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And here it is! Party House is one of the games on UFO 50. The idea is, on each level, you are hosting a house party and every time you open the door a random guest from a pool of guests turns up. Each guest has a different effect on the party, however, and that’s where it gets hard.

So to start with, your house can only hold 5 guests. Some guests increase the popularity of the party (which, each round, adds up and can be “spent” on inviting other guests to the pool). Some guests bring in some money (which you can use to increase the capacity of your party). Others actually cost you money, and some increase the chances of the police turning up and shutting you down (which requires you to blame one party attendee who is then barred for a round).

Then you’ve other guests who can reduce the police chance, or automatically bring a +1 (which may cause the party to overspill – causing another shutdown), or act as a popularity multiplier. There are dogs who can preview who the next guest will be, bouncers who can kick someone out, and guests who can invite a specific additional guest from your pool.

It all feels a bit like a more complex version of a sort of solitaire poker, or something akin to Balatro. Even though it’s mostly random, there’s strategy as you try to gain enough popularity across each of the 20 or so rounds to eventually be able to “buy” all the required attendees needed to call the party a success and win.

Each of the five levels has a different set of available guests, so they play out differently. It’s very addictive, meaning the extra “random party” mode can give unlimited replayability.

UFO 50 is presented to you as a collection of 50 games from an 80s game development company called UFOSoft, for their three computer systems called the LX-I, LX-II and LX-III. The thing is, UFOSoft never existed, the games never came out in the 80s, and the LX series of computers aren’t real. It’s all a lie.

Except that there are actually 50 games here. All full games, fully realised, and they all could have plausibly existed in the 1980s as the fiction of the collection suggests. All sorts of genres exist here, from arcade shooters to platformers, from a full blown JRPG to what is essentially a clicker game. A horror adventure title. Puzzle games. Tower defence. One-on-one fighting. They’re all here. Most of them are pretty decent games too, with a few real corkers as a standout.

One of my favourites is Mini & Max, a platformer where you can shrink in size and sort of “zoom in” on objects, and have insects to talk to and avoid. You later get an item that lets you shrink further, to the size of bacteria. The aim seems to be to collect a load of stars, either found or awarded for completing tasks for creatures you find, but the shrink and grow mechanic is very clever.

So how, you may be asking, have I completed this compilation? Surely I’ve not completed every single game? Well no. Because, you see, even though each game is an actual game, there’s a meta game going on here too. A clue at one point in the proceedings will lead you to a specific point in a specific game, which in turn is a clue for another. You follow a few clues and unlock another “game”, where you actually wander round the UFOSoft offices, eventually finding some prototype games to play, and more clues to follow. It’s very clever.

After plotting your way through all the games referenced and finding all the clues, you’re able to complete the meta game. Which I did!

You’ll notice I’ve not explained how you begin this meta game. Nor am I going to explain what form the clues take. I went into UFO 50 knowing nothing about this whole extra thing even existing, so I’ve already “spoiled” that for you (sorry), so I’m hardly going to ruin how to actually do it. What I will say, is that one of the prototype games – which in the fiction of UFO 50 is an early version of the Campanella game – may only be incredibly short and just a single screen long, but it’s the hardest thing I’ve played in the entire collection so far. And yes, I have played all 50 (…actually, there are more than 50 – secrets!).

Now I’ve done that, I’ve an eye on a few of the individual games to spend some time on. Another diary post on at least one of them soon!