who actually kinda enjoys this game. You have to play it very backwards. Combatants enthusiasts will tell you it's actually a game about learning cheese strategies to succeed, which, some will note, is an incredibly accurate experience playing certain 80's titles. This is gameplay that the game appears to be designed around, as Combatants has gone entirely untouched despite multiple updates to UFO 50 as a whole.

This level is an early game difficulty spike. My advice? Rushdown strats.

A full few-hour long game, functional, but also broken. Not even the game knows if the title is meant to have a space or not! It's also the same number as Dedant from Action 52.

Far back in the early numbers, there's a game that's pretty alright by all standards. The Big Bell Race, sitting pretty at number 19, will feel like Deja Vu for people who were playing the collection in chronological order. You'll be quickly reminded of game 17, Campanella, as The Big Bell Race re-uses the gameplay physics and level system, turning it into a multiplayer single screen racing game. It's incredibly fun, albeit incredibly short and not very difficult.

The music for this game is REALLY fun, at least.

It released SO soon after Campanella, which is listed as the studio's first big success as LX Systems. The history log tells you it was made in a mere 2 weeks... Reuses assets and physics... Oh my god! It's a cheaply made cash grab! 

Well I never! The Campanella series is RUINED!

Is it kind of bad to create an intentionally middle-of-the-road cash grab in the middle of your 50 game compilation? No. That rules. Considering the mission statement of telling a narrative through a studio's 50 games, this is the exact type of thing you could ONLY do here. This is taking advantage of the unique opportunities this format gives you. It's not like The Big Bell Race isn't a fun waste of 30 minutes, and a bit of a laugh with a friend. First game you see Slard in! Can't forget iconic character Slard!

"You'll need to pick me to survive in the Big Bell Race!"

Slard's main appearance is 25 games afterwards in Pilot Quest. A game that displays another interesting quirk of UFO 50. The way it takes genres that weren't invented until after the 80's and says "what might be different about this type of game if it was invented back here?" Pilot Quest is an idle game. 
Okay, fair enough. Idle games in some form have actually existed since Ganymede on the Commodore VIC-20, and the 2000's had games like Progress Quest. But, the exact type that Pilot Quest is pulling from is the kind invented in the early 2010's. Specifically in 2013 when A Dark Room, Candy Box, and most famously Cookie Clicker all came out.

Can't help but feel this game might be a loving parody of clicker games, but that's another story!

Pilot Quest has the essentials of the genre. A small thing to mash against that grants you a piddly but unlimited supply of a low-value currency, an ability to buy increasingly expensive means of generating the currency automatically, and usually different types of currency can be farmed directly or produced automatically. The parts Pilot Quest actually adds to this formula are pretty interesting. One of the things you can buy is meat, which fuels your ability to head to the Wild Zone.

The Wild Zone is like the Zelda 1 overworld if you were under some serious pressure to get in and get out. The idle stuff fuels your ability to play the fun half of the game. The more production you have, the more effectively you can explore it. The best part? Resources tick up whilst you play other games in UFO 50, so you can check on it between attempts at the other games. You barely need to actually wait.

If UFO 50 calls something "wild" you better be careful...

It does seem like the reason idle games weren't a thing in the 80's is that it was probably deemed very unlikely that people would turn on a video game console to watch something instead of turning on the television or going outside. I think focusing on the idle game elements singularly doesn't do it much favours. It's not just trying to do one thing! It's also being a sequel to a previous game in the collection! Adapting Planet Zoldath into a game that you beat over a long period of time instead of 30 minutes.

Pilot Quest is also a late-80's game, with the idea being they've become more adept at making advanced games. I definitely believe that many of the games look a little too good and run a little too well for the era, but that's probably because they wanted these to be smooth and enjoyable games that go beyond their advertised era. I think it's a reasonable sacrifice. 

The Story of Amy

This is when I must talk about the sweetest layer of storytelling. Let's hear it for Amy! If you've played UFO 50 yourself and have no idea who Amy is, you need to play the game more. Well, there's a good chance you've already seen her around. 

I suppose in terms of spoilers, this is my first actual spoiler warning. Mild spoilers ahead. Finding connections between games is a fun part of the game, though mostly inconsequential!

Amy's first appearance is as The Host in Party House. If you've played Party House, You likely didn't know that you can idle on the scenario select screen to activate the game's credits. This is how you can find the codes VIPS-ONLY and MAKE-GLEE, which allow the player to create and play custom scenarios, but more importantly, there's who the player is playing as! The whole time! You never even get to see her in actual gameplay!

Does this look like the face of mercy? I party... HARD!

Then, instantly followed up by the next game, Hot Foot. She finally has a name! And, a younger sister? Hot Foot's full of wild interactions and connections, if you ever want to look for some yourself, it's a great place to start. If you can get a good grasp of the gameplay. I can't!

Not pictured: The number of times I had to reset the game to get this interaction to play.

Then, over in Fist Hell, here's "The Party Queen" herself, making her grand return. Her special ability to charge power throws is very fun, but rarely useful. Would've been nice if she used that ability to remove Wild Buddies from parties about to get noise complaints.

She has power throws because she's great at THROWING parties.

An unexpected turn of events is in Night Manor, where the protagonist is possibly one of the Old Friends from a party that went VERY, VERY wrong. Of course, it's not impossible for there to be a different Amy who hosts parties. But it's a UFOSoft game! They love their cameos and references!

Then, finally, in Mini & Max... I think this speaks for itself.

Remember Amy's baby sister? This is her now. Feel old yet?

I suppose the important question is what does this add to the narrative as a whole?  Surface level, these are just amusing references to make a player point and smile at their monitor. Thing is, many people won't notice these on their own. Keep in mind, you might play these games hours or days apart from each other. The way I have presented it here, is of course, not how you'd experience it. They're a reward, and encouragement, for being perceptive, that offers zero gameplay advantage.

Of course, the other bonus is that of the game's individual narratives are strengthened by knowing these little pieces of backstory. Party House is a much funnier game when you realise Mini is locked up somewhere in the back, potentially having an adventure! Does a party go wrong? Perhaps an upset friend ends up in Night Manor!

And there's a reason I chose to talk about Amy. The best ratio for "most appearances" to "least amount of spoilers". There are others I could've talked about, and some of them are coming later, but there are too many across the whole game to fit in just one post. This is because I want you to look for these connections yourself!

Eh, what the hell, another example wouldn't hurt! Overbold being a sequel to Velgress is obvious to most, especially if you play all the games in order. I'd say even if the two games are almost entirely different, it's a lot more compelling to have an adventure continue! Alpha can't catch a break.

Where UFO 50 GETS-REAL

We're out of the low spoiler zone. Welcome to MEDIUM spoiler territory. This is the part where the seemingly unrelated facts I spent a few hundred words typing start to come together. We're talking about the development knowledge a player will begin to accrue. The easiest way to do this is through the 50 snippets of info that can be found in the panel for every game. There are other ways to do this, as well. Ways that a player may or may not find!

Many games have messages that are far from impossible to locate. They tend to require doing something a little bit strange or specific, but there's enough of them that a player is almost guaranteed to run into at least one of them naturally. It definitely helps that the game encourages experimentation!

Hidden messages from early in the collection are generally more lighthearted and fun. Some of them are in-jokes we have no context for! If you let Barbuta's roaming skull into the game's opening screen, something strange happens.

Some of them are straight up just easter eggs. A game over during the bonus round areas in Ninpek gives you a unique message to mock your lack of skill!

Some of them are just developers doing some good ol fashioned ribbing. A playful bit of banter between friends never hurt! Gerry Smolski didn't work on Velgress, instead spending his time on Planet Zoldath. Both released within 2 months of each other. Perhaps there was a bit of good natured competition at this point.

(I wanted to get all the screenshots for this article myself, but I didn't want to gather at least 31 of each material for this easter egg. Credit goes to the UFO 50 discord's Write-Up V2 Document for this one)

The playful, personal messages are very charming, and display a form of grizzled friendship between Benedict Chun and Gerry Smolski that seems very organic and real. We all take silly jabs at our best friends, sometimes.

Hey, look! It's the orange couch from the Warptank history section! What does that text mean?

That's a lot less jovial. A fair bit less playful, too! Well, perhaps it's just a non-sequitur. Not all of these are gonna be easy to understand! Let's play some Mortol II to chill out! Who'd say no to a quick round of that?

Messing around! I was trying to test the limits of what the LX-III could handle. Ignore the weird text.

This section's getting a little depressing. How about we lighten up with a bit of UFOSoft trivia? I think it's quite charming that the little Daruma enemies in Ninpek were clearly part of the inspiration for Pilot's visual design.

If you're the type to say "Something is definitely going on here." instead of treating these pieces of information you get as odd jokes, seeing your first easter egg (of which there are many) might get you on the hunt for information. Where else is information, but the history panels the game provides for you! Without beating games and seeing credits sequences, this is one of the only place a player will be introduced to the names of the developers... Eagerly, you'll look.

Well, if they take their search down to the final row. They might notice something...

Last, last, LAST call for spoilers, everybody!

Someone who's played enough UFO 50 to know what that little dash between two four letter words means is ready for what comes next. If you've read this article and have a memory span longer than 4 minutes, you'll also know. But the terminal's response isn't exactly cut and dry.

Ehh, whatever. We'll just figure it out later. Let's just go chill out with some Mini & Max. One of the best games in the collection, and an incredibly charming time. If you own UFO 50 and haven't dusted off pieces of the later half of the collection, you're definitely missing out! There's so much to explore, and even in this spoiler-ridden article I refuse to show all of it's incredibly adorable setpieces, items, and moments. I'll just show you ONE room from the early portion of the game to give you a teaser.

Here's my best Nintendo Power impression:
"In the latest game from UFOSoft you'll find yourse-

WAIT A SECOND. Cut the impression. It must be time to open up the terminal! 

Fun fact. When I first played Mini & Max I found this without the GREG-MILK code.

Well, then the hint hunt is on! To try and keep this article on topic, I won't cover it from start to finish. This isn't GameFaqs. Figure out the hint clues yourself. Or, scroll down past this innocuous Barbuta screenshot to see where this all leads.

Really take it all in. It's odd, honestly. It manages to look so primitive yet incredibly pleasant.

So, after a round of hints, you will find yourself at one unique code. Now, something often joked about with UFO 50 is that Action 52 has more games. But something I always found interesting about the game's title is that 51 is the number generally associated with UFOs. With Area 51, right? It's a bit of an odd choice, but the game select screen makes it clear that 50 was the intended number.

Possibly because in an interview, Derek Yu said he had to scrap a game called Godsblood.

No matter, with 50 games on your plate already...

I hope you left room for desert.

If we're still using the food metaphor. Think "Gateau", not "Cupcake"

Typing this code into the terminal places you in a dim, grimy basement. You know it's a basement because the bottom of the screen tells you as such. A small, upset looking creature sits in the middle. Where are you? Who are you?

UFO 50's secret trick is only effective because it's not advertised. Don't tell people about it to sell the game to them.

It's time to find out:

How the Sausage is Made

I'm going to assume if you've scrolled down to this metaphorical basement that you either know what happens in "EXEC-MIAS", or should go, right now, and play through it. You'll know when you completed it. For the sake of structure, I will be quickly recapping the events of the game, but there will be plenty I won't talk about. Because ideally you should play it yourself.

You quickly find an LX-I, a box containing unreleased magazines, and a box that releases Gerry and Boby Smolski from hiding in the basement of UFOsoft. After fiddling with the breaker box and finding a disc, you get to play a prototype of Paint Chase, before you must find more clues through more games.

Then, you'll find yourself in the lower corridors of UFOsoft, talking to the people of hardware development, fresh LX-III units are being shipped to "Murzbach Preservation Industries", and people from up above are coming down for freelance therapy. A clumsy caretaker leaves their keys, allowing you to unlock the garbage and retrieve a old LX-II, who the tech people helpfully revive, as you retrieve, and play, a prototype of Campanella, letting you access another set of hints for the hunt.

Afterwards, you'll be placed in the employee bathrooms, right across from the main offices of all the artists, directors, and programmers who made the games you've been playing for so long. It seems that Joy Akebi misplaced her wallet! Which you can go retrieve from downstairs, bring back, and bring the new music track to her brother. Once you do, Ian Spinzer, the manager is mad about how late the 50 game project is, and how long it's taking. Instructed to write a list of notes, you return to your cubicle and create a list to give to him. Then, you find the prototype for Godsblood hidden in the trash of the empty cubicle, and pop it into an LX-III.

Finally, after the final part of the hint hunt, you start in the games room, and are able to reach the top floor, the executive lounge. You get the honor of talking to Winston Nemuru, who's ever so excited about the completion of Cyber Owls. He talks very highly of a woman he's crushing on, and her son who loves owls. Then, the CEO of UFOsoft, Tao Nemuru, greets you in his office. He asks you how the game collection is going, reminds you of how good the game collection will be a shining light in the dark winter ahead. Whatever that means, and reassuring you that there must be a way to make this 50 game collection fun to make.

Then, he says the most important line of all:

The date is 24th of July 1989, You are Greg Milk. Long time UFOsoft employee, who has watched the company grow and prosper. Now? It's basically dead, and the swansong of the studio is in your hands.

What's it all really about?

EXEC-MIAS, or Miasma Tower, is the glue that binds the other 50 games together. Why does Bug Hunter feel like a board game? Because Chun & Smolski designed board games before they made video games. Why is Combatants janky? It's the one game designed by Tao Nemuru, who doesn't make video games. An investor-CEO in over his head.

Even the "in real life" scrapped game Godsblood is scrapped in universe. I think one of the interesting things about it is that small references and homages to that game still exist around in the collection. For instance, Val, the protagonist of Godsblood is a playable gambler in Quibble Race. 

Having no game to having a gambling addiction... Not sure which is worse!

The more you look at the different scraps of information given to you by the game, and combine them with this 51st game, the more remarkable it is that they kept it all consistent throughout the entire 50 game collection. Usually when a game has a "Meta mystery" story, it's the game's entire thing. Meta-narrative things like Petscop, Inscryption, and Undertale are known for their stories about themselves, and whilst that's a fine approach, I personally found UFO 50's storytelling more impactful.

Because none of the scale is faked.

They're constructed entirely around their meta-narrative. You can't experience them without encountering it. It definitely creates a tighter experience, as it allows you to talk to anyone who's played the game about the narrative and they'll be able to talk to you about its self referential metanarrative elements. Everyone gets the experience. But, at the same time, I can't help but feel like the effect of "discovering hidden layers" to something is very slightly cheapened if the layers aren't hidden at all. 

UFO 50's metanarrative is just one of the many feathers in its cap. Not only do you not have to participate in it, most players actively will not. This means if you're someone who chooses to seek out the history, not only does it feel like unearthing a mystery, it IS unearthing a mystery. It IS something that most players won't bother with. This is what I mean by the scale not being faked. All the games, as described by the metanarrative, are full. They exist. They are more than narrative fuel. Whether as rare easter eggs or design choices, each game naturally engrains narrative strings. 

The story has little impact unless you've actually played and enjoyed the games. One of the ways it intentionally messes with the player is by talking about planned sequels in the prophetic perfect tense. You will quickly realise they aren't talking about sequels that are going to be later in the collection. You aren't getting the 3rd game starring Space Pirate Alpha. Pilot? Him and his sister Isabelle aren't coming back for another Campanella. Rakshasa 2 is lost to the sands of time. 

The nature of this meeting room tells you all you need to know about late 80's UFOsoft's work atmosphere.

It's interesting commentary on the relation a player has with the developers of a game. It's an unfortunate truth of the industry that games that we love were not always developed in the best environments. One of the things that makes it tick is how mundane and grounded a lot of the dialogue is. Normal enough to not spell things out too much and feel natural, but not too obvious. Whilst writing this post, I replayed Miasma Tower again, and noticed character details that I'd missed the first time.

Even the way it's accessed makes sense. Greg Milk is the guy tasked with compiling UFO 50 together, he's trying to find a way to make it fun whilst in a miserable part of his life. What better way to vent frustrations than to make a hidden expose and homage to the last years of his job at UFOsoft? It's hidden enough to not be found by the people it was created to insult. It's not like Ian Spinzer or Delia Pace or Winston Nemuru were actually gonna look into the compilation deeply. It's not like anyone was ever going to be able to.

Because of that bastard, Tao!

Tao Nemuru is a very unique antagonist, who operates far outside the realms of a regular villain. An invisible menace who has already won by the time you're able to learn about him. He's also the reason you have any games to play. Unlike every other final boss in UFO 50, he is unbeatable, sitting atop his collection of rare videogames.

He is represented as a Grasshopper, with many of his personal subordinates as ants and other insects. An homage to the Ant and the Grasshopper fable, where hardworking ants prepare for the winter, whilst the grasshopper who spends his time singing and dancing dies in the cold. The fable is about the value of hard work and intelligent planning. However, it's been a controversial tale for centuries, with some people believing the ants were needlessly cruel, leaving the grasshopper in the winter to die.

"Would you fellows be interested in testing Campanella 3?"

Bernard Suit's 1978 book 'The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia' expands the philosophy of the unfairly treated Grasshopper into a worldview; In a utopian society, where work has been eliminated by progress, play will become vital for human existence. Games, in essence, are a self imposed challenge. A seemingly needless difficulty we choose to partake in for recreation. 

Tao Nemuru hands out a copy of this book to every single UFOsoft employee, and appears to have taken the point of view of it to heart. He values videogames incredibly highly, saved UFOSoft financially, appreciates Greg's archival work tremendously, authorized accounting to give hefty wages to employees, and again, was the person who oversaw the creation of UFO 50. Because of this, some believe that Tao could be partially misunderstood. Maybe he's a philanthropist in over his head.

This recently discovered easter egg has sparked discussion. Is Tao as bad as we think?

But in that case, why's he the only guy with full credits in the last few games? After Combatants, people who's surnames aren't Nemuru are only credited by their initials. It could be an attempt to stop developer poaching, a common tactic in the early video game era where rival companies would contact and steal employees with the promises of higher pay. Perhaps Tao's a bit of a strategist.

I suppose T. N. didn't have the same ring to it.

Okay, but the blatant nepotism is a tad indefensible. Yeah, perhaps Winston Nemuru happens to be a talented game developer, but how come he's only ever credited on roles that other people are also doing? I suppose he did direct that Cyber Owls game. Though it's clear that he only got a chance to do so because he's family. Most other game directors were either there from the start, or from the LX Systems days.

I think my answer is that he's an egotist. Making choices and moves that may benefit others, but are all for the goal of making him feel more important. He appears to be polite because it does nothing for him to put people down. Especially not the people making the rare prestigious titles for The Nemuru Collection. After all, he hired Ian Spinzer to do the angry yelling for him and keep people in line. He doesn't have anything to worry about. 

Okay, it's been long enough. Let's talk in depth about Cyber Owls. If you were the type to play the collection in chronological order, this will be the final game you open. My, what a different vibe it has to the other 49 games. Especially after you just played Seaside Drive and Campanella 3 back to back. Even when it was obvious the company was being bankrolled, they were still making games with their heart and soul poured into them. Cyber Owls, on the other hand, feels like it's trying to market itself to you. It's a bit TMNT, a bit Thundercats, a bit Biker Mice from Mars...

They even have Dim Sum as their "iconic favourite food"; Like the TMNT and pizza.

If you've played Action 52, it's also a bit Cheetamen. An homage that I'm 99% sure is intentional.

The big thing is that Cyber Owls is a very corporate IP, designed for merchandise and general marketability. To use a modern phrase: It's entirely soulless. It has the highest production value of any game in the collection, by technical aspects it's a very impressive work. Creating 5 different gameplay styles isn't easy, the music has higher quality samples than most of the others in the game, and the graphics are colourful and comic-booky!

But, at the same time, it's far more shallow compared to the standard you will have come to expect from UFOsoft. The setup for the game is far more conventional than most of the other games in the collection, and the message of the game... I'll talk about that in a minute. Whilst they have a cheesy charm, the character archetypes are a bit run-of-the-mill, and gameplay wise it's far more unfocused and scatterbrained than the rest of UFO 50. One of the most impressive parts of Cyber Owls is that it manages to hit all the right notes for the continuity whilst not actually being a terrible experience, and feeling like an earnest enough attempt at a game despite the inbuilt cruddiness. 

The "Play Engineers" did a fantastic job, all things considered.

Now, the game's message. It appears to be pro war? Yes, the game over screen, which is unusually eerie for this game, doesn't appear to be a fan of nukes, but Cyber Owls thinks governmental powers dispatching enforcement squads is the coolest thing of all time. Would definitely look to Fist Hell and Avianos as examples of how UFOsoft normally handle these sorts of subject matters. Wait, there's an Avianos reference in Cyber Owls? It's either far in that game's future or complete nonsense because Humans are also around.

GETMEOUT of this nightmare!

Seems like Winston Nemuru doesn't get what makes UFOsoft special. After all, it seems he's mostly making this game to try and get Vanna Servo to like him, which is kind of sad. But, at the same time, also kind of funny. It almost certainly didn't work, especially judging by the kind of guy he is according to Miasma Tower. 

Let's compare this to Seaside Drive for a moment. If you've played all the games in UFO 50, answer this question in your head: Did you enjoy Seaside Drive more than Cyber Owls? Data compiled from surveys, forms, and comments sections tells me that "Yes!" is a common response. Seaside Drive's not got the setpiece action of Cyber Owls, it hasn't got 5 hundred million gameplay styles. No grand terrorist-stomping scheme! Just a guy driving to his gran's for some tasty pies with a simple, pleasant graphical style that keeps everything clear. All under 1 tightly refined, satisfying and fun gameplay style.

"Why are CUBES attacking the player? This game needs more story!" Words spoken by nobody,

At the very least, I think Mossmouth are trying to tell us something about what makes a game GREAT. The whole collection is about ideas. This small indie dev team was able to craft a LOT of gameplay ideas and execute all of them at a very high quality standard. No game in the collection is without fans. My favourite game in the collection is Divers, and many people HATE that game! I just spent a bunch of time insulting Cyber Owls, but playing it a bunch for this article has increased my appreciation for it quite a lot! It manages to be fun whilst simultaneously making a clear point about scope and originality.

I mentioned the layers of storytelling at the start, and quite frankly haven't leveraged that side in the 2nd half of the article, but I'd like to again re-iterate how impressively difficult it is to design entire games; Entire playable experiences that are salient and fun in their own right. Whilst also making them fit into a larger scope storyline outside of the game, and making a real life point about the nature and corruption of the video game industry. They made it look effortless. It's not always been easy to put into words, but it's a narrative that's impacted me far more than most games. More than most games centered around their tale.
 

Decouple yourselves from the standards of storytelling! Poignancy can be found everywhere, as long as you seek it with eager eyes.

In the story, we don't know where anyone went post-Ufosoft. There's a coldness to UFO 50 at times. A lot of the games have weirdly creepy elements to them. Ninpek has a river of blood. Mortol is about ritual suicide. Rakshasa begins with the death of the protagonist. Some games have surprising twists in their endgame that change how you'll see the game forever. Have you beaten Waldorf's Journey or Campanella 3? Some games stay consistently cheery or consistently creepy throughout! It keeps you on your toes, none of it cheap.

There's so much I could keep going on and on about. The scope of the game is, quite frankly, absurd for 20 dollars. I hope as the years go on and more people are able to discover this narrative (perhaps thanks to this, who knows?) more people will appreciate what it does. There's still plenty of time! I have more golds and cherries to get on my main profile, so I'll still be booting up UFO 50 for a long, long time. I hope you will be, as well.