UFO 50 isn’t the Spelunky follow-up you’re expecting. It’s even better

This story is part of our Summer Gaming Marathon series.

When you create a game as important as Spelunky, players tend to pigeonhole you. Some fans of Derek Yu’s games likely expect his studio, Mossmouth, to put out 2D roguelikes that feature punishing gameplay and a deep well of secrets. But when people expect you to zig, that’s when you zag — and boy is Mossmouth zagging with its next game, UFO 50.

Before I sat down for a hands-on demo ofUFO 50 at Summer Game Fest, I didn’t know much about it. I was aware that it was some kind of minigame collection featuring 50 playable titles, but that was about it. It sounded like a surprising turn following Spelunky 2, but after playing it for myself, I completely see the connection.UFO 50 is just as ambitious as Mossmouth’s signature series, even if it’s nothing like it. Even playing just a 10-minute snippet and speaking to Yu about it was enough to send it straight to the top of my Steam wish list.

“Minigame collection” sort of undersells what Mossmouth is doing with the wild project, which was first revealed in 2021. That branding might call to mind something like WarioWare, with its very short and rapid-fire games. That’s not the case here. Mossmouth has crafted 50 full-on retro games, half of which feature a two-player mode. That would be an impressive feat on its own, but it’s the packaging of the whole effort that really stands out.

When firing it up, an opening credits scroll invites players to buy into its fiction. Mossmouth presents the package as if it has discovered a cache of old shareware games from the 1980s in a storage unit. Those games were from a prolific developer called UFOsoft, an apparent nod to figures like Jeff Minter and his label Llamasoft. When entering the game select menu, the cartridges initially appear with a layer of gray dust over them. Playing it for the first time wipes that away. Everything here is constructed to make players really believe they’re playing a lost visionary’s work.