A while back, I played the demo of this and enjoyed it enough to stick it on my wishlist until it went on sale. Eventually, it did!

While it might not look like anything special, and there are a million late-90s style 3D platformers around, what this has that most of the others don’t is a properly controllable character. As in, the jumping and “steering” physics and controls feel right. You know how on the Super NES, Mario in Super Mario World feels right, but Bubsy the Bobcat is a horrible slidey imprecise mess? Now see how most 3D platformers from the Mario 64 era (and those that ape it) are more like nasty Gex 3D and not Banjo Kazooie in the same way. Well, Lunistice isn’t and clicked immediately with me.

It isn’t a huge game, with only a handful of worlds with most only having two acts, but it is inventive, varied and fun. There’s bits like Sonic Adventure, and bits like Mario 64, and bits like Crash Bandicoot (only good), but it still manages to be its own thing. Nice music, new-retro 32bit console aesthetic graphics, and a draw distance the PS1 couldn’t even dream about.

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!

While I was playing Cat Survivors, I was convinced it was actually the same game as Catlord that I’d played a year or two ago. I mean, they’re both cat-based Survivors games that were peanuts on the eShop. Turns out they’re not the same game.

Catlord was a freebie from No Gravity Games, and although it does have a cat and is a Survivors game, it plays somewhat differently. Firstly, it’s harder. Secondly, you have a jump button that you can use to either jump over baddies or stomp them. Then there’s a shield which you turn on and off when you want (although it has a usage bar so you can’t leave it on). Oh, and you don’t have many powerups – just balls and superballs.

So yeah, it’s a different game, it’s not as good, and somehow I still got some enjoyment out of it.