Fifty Days of UFO 50: Day 16

 

   I've been grappling with a couple of the UFO 50 puzzle games of late, namely Camouflage and Block Koala. "Find the order of operations" puzzlers like this appeal to me a lot because they tend to sport clean, nostalgic single screen designs. In practice though, I'm not some sort of Baba is You level conqueror of such challenges; the levels that demonstrate mechanics are a breeze, but it's easy to get overwhelmed later and have part of the problem slip through my mental cracks while trying to grasp the big picture.

Maintaining play momentum on all these games has meant the strategy thus far consists of puzzling out a level or two and then bouncing out to something that requires more practice, and less... staring at a grid and thinking. Still,, the way every level of progress counts and is saved can feel like a progressive balm out here in a scorching sea of arcade-style games. A large portion of UFO 50's catalogue is about sitting down and performing per-session, with the incremental progression being personal skill and knowledge.

Block Koala (May, 1985) "We held a level design contest in our bi-monthly newsletter, the LX Star."

Camouflage (June, 1985) "Based on an unpublished picture book written by Smolski's mother."

Boy, LX Systems was really on a fictional puzzle jag back in eighty-five! (They wouldn't release Campanella until August of that year, which was the surprise hit that kicked off that whole UFO theme.)

I haven't beaten either game just yet, and aren't likely to transcribe the credits of both games for a detailed comparison, but it does make me wonder if the "UFO 50 Recovery Team" imagines that these two titles were being made around the same time. There's sure to be a lot of developer overlap, simply because these teams of characters weren't that large.

I can sort of recommend bouncing back and forth between these two puzzle games, because they make for contrasting cognitive companions. Block Koala is fundamentally about seeing and parting limitations, and Camouflage is more concerned with spotting liberties.



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