How the Mystery of Freeware Inspired the Kaleidoscopic UFO 50

There are many reasons that creating a video game can take a long time. It may take a while to land on the mechanics, or to nail the story beats. For big-budget games, the sheer scale of ambition and world building can cause development cycles nearly a decade long, during which shifting audience trends may force a developer to scrap its initial vision.

For UFO 50, which began its development in 2016, the protracted path to completion is right there in the name: It is not just one video game, but 50.

There are arcade-style sports games (Bushido Ball, Hot Foot), platformers (Cyber Owls, Mini & Max), puzzle games (Block Koala), deck builders (Party House), role-playing games (Grimstone) and dungeon crawlers (Valbrace). While each ’80s-style title is not necessarily feature length by modern terms, they’re fully built out, with narratives, multiple levels and multiplayer modes when appropriate.

UFO 50’s origins can be traced to the childhood of two of its designers, Derek Yu and Jon Perry, who have known each other since second grade. Perry said they were inspired by the scrappier, freeware era of early PC gaming.

“Derek’s dad used to get these disks that would have like a ton of different old PC games on them,” he said, “and I remember going to Derek’s house and seeing a list of titles on a DOS prompt.” There was a sense of mystery and exploration in, he said, “typing in the title of some weird game that was made by one guy and just not knowing what you were going to get.”