I wanted to muster up the power to play There Swings a Skull, but I just couldn’t do it. But do you know what I have been doing? Playing UFO 50! I got 60 hours in the collection now, and ever since getting the cherry in Party House, I got the cherry in four other games! So for the cherry on top, I decided to write about those games!

First off on the docket, we’re talking about Devilition! Now the interesting thing about Devilition is that Devilition isn’t a new game, per se. It’s actually a remake of a game that Mossmouth devs Derek Yu and Jonathan Perry previously worked on. It’s honestly really cool that they brought back a game that’s like, two decades old into the UFO 50 collection, it feels fitting.

You are an alchemist tasked by a village to protect them from legions of demons leaking in. What do you do? You’re lining up entities to defend everyone. Nah, this ain’t like a tower defense (though there is a UFO 50 tower defense), it’s a puzzle game. You can only detonate one thing – but that thing you detonate can also set off an entity it hits alongside killing demons, and that entity can trigger more entities. The main goal is to create a web of demon slaying attacks, an alchemical Rube Goldberg machine that can kill as many demons as possible.

You get an allowance of pieces to play at the start of each round, and any extras you have carries over into the next round – and your final score is partially based on how many extras you have left over at the end, so you gotta be smart about making The Device instead of placing things willy nilly. You got guys that attacks everything in a cross formation and a plus formation. You got a funny trident guy that hits the three spaces in front of them and an exploding flask for group damage. You have a snake that can only attack in two directions, which I initially thought was weak shit, but as demons also love to spawn alongside the villagers, you’ll come to appreciate their narrow scope.

The most important units I think are the cannons and the rockets. The former tears a straight line through the play field, and the rockets are two piece entities that can hit a far place that may not be in the path of a cannon. These unit types are important for expanding the reach of your death machine, because those demons will really spawn everywhere and you’ll likely to run out of units if you’re just chaining the more regular joes all over the place.

You just need to make sure that you have more human villagers remaining at the end of a round to keep playing, However, if you actually manage to clear the board, you get an extra villager for more leeway in the future and a better score at the end… assuming you don’t accidentally get some villagers killed by The Device, of course. As I said, demons will love spawning near villagers, and it might be a bit tempting to air strike everyone. It’s fine, everything in the past year taught me it’s fine and normal to kill human shields, actually.

The biggest threat? The demons that take two hits to kill. It’s not necessarily hard to kill them, but it might be easy to forget to strike twice among all the normal thinking you’re doing; this is especially rough for the Baphomet looking fuckers, since they heal themselves if you only struck them one.

Second biggest threat? Just kinda forgetting how to properly start the chain. It’s especially hard to remember which one is the first piece if the chain branches off in multiple directions. I’ve had multiple games where I got everything set up but blow up the wrong guy. Just a horrid fumble simulator.

At the end of the game, there’s a boss battle! It’s pretty easy, but if you’re chasing the cherry, it’s a trial that drains units from the final score. Besides having leftover units, the final score is also based on how fast you cleared the game. So not only do you gotta play smart, you gotta be fast with it if you wanna get a cherry. I personally think that having more stuff by the end matters more than time, but ehh, I’m someone that prefers taking their time.

Overall, I really liked Devilition, it’s a dang good puzzle game. But hmm, I’ve only been playing slower games so far. We gotta look at something with more movement, more action.

And the next game we’re looking at is Mooncat. Mooncat is also a revisited idea, an expansion of a Ludum Dare 34 game by Eirik Suhrke. What does that title mean? I don’t fucking know, you’re a weird walking fish in a platformer.

This walking fish doesn’t walk like a normal platformer hero, though. Standard movement keys move the character right, action button keys move the fish-thing left, and they jump if both keys are pressed, with the jump being in the direction of the second key pressed. Taking things further, the creature can do a ground pound if a jump is triggered in mid-air, letting them bash enemies and propelling themself further, or can be used to skip through platforms. This control scheme is the defining feature of Mooncat and its main challenge.

I feel that some people would be turned off by the game because of its weird control scheme, but listen: that’s where all the sauce is. Mooncat is honestly a pretty basic game besides the one-hit deaths. It’d just be an okay platformer if it played like a normal platformer. But the weirdness gives it the spice it needs. You gotta put more thought into movement since it’s way harder to freely hop everywhere, and there’s a bit of an edge with timing jumps because there’s that extra factor to consider. It’s good that Mooncat’s weird, and quite frankly, you’re a basic bitch if you disagree.

That said: Mooncat is way more comfortable to play on keyboard than the Steam Deck, my preferred method to play and the reason why my screenshot game for this is weak.

There are three bosses in the game that challenges you to master weird jumping and ground pounding to see things through. Slaying all three will net you the cherry, but finding all the bosses is arguably the real challenge. There’s esoteric secret stuff that plops you on alternate paths or acts as shortcuts and… I’ll be real, I only found the other bosses because I played this game with my partner guiding me. There is logic to finding these alternate routes, though.

Mooncat’s neat! I’m not too into platformers nowadays, but it’s a pretty respectable one.

Hmm, that’s a slow paced game and a faster paced one… but what if we looked at a game that tries to meet it in the middle?

Let’s crime it up.

In Rail Heist, you play as a trio of disciple cowpokes going out to rob trains. Usually, one guy’s trying to find money on the train, and you then have to make a getaway by jumping off the train to a horse of one of your fellow robbers. It gets more complicated as you play along.

You got a decent moveset for a robber. You can pick up and throw things; you can toss steel crates that kill people, or maybe explosives if you really wanna break some shit. You can punch things and break through walls, including the floor of the train – maybe make a hole to cast a guard out into the desert. And of course, what kinda cowpoke robber goes around without a gun?

But the moment at least one of the train’s lawmen is aware of trouble, the game’s pacing shifts. You’re only allowed to freely move for a few seconds, and when time’s up, alert lawmen go on the move for a few seconds. Sometimes they’re just following a scripted routine, but ones that are aware of a disturbance will rush toward it. Caught sight of you within their stopped time? They will immediately shoot you – and failing that, they’ll chase you to the ends of the Earth to beat you to death with whatever they get their hands on during their turns.

Rail Heist becomes a strategy game, where you and the less lazy lawmen take turns making moves as the train chugs on. Learn the normal schedules of the lawmen to maybe try to stealth your way through the train. Maybe use your turn to place down boxes on ladders so you can’t be followed. Maybe try to effectively stealth kill people during their stopped time. Heck, maybe load your gun and have it pointed out to kill a patrolling guard on their turn as an overwatch move to turn their normal antics against them.

Things get more complicated when you start controlling two cowpokes. You control one, the lawmen take their turn, you control the other, Johnny Law takes a turn, then so on. You have your eyes on multiple perspectives, so you gotta gauge for way more threats. Because of the turn order, you also have to be way more mindful of where you leave a character, since the latter lawmen turn can catch them off guard – or maybe start shit with the other so that character can have some breathing room. I was already liking the game, but having two guys gives you a lot more to play around with.

And of course, in the midst of all the robbery, you gotta remember to make a dashing escape. Successfully getting the money means nothing if you can’t escape with it, and man, the time limit gets pretty strict toward the end, especially when you’re trying to juggle two people toward escape.

Each level has three stars: a star for speedrunning the level, one for finishing without killing an enemy, and one for killing everyone. Getting the cherry means getting most – but not all of the stars. I think this is my favorite cherry so far? Because there’s different stars, there’s different ways of working toward that cherry. It encouraged me to really explore levels and the different ways to play through them, and I think it really highlights the strengths of the level design in Rail Heist.

I don’t know if I like Rail Heist more than Party House, but it’s pretty damn close. There’s no wild buddies in Rail Heist, so that’s definitely a plus.

You know what our cowpokes should do with the money they’re stealing? They gotta gamble with it. They’re already gambling with their lives, so why not?

I’ve been open with my love of gambling aesthetics this year. Balatro, Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers, Kaiji… but ohhh, the casino continues to call to me. So, let’s finish things off with a game about betting on races.

Quibble Race is another revisited game – heck, you can even play it on Newgrounds right now. Various characters – some of them from other UFO 50 games – place bets on quibbles, these funny green guys doing races. But oh no, you’re not merely placing bets – you gotta cheat your way to victory. Everyone’s doing it and getting caught is just a cash penalty, so why not join the fun?

In this cutthroat casino, you can buy a little aid before each race. You can buy your favored candidate a boost to make them race better, or, you can drug a strong quibble to make their performance worse to swing the odds in favor of somebody that can give a better payout if they can actually win. Hell, you can straight up poison a quibble so they can drop dead during a race – assuming that you’re not caught.

Besides sabotages, you can buy protection for a race to prevent sabotage and drain the coffers of whoever was trying to fuck you up. This opens the way to interesting mind games. Do you think your opponents will sabotage the guy you bet on and buy protection, or do you think you can risk it and work on empowering your guy or sabotaging others? Hmm, that one clumsy quibble will give an insane payout if they actually win, so maybe you should bet on them… or maybe you should sabotage their clumsy ass even further if you think your opponents will bet on them. After all, everyone’s looking to be the number one gambler at the end of the play session.

Outside of the game of sabotage, you can sponsor quibbles and train them up. You get a cut of money if your sponsored guys win, even if an opponent bet on them. You can consider this to be a form of insurance if you bet on someone else that doesn’t win, because hey, at least you’re getting some money.But well, if you’re hurting for cash, you can take out a loan. Just beware of that eating into your final score.

Quibble Race may be the most stressful offering I’ve played in UFO 50 thus far… and because of the ease of play, it’s stress that’s easy to bring on yourself. It’s easy to just get sucked in and get caught up in the mind games, because after all, 90% of gamblers give up before they hit it big, and 70% just aren’t sabotaging their opponents hard enough. This game made me feel like Kaiji, and everyone against me are the fuckers of the Teiai Group or some other gambling addict losers trying to destroy me for the sake of their own happiness.

It fucking rules. I vow to never do real gambling.

So, that’s everything I cherry’d in UFO 50 so far. I probably won’t write about this game again until I cherry a bunch more stuff. UFO 50? Game of the year. To deliver such varied experiences that can truly stand on their own merits as their own standalone games is such a prestigious achievement. Honestly, what can be better?

But as for this site, what’s next? Well, as I said, this took up There Swings a Skull, so, it was time to spin for another game and…

It’s Novectacle’s The House in Fata Morgana, and heck, another opportunity for a bingo! Now, I know that this is a long game, so if you have any suggestions on how to structure coverage
(like, how many parts should I split it in), please let me know.