UFO 50 (live playthrough)

bingo game #1, completed 2026/1/10
all 50 games tried, 12 completed, 2 cherried

Discovering new experiences and figuring out how things work together are two of my favorite things about playing games, so I'm very suited to a gem like UFO 50 where the instruction manual doesn't exist and the genre switches every 30 minutes or so (at my whim).

I ended up being delighted not just by searching for the next Canon Game (Mortol, Party House, and Campanella 1), but also by the unexpected and deliciously frictionful growing on me (Overbold, Mooncat, Barbuta). There are misses (Fist Hell, Diskonia) as well, but knowing what you don't enjoy is, in itself, a growing experience.

This game is a wonderful toybox of ideas that sticks itself in your head, growing ideas of your own and giving you a fertile garden to come back and enjoy a little time in to for weeks and weeks to come. I'll be back, Golfaria.

Click here to return to the main post for my games played in 2026.

welcome to bingo board day 1

after picking 25 games to play this year... what's another 50

anyway I have barely scratched the surface and have been screaming nonstop. what do you MEAN there's a decoration room what do you MEAN there's per-game goals and stats what do you MEAN history

my first two random games were dodgeball and pong likes (accurate to my 8-bit era experience) and the third serves me PINGOLF which fucks because yeah I like pinball I like golf and I LOVE pinball dot matrix displays, play the extreme pinball dos demo

legally speaking, BUG HUNTER being the 'first' game of a fake company (and second ufo 50 title overall!) and a tactical game With Deckbuilding Elements is kinda really super crazy. big juice in this one

'ROCK ON! ISLAND looks like Adventure Island so it's probably gonna be a similar scrimblo platformer?' - idiot who has never heard of tower defense

the 'awww no it's an action-puzzle game not a pure puzzle game' -> 'accidentally turning into an arrow and flinging yourself headfirst is funny as fuck' -> 'MORTOL is a sick as hell concept' pipeline

(closes MORTOL, opens manual) 'rituals can be chained together' (shouts holy shit, opens MORTOL)

MOONCAT: I know developers who explain their games or control schemes at all, and I think they are all cowards

Legally speaking I think this is my first rage platformer? First game I cleared on here and only because I locked in for 45 minutes honing how to control this chicken-tender-on-frog-legs

played BARBUTA and bounced hard until I tried going to the right instead of left, upon which the funniest moment happened

I haven't managed to do *anything* but there's a style to how the actual mechanical execution is suffering but I really like trying to understand the game's mind. Is this sylvie

VELGRESS shows off a part of UFO 50's sense of humor where you read a description for a game and say 'this is the samus game where samus samuses' and you boot up the game and it says 'samus is going to samus' and then the gameplay is comically anachronistic like zoomer-speed Icy Tower

PARTY HOUSE

Oh fuck. I think this is at least like 50% GrimGamblers?

Solitaire-type deckbuilders (i.e. Balatro) that focus on your own composition rather than reactive elements are actually one of the subgenres I enjoy the most so this kind of fucks. I'm discovering Lots of Delightful Interactions

I kind of like Do Not Vibe with CAMOUFLAGE (even though it's a pure puzzle game) (and it's probably not because I accidentally got jumpscared the first time I failed a level) but the more I stare at it the more I think I'm secretly solving like how to four-color a graph

a fun canon fact is that one of the games I was obsessed with reading about (in a relative's NES game guide book) as a kid was Bubble Bobble

anyway Kick Club! banger idea

went through a few more games (hey porgy! very neat) and I will admit that I'm keeping a mental list of UFO 50 games where I can get game over before a modern console even boots up

Oh!

Don't worry about it

booted up DIVERS. annotating what menu option is which is for people who don't want to say '.... legs?? I think'

oh DIVERS is kind of crazy.

I'm frequently unnerved by retro games because my brain fills in the gaps very strongly, and this is doubled by the fact that The Ocean Is Scary As Hell

divers shows me nothing and tells me less and also there's equipment durability! pass the sandpaper let's go

100%'d NIGHT MANOR in UFO 50! a point-and-click adventure type game that's pretty tightly made (I only had to consult two hints online)

fun puzzles interrupted frequently by me making a jerkoff motion at some dude with a knife. i'm tired of these jumpscares I don't want nightmares tonight

Alpha appears in OVERBOLD because you can lose in this game about as fast as Icy Tower

you have 6 HP! how much damage does even the weakest enemy do? like 6

raising Overbold's grade by like 10 points because the ramp is actually extremely short, so if you just limp through every round thinking you can power up slowly you will get obliterated. very smart and funny

thinking about UFO 50 at work

* it shouldn't have come as a surprise that THE BIG BELL RACE is my designated scrimblo game. I will defend it

* BUSHIDO BALL was the first game I played and I bounced hard but the more I played it 2P the more I kept finding kinda crazy things to do with it. gj

I think it's funny every time UFO 50 makes another game which is like normally silent but then a minor UI action has a big looping jingle for some reason

this is the optimal amount of introduction text to have for your game

the greatest thing about UFO 50 using random ordering is that I guess I had a 2% chance of having the last game be the incremental game hybrid and I think that's beautiful

how is MORTOL adding mechanics at this fast a pace. this is mind-expanding.

picture taken at the moment I was saying the sentence 'I don't get it, are they trying to tutorialize burning vines again for some reaso-'. MORTOL is the funniest game

SEASIDE DRIVE definitely my favorite shmup on here. I am good at exactly 0 shmups but if you play with someone else you only have to be half as good so yay! the enemy theming feels just right too as an AIRRADE kid

the storytelling moment is yesterday i was chasing 10th gold in UFO 50 and it was absolute miserable, total tiltfest, and today I golded 3 games that I hopped into for fun (and none of them were pilot quest which I expected to gold LOL). Golding UFO 50 and Browsing UFO 50 are two different games

me: three day weekend! I'll do a quick UFO 50 writeup and then move on to working on some personal projects

me, afternoon: 3 hours of PARTY HOUSE randomizer

I don't *want* to cherry party house but i mean if it happened to me it'd be neat. anyway go go gadget 1000 actions clicky build (actually really exhausting)

I'm a rockstar believer now

quick UFO 50 favs

* MORTOL (my #1. Mario Wonder the flash game)
* Campanella 1 (I also love this flash game)
* Overbold (amazingly tight and you grow so much playing it)
* Hyper Contender (8 jumps @ fgc locals)
* Party House (ya)
* Barbuta (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg7IO3JDSfw)

Writing by invelica | Built with zola 0.20.0 | Theme by ネe3 based on futu@main