Fifty Days of UFO 50: Day 3

This little piggy lives in a secret garden tucked into the filter menus. The porcine mascot seems very sleepy most of the time, but that's probably my fault; their pixellated dollhouse is bereft of furnishings that resemble a bed, and I have yet to figure out which game I need to excel at in order to gift them a place to sleep.

Having finally explored enough rooms in a certain trap-filled castle to meet the game-specific goal, I've unlocked an attic trap door, though! Achievement systems haven't really held sway over my play patterns since the hoary old XBox Live Gamerscore days, but I suppose we'll see whether a dash of Tamagotchi-like cuteness is enough to get me sampling a few more of these titles...

[Look at you, gamer. You're physically restraining yourself from writing more about Barbuta, of all things. Get it out of your system then, so we can explore other confections.]

Keeping up a blow-by-blow account of how things are going in this incredibly stripped-down, Metroid-esque platformer constantly threatens to turn things into an old-school, forum-style let's play, and the objective of this project cannot be to glacially spoil UFO 50. In the spirit of gaming progress, here is what I hope will be the last "what the hell is up with Barbuta" section:

• I know what the Umbrella and Pin do now, but wonder if the Trash really is just a cheeky waste of 50 cash
• Having encountered the Spelunky ghost-like Death, the new, unverified minimap theory is that it may be some sort of Grim Reaper tracker
• Something is up with two similar rooms full of ladders that I may need to take screenshots or notes to resolve

I'll just have to press on without the aid of whichever brain cells have tasked themselves to puzzle over Barbuta ad nauseum...

Velgress (April, 1984) "The space pirate Alpha makes her debut in this game, notable for its use of random level generation."

I don't think I've written about it yet, but in addition to a little gameplay teaser like, "The space pirate Alpha is trapped in the deep pit known as Velgress. Help her climb out!" every game also has a development note like the one above.

They're sparse little tastes of worldbuilding designed to lend intrigue to the premise of this game collection; that rather than seven developers forming a sort of indie supergroup and crafting a boatload of throwback games, this is a retro recovery project. In the fictional world of UFO 50, Derek Yu and friends stumbled across the LX in a storage unit; a forgotten all-in-one video game console from the eighties with an inexplicably 16:9 aspect ratio monitor built in. Armed with the complete works of the developer UFO Soft, they set to work porting all fifty games into a collection format that would celebrate this lost history and allow us all to enjoy the games here in 2024!

Despite my profession's collectively studying the works of From Software to the point of obsession, one of their most valuable lessons often goes unlearned; because our evolution was buoyed by a kind of pattern magic, any blank spots in our perception of art are automatically filled with things no artist could deliver. Some of the strongest stories can only exist in the margins between item descriptions.
    Less really can be more!
Gleaning little details about the UFO Soft offices through these history blurbs does more to draw me in than any number of higher effort, more verbose implementations. The temptation to crash on the orange couch after returning from a team lunch. Staring at the painting of a blue flower in the bathroom again after one too many cups of coffee during crunch. I've been there, but I've also been there.

[So you're still referring to yourself as a game designer, despite your current circumstances. Has it occurred to you that some of this only works so well BECAUSE of your development history? Personal context counts for quite a bit.]

Anyway, enough about the lore! I've been staring at her key art this whole time, and now that I know who she is, I've got to gush about how the developers were COOKING when they designed the space pirate Alpha. Someone mixed Samus, Dora the Explorer, Zangief, and Cammy into a Doom-Guy-shaped mold, baked on "attitude" until golden brown, and frosted with a little Tron Bonne and Rottytops.

It's a potent recipe, and easy to see why she's front-and-center in the game's marketing. The phrasing implies I'll be seeing more of her in some other titles, do I'll be keeping an eye out for green armor as I randomly elect to fire up...

WarpTank (1P, Adventure, Puzzle) "Use your tank to regain control of the station and sever all ties to capsule world!"

[How random was it really though? The icon was crafted to remind you of the vehicle from Blaster Master and they named it "WarpTank" for crying out loud. As always, you should play more and write less.]

A single stage in, and this is already my jam on multiple levels; the Solar Jetman gravity flipping mechanics and Adventures of Lolo-like pace are sublime.
I found an exclamation bubble hidden inside a design-telegraphed block and it revealed a steaming hot cuppa joe collectable! I have no idea what it does, but between the coffee and the jazzy music, my new headcannon is that the titular WarpTank is piloted by none other than Godot from Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations...

[The sleep deprivation is clearly getting to you; maybe take a nap or something?]