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Fifty Days of UFO 50: Day 29

     I didn't write about it in detail at the time, but I got the cherry in Camouflage  a little while back. In hindsight, I should have approached this order of operations puzzler the way I'm currently playing Block Koala , nibbling off a single level every now and then between tasks and other games. Of course, Block Koala  has many, many  more levels than Camouflage 's paltry fifteen. I enjoyed this one a lot, but for the first time beyond simply not having access to a second player, a UFO 50  game I cherried has left me wanting more. Another fifteen levels of so would have been great, but I recognize that without introducing some new predator types and mechanics, that theoretical back half would probably feel somewhat bloated. There are enough terrain types to make most one-screen patterns buildable. The only reason for another color like gray would be to have later levels follow the narrative arc a lot of games with natural world theme do; the lizards needing to escape
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Fifty Days of UFO 50: Day 28

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Getting the Super Mario Bros. 2 / Doki Doki Panic reference at the end of Campanella  does very little to reduce how surreal it feels in this moment. The hot pink spacecraft was just having one heck of a weird dream. Never mind where Pilot is or what he even represents in this scenario; judging by the beginning of Pilot Quest  the lil' guy is probably also fast asleep in the cockpit...     Of the spaceship that is docked in its giant bed. Snuggling against a huge fuel pillow. Tucked into the maintenance blankets. Don't worry about it. Haven't been able to sleep well at all. I keep having this recurring dream about what must be a UFO 50 game that doesn't exist... It's a side-on platformer where the player-character and the enemies they're eating are cities and towns. Like little pixel art dioramas with jumbled house bodies and cathedrals for teeth. You shed material from a meter tracking the number of citizens living inside you, burning them like fuel in order
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Fifty Days of UFO 50: Day 27

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I've got a few different blog entry irons in the fire at the moment, but none of them feel mature enough to edit and roll with today. The idea of writing ahead and posting from a backlog is highly appealing; what I wouldn't give to take a whole day off from UFO 50  and just play Metaphor Re Fantazio  or Steam NextFest demos! Lofty, lofty goals... Been taking a bit of a break from some of the games that I feel like I'm organically close to mastering or finishing because they fall into genres that I play a lot of: Porgy  and  Vainger search action patterns Grimstone  and  Divers role playing games Valbrace  and  Mini & Max adventure patterns The theory being that if I'm going to try and gold/cherry as many of these carts as I can over the next few weeks, it would start to suck progressively harder as the field winnows down to only super challenging arcade style "one continue clear" affairs that I'm not sure I retain the hand-eye coordination and finger s
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Fifty Days of UFO 50: Day 26

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     One of the things I was expecting to want to write about once I'd tried out all the UFO 50  games was another big rundown where I stack rank them all based on personal preference, or some sort of "Top Picks So Far" roundup to mark the blogging project's halfway point... Instead, I find myself mentally and physically exhausted at the prospect. Over the last month, I've gotten just a taste of what it must feel like to review video games for a living. Sure, I've written Steam reviews before; who among us hasn't? Writing about how your play "shook out" to a deadline, though; totally strange and different beast. I wonder how the public's view toward reviews and release coverage would change if most gamers got a taste of what it's like to do a little stint in the content mines. I was at least peripherally aware of how covering games alters your relationship with what is ostensibly an entertainment product, because I've been paying at
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Fifty Days of UFO 50: Day 25

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Only three more games remain un-played! The grand blogging project is half over as of today, so it would be an... auspicious post upon which to have finally laid hands on every single UFO 50  title... CombatAnts (1-2P, Strategy) "The evil red ants have taken your land! Fight back and defend your queen!"      Playing this game unlocked a memory of something I haven't thought about in years ... Starcraft was a formative game for me, sort of in all the wrong ways. Digging into why is far beyond the scope of these initial explorations, but basically I'd forgotten about the very first mod I ever made; a custom 1v1 PvP  SimAnt  map. The little green food balls in CombatAnts  took me back to playing SimAnt  on the Super NES using the mouse that came with Mario Paint . Vivid recollections of designing and scripting a caste birthrate control system using a lurker unit trapped in a triangular corner of the map came flooding back. I'm not sure if these memories made me pre
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Fifty Days of UFO 50: Day 24

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Five unopened games remain. Time to marathon some first impressions before crossing the halfway mark on this blogging project... Elfazar's Hat (1-2P, Arcade, Shooter) "Elfazar is hailed as a great magician, but his captive animals are ready to strike back!"      When I say that this is "just" a new Pocky & Rocky  spiritual successor, but starring an escaped stage rabbit and pigeon instead of a shrine maiden and tanuki, understand that's in a tone of utter delight, not derision. The existence of Elfazar's Hat  really felt like a surprise, thanks to a quirk of UFO 50 's main menu attract mode; you see, because I've been spending so much time between games writing and editing blog entries, I've seen all of the fifty little snippets of games playing themselves looping. Because this game happens to be represented there by its between-level bonus stage and not its core gameplay, I figured this was going to be an isometric auto-scroller with lo
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Fifty Days of UFO 50: Day 23

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     A while back, I experimentally set the CRT Effect setting in UFO 50 's options to "Soft," and haven't looked back. This isn't really the time or place to get into it, but my desire for a really high quality upscaler with fancy filters and processing like the Retro-TINK 4k seems to be rising... To have any hope at all of completing initial "first blush" explorations on all fifty games before the project's halfway point, I gotta get blowin'! (Off the digital dust and pixelated cobwebs, of course.) Rail Heist (1-2P, Platform, Strategy) "The most infamous train robbers in the west pull off a series of daring heists."      The written tone and immediate mention of angels and demons makes it very clear this is set in the same "gothic west" world of Lonestar that  Grimstone  does. Sure enough, the woman in the lead position of my party in that game is here to help with getaways in Rail Heist , so I guess now I know where she ge
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