This is Part 2 of 3

I split it up into 3 parts, because of all the animated gifs. Didn’t want to have one big page with 10 megabytes of gifs.

Part 1 is here. It has my introduction, and my F Tier, D Tier, C Tier.

You’re looking at part 2! It has my B Tier and A Tier.

Part 3 is here. It has my S Tier and my SSS Tier.

B TIER (I like it, but with complaints)

41 – Velgress

[My Description: Keep jumping upward and shooting anything in your way, in this short but difficult randomly generated 1-life challenge.]

My next most controversial pick after Mortol! I do like it though!

It definitely makes a super strong first impression, which is important in UFO 50, where the temptation is strong to bounce off a game and try another. The action starts immediately, the music is exciting, the controls are impeccably tight, and you restart so quickly after each death, that the game is very hard to put down! If this is a roguelike, then this is the most “one more run” roguelike I’ve ever touched.

But for me, there’s actually not much more to the game beyond that first impression! My playstyle doesn’t change at any point in a run, from beginning to end, I pretty much just keep jumping as fast as possible, ignoring enemies, and only shooting straight upward, never sideways (if an enemy is not in my path, it’ll be off the screen in a second anyway!). There’s no thinking to do really. And my playstyle didn’t really change between my 1st attempt and my 50th!

You can try to collect more coins and spend them at the shop, but the shop upgrades are very mild, almost undetectable really, and there aren’t very many types of upgrades (like 4?).

I love procedural generation, but this isn’t a very impressive use of it: it pretty much just feels like random platforms at predictable distances, and lots of recognizable very simple pre-fabricated structures that get old pretty quick, and flying enemies that can mostly be ignored. Spelunky this is not.

The Gold ending doesn’t end with a boss or any sort of finale moment (as far as I remember) and felt underwhelming to complete, and I haven’t been intrigued enough (I suck) to see if the Cherry ending is any better (it probably is!). So take that into consideration for this relatively low ranking.

40 – Vainger

[My Description: Very similar to NES Metroid, but with more upgrades, more save points, a map, and the ability to flip your character’s gravity anytime.]

Metroid was almost a great NES game, but big flaws held it back, and Vainger fixes most of those flaws. So does that mean Vainger’s a great game?

Kinda, but not quite, because there’s a BIG problem holding Vainger back: You get all these cool upgrades, but you can only equip a small subset of them (swapping them is done at save points). Some of the upgrades are good for combat, and some are for exploration–because they help get you past exploration blockades.

And there’s the flaw: it only ever makes sense to equip the exploration upgrades. The form of progression of the game is exploring/uncovering new areas of the map (for NEW keys and NEW upgrades). So why would you leave the save point without all your exploration upgrades equipped? You wouldn’t. So, all these cool combat upgrades you find, you can’t ever actually use, which is frustrating and boring.

Which then ruins the fun of exploration further, because you’ll know you’ll just find upgrades you can’t use anyway. Or you’ll run into an obstacle and realize “ugh i got unlucky and equipped the wrong upgrades, now I just have to just walk back to the save point.” Ugh.

The other reason I can’t rank this very high, is like Block Koala: this is a very crowded genre these days, so do I really wanna spend time playing this very traditional Metroidvania, when there are so many being released right now, that are far more beautiful and more innovative? Not really! The innovations here are just not big enough.

And you have to admit, only seeing the map at the save points, is pretty annoying, makes you wanna play a modern metroidvania.

That ALL being said, it’s still a good game. Good music, great pixel art, interesting backgrounds and tilesets, the gravity flipping keeps you engaged and thinking about the combat and room traversal… And I’d say it’s the perfect length and size for a Metroidvania, it doesn’t overstay its welcome. Final boss was good too.

39 – Hot Foot

[My Description: Top-down 2v2 dodgeball, but with beanbags! Hit the enemy team with a bag to score a point, and jump to dodge an incoming bean bag, to build your special meter!]

Can’t say I ever guessed I’d play a dodgeball video game, and it sounds like a bad idea to me, but it actually works!

Well, I don’t see much strategy or tactics here, so maybe I’m right that the main idea isn’t that good. Many times I win a match, it felt like I just got lucky hits I didn’t deserve, or the AI made dumb mistakes. You kinda just have to be careful and concentrate, to win.

But it’s got some great kinesthetics: throwing the beanbags feels good, love seeing the enemy get knocked down (or when I get knocked down, I’m like “crapcrapcrapcrap get up!!”). Jumping over the bags feels GREAT (especially when you accidentally do it with both characters!). I think the sound effects and animations are doing a lot of work here.

The gym tournament theme is also doing a lot of work too, it’s really cute, and I like the teacher barking out comments and throwing useful items in the middle of the court, adds some good exciting showdowns versus the opponent, as you figure out who’s gonna go for it. Games of chicken. Also encourages you not to play “too far back”. There’s some “area control” here.

The unique character passive traits keep things interesting every time you play, great addition. I’m not crazy about the power shot system in these types of games, but I can see why it’s important, to have a resource you’re building up and managing.

People complain about the clumsiness of controlling two characters… ok, but c’mon, it’d be so easy if you only had to track one character. It’s way more fun having to track both, so you can dodge/jump bags coming at either one (or both)!

I think a game in this style could never really rank that high on the list, ‘cuz there’s no level design going on, not much game design really. So how impressed could I really ever be? But still, I like the game, it’s good.

38 – Onion Delivery

[My Description: Top-down 2d Crazy Taxi. Drive to the locations it tells you, before time runs out, which makes you lose a life and start the day over. Finish 7 days without running out of lives to win.]

This was perhaps my biggest case in UFO 50 of absolutely hating a game, at first… and slowly significantly changing my opinion on it. Now I think it’s pretty good!

What made me like it (after struggling a lot), was going online and looking up a map of the city, and realizing it was not randomly generated or arbitrary, but was designed with intent, and that made me want to learn it and understand it. I love learning a good map! I went back and studied the online version from time to time, to get a feel for important aspects like landmarks, main roads, bridge locations, and such. It’s a pretty unique cool feeling.

I also realized that each destination you get sent to has a NAME, and that NAME appears on the left side of your screen! I somehow had missed this in the UI. Learning those names gave the city a lot more life and character! It’s amazing what location names can do for a game (for me anyway).

One thing that really impresses me in UFO 50, is that many of the games have an excellent difficulty curve–what I mean is, at first it feels like the hardest game ever, but every few minutes, you NOTICE yourself getting way better. And then better, and way better, etc!! Onion Delivery is a HUGE example of this.

There’s some other little design choices and strategies and tricks to figure out that I won’t spoil here, but it’s more stuff that gives the game depth the more you play it. The hard part is sticking with it.

Because, it’s still a pretty annoying game: the controls still don’t feel amazing to me, and it is really hard to see ahead of your car. I wish the streets were just a little bit wider or something, or fewer death pits, so I could enjoy the driving a little more, instead of being constantly interrupted and stressed.

Or maybe I wish each delivery was a little more satisfying somehow? Maybe a better points system or just better sound effects, would have done the trick? Something’s missing.

37 – Star Waspir

[My Description: A traditional vertical shmup, across 5 difficult stages. Collect various combinations of letters to get powerups and score multipliers.]

OK, yes, this game isn’t innovating much, and shmup is a crowded genre. I complained about that for Vainger and Block Koala, how they feel like a waste of time when I could playing more innovative games in those genres… But it’s not AS big of a complaint here, ‘cuz this is a very short game!

(Also I’m biased, because I like this genre more–anytime I get a new console I immediately get a shmup on it, as a tradition.) (Whereas Metroidvanias are hit or miss for me, and block pushers I don’t really care about.)

But anyway, in spite of the lack of innovation, they did a really really good job on this one! This is one of the better shmups I’ve played, top 20% probably! The graphics are vibrant and awesome, and the controls are perfect to me–I love how you move faster when you let go of shoot, and I love how you shoot a spread shot when you tap the button, and how it becomes a straight line when you hold it down–so tactically versatile! This isn’t the first game to do these things, but they were still smart to make these design choices.

The EGG letters system is pretty good. I don’t like that you have to look online to see how the heck it works. But after that, it’s a cool multitasking aspect–you can’t just grab every letter you see or you’ll wreck your multiplier–so this leads to tense moments where you’re dodging a lot of letters you don’t want, searching for the one you do! I love how you often find yourself weaving in and out of streams of projectiles, to grab a letter you really need in there.

Like Onion Delivery, and so many UFO 50 games, the skill curve is excellent–it feels impossible at first, but you absolutely notice yourself getting way better at it, quickly. And the presence of the “gold cartridge” system helps you stick with the games a little longer, so you can get hooked.

One big problem though: for some reason, I can barely see the enemy bullets. They’re almost invisible to me. No idea why. About 25% of shmups have this problem for me, and this is one. ALMOST a dealbreaker, but I still like it. If they solved this problem, Star Waspir would probably move up one tier in this list.

36 – Caramel Caramel

[My Description: A traditional horizontal shmup (a “shm-across”). Candy and outer space themed. You can shoot, but you can also take pictures of enemies, which stuns them, and other interactions to figure out.]

I flip flopped a lot on this versus Star Waspir, they both have strengths and weaknesses.

But I ended up giving it to Caramel Caramel, just because the art here is so colorful and cute. So much variety and so many themes, even within a single level!! Every screen feels fresh. And there’s a lot more level design going on here, with all the obstacles and enemy types. There’s even a nice little tutorial prologue, completely optional! I appreciate that.

At first it seems like it’s unfair how they only give you one life. But you’ll probably get more lives after level 1. So actually, they’re being nice–do you really want to keep going, if you lost a life so early on, and are sent to the beginning of level 1? No, you might as well start the game over and get that life back–so they’re helping you do that!

The main problem with this game is that the checkpoints are too spread out. Whenever you die, you’re probably getting sent back quite far, it’s pretty demoralizing every time.

Also, while the photo mechanic is cool, it’s not that cool. Star Waspir has the upper hand when it comes to actual shooting, interesting controls, powering up, and the EGG letters system in general, and the multiple ships. I’d take all that over the photo system, tbh.

Also, WHY THE CRAP IS THE COOKIE MINIBOSS IN STAGE ONE SO HARD??? Actually you know what, it’s such a memorable design choice, that I actually love it. Bad design is memorable design, and memorable design is good. Also it’s a cookie!! It’s hilarious to make an impossible cookie boss.

It’s a little weird that both autoscrolling shmups ended up at practically the same spot in the list…but maybe it makes sense? If a single group of people makes the same genre game twice, it makes sense that both games would be of similar quality.

35 – Paint Chase

[My Description: In each of the 25 top-down maze-like stages, make sure there’s more of your blue paint on the ground than the enemies’ red paint, when time runs out. Run over enemies to stop them from painting.]

The UFO 50 devs make game design look so easy. But it’s not! There’s a lot of 80s pac-man inpsired games that look a lot like this, except they suck. But Paint Chase rocks!

It’s intuitive, unique, and deep; really hard to achieve all three of those at once. Whenever I see someone try it for the first time they’re like “oh cool, yes, I get it, interesting, hmm.”

OK maybe it’s not DEEP, but it’s not shallow either. There are right and wrong strategies, even on a per-level basis–if you want to win, you’ll have to keep considering whether your approach is working, and you might need to change things up on the fly, mid-level.

It also keeps adding interesting stuff as it goes–new enemies and objects to interact wit,h that you’ll have to figure out and strategize around (always intuitive though) (oh and I love the little intermission animations that pre-explain some of them! great throwback, cuz original Pac-man had these too, right?). The enemies later on that you can’t attack head on, particuarly throw me for a loop!! I find myself trying to predict their AI, and I even stand still sometimes, so I can wait and see where they’ll turn next. Good stuff.

I always wished there were more Pac-man games that were 25 unique stages like this, that kept adding mechanics, and a good final boss, like this one. It’s a great idea to take Pac-man’s great formula, and make a true single player “campaign” out of it. (Well, another such game kinda does exist, it’s called Pac-Man Arrangement!! And it rocks. Paint Chase might be even better.)

Unfortunately, what I remember most about this game, is frustration, from getting Game Over at the hard parts later on, which always meant I had to start over, and play through the first half of the game, which I had pretty much memorized my routes/strategies for. Really annoying, some randomization might have helped a lot with that problem I bet.

And that’s actually an annoyance with a lot of the hardest moments UFO 50, having to play through a lot of memorized easy stuff, to get back to the really hard part–Star Waspir, Fist Hell, and Kick Club come to mind quickly. More randomness would have helped–or different characters/vehicles to pick from!

Also I gotta give this game minus points, for being one of the uglier games in UFO 50. But that’s kinda because most UFO 50 games look so good.

34 – Bushido Ball

[My Description: 1v1 tennis/pong, but with swords to hit the puck back and forth, and 6 different characters with traits and special moves.]

Tennis games are always fun! Except here, you can bounce the ball off walls, which is kinda just strictly an improvement over most tennis games (and real tennis), cuz ricochets are awesome in games.

The fundamental gameplay is great: I like that you swing directly in front of you, therefore you must position yourself behind the ball, THEN swing. If you get into position late, and don’t manage to get the swing off, well, you still blocked the ball, but it stuns you for a moment, and the opponent is gonna have a nice opening. Cool! Makes perfect sense, I like it. Fundamentally I think it works much better than Hot Foot, and that’s why I’m putting it higher.

Although then there’s a character that doesn’t work that way, and you CAN swing sideways for extra reach! The characters are surprisingly different, which has double value: keeps it interesting throughout your run, and keeps it more interesting for you to play again with other characters. And just, asymmetry is just one of the most fun aspects of 1on1 one games of all kinds.

It’s just an exciting game, at all times, never a dull moment. Each volley is pretty intense right off the bat (no super slow starts!). And they never really feel too repetitive or predictable, surprisingly. I’m still not really bored of this game.

The power shot system is here as usual (like Hot Foot, Windjammers, lotta games in this genre), it’s a little uninteresting to me as usual, although a difference here is, I find it surprisingly doable to actually return those shots, which feels even better than performing them!

This still has the problem like Hot Foot where, when I win, I feel like it was mostly because the AI just decided to make a dumb mistake. So, that doesn’t feel amazing, and honestly kinda keeps it from going higher on the list.

Also, again, there’s not much level design here, so how high can I really rank this? But I really really did enjoy this game, and I’ve already gone back to it sometimes, just to screw around with it purely for fun, so that’s a really good sign. Who plays a game for fun? (In fact, I even accidentally got the cherry on one of these “for fun” runs! I still go back though.)

33 – Kick Club

[My Description: ~40 levels of one-screen battles, where you jump around, and kick a soccer ball at all the enemies before time runs out. It’s like Bubble Bobble.]

This is the opposite of my complaint about Vainger and Block Koala–this is maybe the most UNDERUSED and underappreciated genre, that died out in the mid-90s for some reason. Putting one in UFO 50, is a genius retro move!!

I recently saw a youtube video call these “Single Screen Elimination Platformers”, but perhaps Bubble-Bobble-likes is a more obvious name. GOD I love Bubble Bobble, it’s definitely in my top 100 games somewhere, yes, please rip-off Bubble Bobble, game developers!

I don’t think the gameplay is quite as good as Bubble Bobble. The bubble mechanics are more interesting and cooler than the soccer ball. I also love the crazy random surprise stuff that can happen in Bubble Bobble, like the umbrella, or, OOPS suddenly all the enemies have turned into donuts, dunno why! But at least we still have all collectible foods for points…so satisfying

And I don’t think the soccer ball kicking is as interesting as they think, here. I found it best to only kick enemies right in front of me, so that I’d catch the ball again immediately. I think they wanted me to do some charge shots…but, then I have to chase down the ball, which sucks! And I’m defenseless in the meantime. No thank you. (Maybe there’s a score reason to charge shot? But I got the cherry easily anyway, my first winning run.)

I do like how you have to scramble to get the soccer ball, at the start of each level, while defenseless! That’s a pretty interesting twist, it’s very combat puzzley. The combat arena level design is very good here, although I don’t recall any hilariously memorable levels like POPCORN in bubble bobble. Good bosses here though!

Unfortunately this ALSO has the same annoyance as Paint chase–it gets really hard later on, but every time you fail, you gotta play allllll that easy memorized stuff again. A bit more randomization could have helped with this, or slightly different characters to pick from.

Like all games in UFO 50, I never tried this multiplayer (coop), which I imagine would raise my opinion of it. Especially since I never play Bubble Bobble alone, I would only ever play it with a friend.

32 – Attactics

[My Description: Uhhhh how do you explain this. In each of the 24 missions, move your units around on a grid in real time, as they walk forward at the enemy team. Break through the enemy line to win!]

Hahaha yesssssss this is what I’m talking about, wtf is this?? This is VISIONARY.

It’s like someone took the “autochess” rts genre and flipped it: “ok, what if instead of ONLY choosing the units, and having no control over them… what if you DON’T choose the units, and you ONLY control them?”

Which is genius, because it leads to the most hectic possible form of RTS micromanagement playing, as you stumble and improvise, to adapt to the units being automatically added to your side of the board (and the opponent’s)! It’s so HECTIC, man. It actually reminds me of the famous “I Love Lucy” scene with the conveyor belts and the chocolate. It also reminds me of that Jackbox Party Pack game where you’re giving a powerpoint presentation, and someone else is picking the next slide for you.

The depth is pretty impressive, they keep introducing new units with clever interactions to consider. Honestly it started going over my head, like, I don’t think I even really ever figured out what it means when a unit levels up after getting a bunch of kills. And I kept realizing I didn’t quite understand the Grunt ability. Would have liked an in-game manual to review for this game!

The reason this doesn’t quite reach my next tier, is that I felt like I usually beat missions by simply trying again and I’d get luckier eventually. I don’t quite feel like I was actually really learning on a deeper level. I’m not 100% sure this is a bad thing! But after each mission I wasn’t quite satisfied I deserved the win. Still, I enjoyed my time with it a lot, and couldn’t put it down after I started! …BUT I’m not sure I’ll go back anytime soon, ‘cuz it was kinda stressful!

31 – Valbrace

[My Description: First person floor-by-floor dungeon crawling; but the combat encounters are 3rd person action, where you move sideways to dodge and attack enemies, kinda like Punch Out.]

OK, so this ALMOST belonged WAY up in my “masterpieces” tier. I loved the first half of this game SO FREAKING much.

The unique combat system absolutely blew my mind. It’s SO up my alley. In video games, I hate having to hit a button to dodge, I like simply MOVING, and paying attention to my positioning, and that’s exactly what this combat is all about. Baiting out attacks, moving out of the way, then getting some hits in. (You CAN dodge-roll too, if you like that. I don’t.) I also strongly believe that video game combat works best when you’re managing multiple enemies at once, and that’s what this game’s all about too.

Also just, the fights look insanely cool, your little sprite at the bottom dodging left and right, swinging at these giant intimidating COOL monsters in front of you. Every hit on the enemy has very satisfying vfx & sfx. It’s visceral and immersive and there’s not much else like it (well, punch out).

And then there’s so much more than the combat!! Tons of secrets, all the unique cool items/weapons/gear to find (that actually have different behaviors, not just stats!), equipment actually shows up on your character (one of my fav features in games!), the magic system rocks, etc, all crazy good.

And all those options available to you feel valid and effective, you just have to make decisions that match the playstyle that’s working for you. Another great example is picking a stat to upgrade when you level up–usually in games this feels low impact, but in Valbrace it has a huge impact on your playstyle for the rest of the game, and I had a really hard time making this choice every time, which is a good sign!

BUUUUT here’s the problem. I started to seriously hate the game later on, as each successive “floor” got more huge, convoluted, and confusing than the previous one. And, they start to take like an hour, to finish a single floor, and you can’t save mid-floor, and if you die you lose all your progress on that floor! Figuring out these mazes was torture. I even tried looking up maps, but the maps surprisingly didn’t help that much, because the floors are THAT complex.

Well, if it was mainly a first person maze game, puzzling floors would be fine. But here, while you’re wandering around confused for hours, enemies are respawning repeatedly!!! So you’re doing the same dang fights over and over, and they start to get repetitive, probly cuz the developers didn’t expect you to be on a floor so long. The mazes are so bad, they almost ruined the game–well, they still dropped the game many tiers on my list.

I’m planning to re-play Valbrace again someday, and I imagine I’m gonna enjoy it a lot more, being able to recall some of the tricks in the mazes. I’m also gonna wait until I get the UFO 50 Companion Guide from Fangamer, whenever they finally ship that thing–I’m hoping it’ll have huge nice maps for Valbrace that’ll make it really fun to look things up when I get stuck.

A TIER (I love it! Basically no complaints)

30 – Campanella

[My Description: Carefully fly through ~40 single-screen levels, dodging obstacles, defeating enemies, and 5 bosses. Press A to thrust upwards, press left/right to move.]

Yeah, you know what? This should be an entire 2d genre, and should be as popular as platformers. Fly em ups, we’ll call it.

I reckon the controls here are just as satisfying and deep as platformers of this era. I was an absolute klutz at first, now I feel like a flying god, sometimes I notice my thumb mashing and holding the thrust button with surprisingly complex patterns to achieve the smooth maneuvers I want.

This game might have the highest rank in UFO 50 in terms of making me make strange noises with my mouth, like “Ayyyyoooiiii!!!!” as I accidentally freefall waaay too quickly away from an enemy, only to barely scrape the ground and thrust up away from it just in time, as if I meant to do it (feels AWESOME). “Lahhhhh??” I say, as I accidentally cut a corner a little too closely, and can’t believe the game didn’t explode me.

The level design has just as much creative potential as platformers too–look how much level design was packed in here, considering each level is only one dang screen each!! And I like how levels get surprisingly complicated later on, I find myself planning out my path for a few seconds, before hitting the launch button. Some of the best bosses in UFO 50 are here too, really silly creative stuff here. I hate bosses generally in games, but love them here.

I think I might have liked some additional buttons to hit occasionally, maybe an occasional powerup that lets me temporarily shoot bullets, or something, y’know, stuff like Mario’s outfits in SMB3 or SMW, etc. BUT I guess I can think of this game as trying to be a simple start of a trilogy, like Super Mario Bros 1. That was probably the devs intent, to keep this simple like Mario 1. Although SMB1 does have fire flower…

The secrets and coffee stuff are pretty fun, I haven’t bothered attempting a cherry run, but I probably will someday. I also like the game’s potential as a score attack or time attack game. I like how gathering points gets you tons of extra lives, feels good.

Anyway, love the game, no real complaints besides wanting more of it. Great looking game, and great music too–those kinda go without saying, for most of the rest of this list.

29 – Hyper Contender

[My Description: A 1v1 platforming/fighting game, with 8 very different characters to choose from.]

I hate fighting games so I thought I would hate this one. Turns out it’s more like a platform fighter like Smash Bros. OK, but I hate Smash Bros too. (Well I love the idea, just hate the actual gameplay.)

But I really like Hyper Contender, so maybe I WOULD like some other games in this genre!

The “ring system” is a genius scoring system, I like it much better than any other fighting game system. Everytime I get hit, I’m swearing like mad, trying to get back up, and get my lost ring back before the opponent does. Every time a new ring spawns there’s such a cool showdown, as we both play a game of chicken of either going for it, or sending attacks towards it. And it gets so exciting when one of us is at match point! I always get reckless and therefore predictable.

But the best part is how wildly differently each character plays. Especially how their movement works–that takes some real effort and creativity to come up with 8 unique movement styles. But it makes the game so much more interesting to master! And it makes each matchup so asymmetrical and weird and cool, I love asymmetry in any 1on1 game!!! Lotsa replay value and stuff to think/talk about.

The Gold win only makes you beat it with 1 character, which is over wayy too quickly. This is a game everyone absolutely should go for the Cherry (beating it with 4 characters), to really appreciate how differently they play.

So yeah, this game kinda saved a genre for me, so it’s gotta go pretty high in the ranking! Although if I think about it, I do like some other games similar to this, like Duck Game, and Towerfall, if those count. I haven’t tried Hyper Contender with 2 players, but I bet I’d like it more than Towerfall, but probably not quite as much as Duck Game.

28 – Rakshasa

[My Description: Very difficult Contra/Castlevania-like with a Hindu theme. Except whenever you get hit, you die, and must play a minigame to revive yourself, which gets harder every time, and so does the real game.]

When I think about this game, I mostly think about how hard it is. It was the FINAL game I beat in the collection, despite being one of the first few games I played. The difficulty does the game a disservice, because underneath, it’s super cool, fun, and well-balanced.

The Hindu-like theme is doing a lot here, it’s very unique, haven’t seen much like it, especially not in an 80s pixel style. The opening cutscene sets a great mood, along with the spooky aesthethics and music drawing me in. The levels are very memorable and dripping with atmosphere too. Lots of mid-level variety!

The combat is right up my alley too, because it’s ALWAYS about managing many enemies at once, my favorite type of combat. The bosses usually do this too, like a duo reminiscent to Slogra+Gaibon from Castlevania SotN, or a 3-headed bosses, or the final boss for sure. As someone who hates bosses, I have to admit, I like every boss in this game, a very impressive feat. (Oh wait I said that about Campanella too! UFO 50 rocks.)

Lotta really good regular enemies too, I love enemies that you just HATE to see appear, like the cloud, or the birds that shoot. AUGH, the hardest moments in the game are whenever the birds show up.

The balance of the 3 weapons is really good. While trying to beat the game, I had eras with all 3 weapons where I was like “oh this is the best weapon, why would I use anything else?” In the end, my winning run mostly used the fire, since its DPS is so good.

The resurrection minigame is cool in theory… but in practice it’s kinda irrelevant. If you really wanna beat Rakshasa, you really need to be so good, that you never need to rez. ‘Cuz the entire game raises difficulty each time you rez, and it’s already really hard without rezzing! (Jeez, if you’re gonna implement “dynamic difficulty”, wouldn’t you wanna do it the other way? Raise the difficulty only for the people who are doing really well?)

But still, it’s a cool idea, and I enjoy the minigame.

THANKFULLY there’s a terminal code to basically give you infinite lives, so if you wanna just have a chill enjoyable experience and see the whole game, you totally can. And then, if you wanna beat it for real (and get the gold), now you’ve got enough practice to do it! Which will still be very satisfying! So that’s a pretty good system.

27 – Magic Garden

[My Description: Gather red slimes like in “Snake”, then convert them into points. Drink potions to destroy blue slimes like in “Pacman”. Do big combos and score as high as you can.]

This feels something that you’d see win a game design contest and you’d be jealous you didn’t design it. It’s nearly the simplest & smallest game that could possibly exist, while still being impressively hard to master.

There are a surprising number of “wait, what if I” realizations you can have, like what if you press the button to convert the slimes you’ve gathered into points, but you’re standing in the wrong spot? And then the strategic implications of that, and so on.

A lesson we didn’t learn from Flappy Bird, is that a High Score -centric game is really fun when the runs are outrageously quick, such that you always feel like you suck. OK, the runs in Magic Garden aren’t THAT short, but they’re shockingly short, such that you ALWAYS have time for another go.

It helps that you always mess up your run RIGHT when “awww I was just about to do something so awesome!!!” Usually you intentionally left WAY too many blue guys on the screen, and you were rushing towards the potion to finally eat them all in one outrageous combo, AAAAND you failed to slip past a blue guy to get to it!

…and so, you always start another run after that, so you can make the exact same mistake again! The “perfect combo” you’re envisioning is always JUST outside your skill level! That’s the magic of Magic Garden.

Besides that, it’s just a beautiful game, I love the cutesy story, and the pretty colors, and the art on the sides of the screen, and the spectating witch. Good song too. One of the most easily lovable games in the package. Crazy this would almost work on a Tiger electronics handheld.

I can’t put it higher because c’mon, it’s a one screen score-chasing game, not much Content here. And I need more Level Design to be impressed further. But hey, A tier IS really high–it’s a sign of how good UFO 50 is, that Magic Garden only gets this high in my list.

26 – Ninpek

[My Description: A single-stage auto-scrolling sidescroller platformer, where you throw shurikens at enemies, and double jump a lot.]

I’ve always liked shmups, BUT I’ve always had some nagging thoughts about the genre. Such as “why don’t they just let you turn around?”. And “why do they need to punish you so hard, for making a tiny mistake?” And I think Ninpek is proof that these ideas are good!

And like, why not just respawn the player right where they died, instead of sending them super far back? Then you can kill the player a lot, which is more interesting than playing perfectly only. AND you can spew a lot of extra lives at them too, so it never feels like the run is doomed, isn’t that more fun? Ninpek does all this, and it all ROCKS! At least, for my taste anyway.

I really love the enemies in Ninpek, there are so many absolute BASTARDS. Those green guys in the water that shoot upward are the first bastards you meet about 10 seconds in, GOTTA go down to the bottom of the screen and kill those pronto, even though it feels really good to be up high, so you can’t fall in water.

And then there’s the fish later on, and the pirahnas that chase you (or are they flying teeth?), and then in the “Second Run” they even invent lots of new high-priority bastards for you to hate!

It’s weird, I usually despise autoscroller levels in platformers (especially Mario 3!!). I think a big difference here is that there’s never a moment where you’re just “waiting impatiently” for the screen to move–there are SO many enemies to kill, and so many items to collect, that you can’t kill/collect everything, so there’s never a dull moment. Turns out I guess I just hate all the standing around in those Mario 3 levels.

And because you’re NOT killing every enemy and collecting every item, that means you’re actually making real decisions in the game–that means your last run was different than my last run. And your last run was different than your next run!

Excellent game, makes a great first impression, and holds up the further you get! Can’t see much that could improve it, besides more content, cuz it’s quite short!

25 – Barbuta

[My Description: A simplistic sidescrolling platformer, in a sprawling explorable castle with many secrets.]

Some say the most important thing to make a game good is “Graphics”, while others say “Gameplay” is most important. I have a theory, that the real most important thing is “Secrets”. And that’s good news for Barbuta which doesn’t have good graphics NOR gameplay, all it has is lots of secrets.

Your only form of progression, is finding secrets, each of which gets you deeper and deeper into the game. If you don’t find any secrets, you might bounce off the game, and say “meh, not for me”… but if you find one, you might find yourself addicted–‘cuz you’re like “I can’t stop now, I’d be throwing away this valuable knowledge I already figured out!!”

I’m someone who thinks the worst thing to ever happen to video games was tutorials, and UFO 50’s main draw for me, was to bring me back to the pre-tutorial days, where you’re just in a game, free to figure it out and enjoy discovering everything about it, your own way. And I love that Barbuta is the first game in the package, because it’s the epitome of that, it’s UFO 50’s mission statement, front and center.

Being that it’s the first game chronologically, this is the ONLY case where I think they’re absolutely allowed to sacrifice graphics+controls, in the name of nostalgia baiting and tradition. And mind-blowingly, this game gives me MEGA nostalgic emotions, even though I don’t actually recall playing any games quite like this before. But the vibes and dedication to the design ethos are just so perfect, that I get it anyway.

This COULD have reached my masterpieces tier, but I think the Game Over system is too punishing, making the game too much of a chore. Every time I restarted, it was so annoying re-doing my rehearsed first few minutes of the game, again and again, so I could get back to where I was, and resume my search. Just a big waste of time.

24 – Planet Zoldath

[My Description: A short top-down puzzley adventure game, with permadeath. The game is significantly re-randomized every time you start over.]

Can’t believe I’m putting Planet Zoldath above the near-masterpiece of Barbuta, considering they’re similar “figure it out” adventure games, and considering Zoldath is smaller, uglier, just as punishing, and has even LESS legitimate gameplay, than Barbuta.

(Might be the ugliest game in the pack honestly!)

…But turns out, a little procedural generation goes a LONG way, at least for me!! All those games I’ve complained about so far on this ranking, where I’m like “ugh I hate how every time I die, I have to re-play the same parts, exactly the same way again.” Well that’s what Planet Zoldath is awesome at!

Dying and starting over becomes EXCITING, because now you have a fresh new world to explore! Were you stuck on solving one little thing? Who cares, it’s gone and re-framed in your new world!

And man it’s SUCH a weird feeling (but cool!) when it happens. If you play enough adventure games, your brain is wired to remember where every item is, every NPC, every enemy, every secret, every room. But then, you die in Zoldath, and it dawns on you that, that world is GONE. No wait, it’s weirder than that–some of your knowledge is still valid, but it needs to be REMAPPED. That item still exists, it’s just somewhere else, and might not be as important; that NPC looks different and has a different purpose, or might not exist at all.

I’ve watched people play “randomizer” mods for games before, like for LTTP and Super Metroid, and I’m always baffled why people are into it. I roll my eyes, as they excitedly say “ahhhhhh this item’s over HERE this time”. I’m like dude yeah that’s the point of the mod, duh. But now, I’ve experienced that feeling, and I get it now.

Obviously, the replay value is high–I find myself coming back to this one, purely for fun. It’s very short, so it’s a low-energy commitment (and I usually mess up and die, so it’s even shorter!). Pretty fun for speedrunning too (and the cherry even encourages it!).

23 – Overbold

[My Description: A short 8-stage top-down shooter, in a single arena, where you change the difficulty right before each stage, to increase that stage’s rewards.]

Ever since I played the trick taking game “Oh Hell!”, I’ve been trying to think of a similar game design idea, where changing the difficulty settings IS a central part of the gameplay itself. Well, Overbold beat me to the punch, more brilliantly and succinctly than I could have ever done.

Whenever I watch someone’s first time playing Overbold, they have the same great experience I had: “This is fun, kinda easy though.” Followed by “Oh really, the final level already? That was quick.” And then “Oh. OHHHHH LOL. OK I get it now, lemme start over…” It’s game design magic.

(I don’t want to spoil the game’s design completely, so I’m being somewhat vague.)

Of course, understanding the concept is only the first step. It’s still not an easy game. And that’s a good thing, because that makes you really think hard about every decision! You can be several levels into a good run, and feel powerful–so you SHOULD increase the difficulty even higher… BUT you don’t, ‘cuz you don’t wanna be Overbold, and lose your great run! Of course, by not pursuing even higher rewards, you still might be screwed for the rest of the fun!

It’s a masterpiece of game design, but I can’t actually put it in my Masterpieces tier in this list… The replay value isn’t quite there. Once you’ve beaten it, there’s not much more reason to go back—it’s the same arena every time, and the shop doesn’t change much… I do appreciate that the enemies get swapped in and out for each run, but there ain’t THAT many enemies.

Huge props to the UFO 50 devs for nailing the controls here. You hold the shoot button to lock in your direction, and then the D-pad becomes moving+strafing. It’s a shockingly good solution–sometimes I think I might like it better than dual-joystick. I definitely like it better than Binding of Isaac. If only Vectorman for Sega Genesis did something more like this, it could have been a good video game.

22 – Rock On! Island

[My Description: A very challenging traditional Tower Defense game. The theme is cavemen as turrets versus cute angry dinosaurs.]

I think this is new favorite tower defense game! There aren’t core reasons why I love this one, instead, I just think they did a great job on many important aspects to me:

• It’s simple and intuitive, the controls and UI are perfect, no problems for me.
• I prefer tower defense games with an “interest” benefit to saving money, and this has it (the chickens are my favorite implementation of this mechanic!).
• It’s really cute and colorful. I love the enemy creatures, all easy to identify with memorable quirks. Love how they show up in the UI too. I love the cavemen too, they’re cute.
• The tutorial is really comfortable to play too: you’re in an example level, and at your own pace, talk to all the characters on the screen, and they explain everything. You can leave anytime and go play!
• It’s HARD AS HELL. This makes it interesting and puzzley, and makes you try to engage with its systems.
• The early waves of each level are the hardest part. This is much more fun than making the player lose late in the level, and then have to replay the easy waves (that’s a bad feedback loop for learning!).
• Most levels are short (5-10 minutes?), so you never really lose that much progress.
• There are branching paths through the game, so if you don’t like a level, you can do a different one.
• The game isn’t too long. Many tower defense games go on for like 40 missions. No tower defense game is worth that many missions!
• The last level is really really epic. Very satisfying, I think about it very fondly. It’s so big.
• It feels like there are many solutions to each level; this is preferable to each level being so gimmicky that there’s a specific correct trick for each one.

OK, now the problems with it:

• Admittedly, it is NOT very innovative. Well, I guess your character can participate in the fighting, but that’s very optional (I didn’t bother).
• There’s a TRICK to investing in chickens, that feels unintended to me. The game felt almost impossible to me, until halfway through the game, I got stuck, and I saw the trick in a guide. After that the game was much more doable (but still hard). The trick felt a bit cheap, I’m not crazy about it.

But still, my new favorite tower defense, so I gotta put it pretty high in this ranking! I think I’ll replay this game every 2-4 years, when I need my tower defense fix.

21 – Mooncat

[My Description: An esoteric mysterious platformer with very strange controls.]

Have you been playing games so long, that you can’t remember what it’s like to figure out how to play them, for the first time? Mooncat is UFO 50’s gift to you: a game where you have to re-learn how to play the platforming genre–the most traditional genre, with the most widely mastered control scheme. GENIUS idea!!!

OK but here’s what I DON’T see people talking about… the controls are kinda great??

This is the rare platformer type, where you commit to your jump arc, BUT they did an amazing job on letting you change the jump height+distance, via how long you hold the button. Like, it’s crazy granular, you can do super tiny hops, or huge leaps. Within minutes I was landing EXACTLY where I wanted to, pixel perfect, every time, it felt like platforming magic.

And then, through the video game magic of “no tutorial”, there’s TONS of little controls quirks to discover as you play, an astounding amount considering it’s a 2-button game (no d-pad even). It’s very likely you won’t find them all on your first playthrough, and certainly not master them. They’re super fun to discover too, little “ohhhhh cool that helps!” moments.

(cool swimming controls too btw)

And then we have some of the best music, and environmental pixel art, and atmosphere/vibes, of all of UFO 50. Just a delight. I think I would recommend this as the best first UFO 50 game to try, out of the box.

Especially cuz it’s easy too. Well, it’s hard, but you have infinite lives, and you never lose much progress every death–that’s my favorite style of difficulty, Celeste-style.

I think the “mystery and secrets” aspect of the game seems cool at first, but it doesn’t 100% deliver on that promise IMO. The end of the game is not terribly interesting, at least the ending I got. I’ve re-played the game a couple of times after that, and haven’t found much else. Well, I’ve found a couple secrets, but they didn’t seem to accomplish anything, not even new areas I don’t think.

I googled more for secrets just now, and, meh, don’t think I woulda figured any of that out. Anyway yeah, wish the secrets were a little easier to find, ‘cuz secrets are important to me, so this keeps it out of the Masterpieces tier.

20 – Mortol 2

[My Description: Like Mortol 1, but instead it’s ONE big nonlinear level to explore, and you have 99 lives to beat it. Each time you die, you can pick a new class to play.]

IMO this is one of the best examples, of truly nonlinear explorable level design.

Most games that promise nonlinear exploration (like Metroidvanias) arguably fail at it, because they’re actually pretty sequential and on-rails (unless you know tricky sequence breaks). Meanwhile many other games have the problem where, at every fork, 1 option is the “critical path”, and the other is bonus loot (so annoying!). Then there’s open world games, which technically deliver on this promise, but that’s TOO open, hardly even a level!

But Mortol 2 succeeds really well here! The main trick is how each locked door needs ANY key to unlock it (which consumes the key). This inherently allows many differing routes through the game! I’m not sure I’ve seen this before. Maybe cuz this means they had to think really hard and make sure you couldn’t softlock yourself, right? But I love it.

But there’s more that makes the world fun to explore, lots of interconnectedness, lots of mysteries and secrets, it has these little mini-biomes like the tree and the pipes, that are memorably unique. The pixel art is good in each one, I like the shading. There’s also a surprising number of enemy types, including some scarily gigantic ones!

I love the class system, each one is cute and their unique aspects feel inspiring for problem solving. (Unique music for each one too, nice touch!) I love a game that presents obstacles with many valid ways to solve them, so you feel like you found your own solution, and the class system does a great job at that.

You also find yourself often trying to use the definitely-wrong class to solve an obstacle (to avoid wasting one of ur 99 lives by switching!). This leads to funny situations where you keep dying because you’re trying to be efficient by not switching classes, and trying not to use a sacrifice ability, leading to way more deaths than needed! So it’s really interesting, trying to balance your # of deaths vs. using the easiest solution.

Good replay value in trying to beat the game by using fewer and fewer lives–my winning run used almost all 99, but I bet you could do it in like 20 lives. There were lots of little areas and shortcuts I couldn’t quite figure out how to get through. Fascinating routing game!

My only complaint is very minor–it feels slightly incomplete. The level is daunting at first, but it’s not actually that big! And by the time you beat it you’re like “oh, that’s it then?”. Maybe the final encounter is just not satisfying enough. Or maybe I would have liked 3 total levels, and this could be the final, biggest level.

19 – Devilition

[My Description: Each stage is a randomized 8×10 grid, where you must set units up, then explode one, to start a chain reaction explosion that kills as many demons as possible, but as few villagers as possible.]

Argh, these UFO 50 devs make it look so easy, to make a procedurally generated puzzle game, that keeps you wanting to play it again and again. But it’s not!!! They’re just really smart!

I’d put this in the same genre as Minesweeper, which I love, but I think I love this even more. There’s a lot more character here, and more long-term strategy. And I like the scoring system more than Minesweeper’s simple time-only scoring.

At first, it’s easy to dismiss the game as “well you just have to be really really careful and double check your chain reaction, before you ignite it.” And yeah, that is a pretty big part of the game (probably a little too crucial).

But like many of the UFO 50 games, its depth reveals itself over time. The key design choice is that the game carries over so much game state, from stage to stage, like the board state of where villagers, pits, and demons are.

Your “pieces remaining” count carries over to the next stage, so you’re rewarded for being efficient early on, which helps make the later rounds much easier. To be efficient and save pieces, you might need to plan ahead for what pieces you might draw soon, instead of thinking one piece at a time!

Your current hand (of 3 pieces) carries over each stage as well, which means you never get to discard your hand! Every piece you draw, you’re gonna have to use at some point–so don’t complain when you find yourself stuck in a corner, with 3 bad pieces in your hand. In board games we call this “hand management”, and it’s one of my favorite mechanics!

I have to admit… When I’m playing Devilition, there’s a thought in the back of my mind… am I actually having fun, or is this too exhausting? My brain’s working so hard. You have to be realllly careful, and the UI isn’t that helpful (maybe the game WOULD be too easy otherwise!). This nagging thought is the reason I had to keep this out of the S tier, even though I do love the game (a lot).

That Was Part 2 of 3

Part 1 is here. It has my introduction, and my F Tier, D Tier, C Tier.

You’re looking at part 2! It has my B Tier and A Tier.

Part 3 is here. It has my S Tier and my SSS Tier.