One of the most beloved video games released this year is a collection of 50 retro-inspired games that took nearly a decade to make — and a developer in the Philadelphia region was one of the major creative forces behind it.
"UFO 50," released Sept. 18 on the Steam platform, is the fifth-best reviewed game of the year based on the Metacritic review aggregator. With a score of 92, it sits just behind the big-budget blockbuster "Final Fantasy VII Rebirth."
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"UFO 50" presents itself as an anthology of 50 games developed by the fictional company UFO Soft for its (also fictional) LX console. These games were "made" between 1982 and 1989 and span genres from quick arcade titles that can be played in minutes to massive role-playing adventures that take up to 60 hours to complete.
Jon Perry, a board and video game creator originally from Los Angeles, moved to Fishtown with his wife in 2018 and now lives in Ambler, Montgomery County. Before making games full-time, Perry also worked as a private tutor.
Perry teamed up with his childhood friend Derek Yu, a California-based video game developer best known for "Spelunky," to create the ambitious compilation.
Perry and Yu have developed games together since their youth, including an action game called "Eternal Daughter" in 2002 and the 2014 card game "Time Barons."
According to Perry, creating a collection of 50 video games was Yu's "insane" idea — but it was one that allowed Perry to make up for lost time with his friend. After bringing in four other prolific developers, the team spent eight years creating "UFO 50."
Perry's favorite contributions
Though all six developers collaborated on each game in the collection, Perry said each title had a developer responsible for overseeing its production. Out of the 50 games, Perry had a major hand in 16 of them.
"Mini & Max" is a platforming game about a girl and her dog who discover the ability to shrink. While in normal size, Mini can walk around in a tiny room, but when she shrinks, she can explore a much larger world and embark on quests.
"I'm just proud of pulling off a game of that scope, to be honest, inside of this collection," Perry said. "I mean, it's hands down the biggest game I worked on."
Another game, "Rail Heist," pits train robbers against lawmen, but it is less action-oriented and more of a strategy game. It requires players to think carefully about their positioning, when to use their weapons and how to navigate an environment with a sense of urgency.
"It's kind of a stealth game ... but it does have this turn-based quality to it," Perry said. "Traditionally, I think the vast majority of video games are real-time and the vast majority of board games are turn-based. And I'm very interested in where those different senses of time can kind of overlap."
"Party House" stems from an idea for a card game that never materialized. Players host a house party, with each guest having their own traits and statistics, like money and popularity. The game requires players to assemble and optimize a deck of cards to achieve their goals.
"What metaphor does (deck building) resemble in real life, in your lifestyle? That's like throwing a party, right?" Perry said. "That's like having an invite list of all these cool people that you know, but you have very little control over whether they cancel or show up late or whether the person that you don't have a great rapport with shows up 20 minutes early and they're the only one there for an hour. And so that seemed like a fun way to contextualize the idea of that building."
Perry's other contributions include "Mortol," a platforming game with a morbid premise. Soldiers must sacrifice themselves by turning into platforms or blowing up obstacles to allow other soldiers to progress. And "Attactics" is a fast-paced strategy game that requires players to move units up and down a grid as the units automatically move to the right. Players also must fight off invading enemies.
On YouTube and social media platforms like X, players already are picking their favorite games in the collection and debating on the best ones.
Modern sensibilities in a retro framework
Despite the fictional 1980s background of these games, "UFO 50" was built with modern tools and ideas. Though the developers abided by a classic pixel art style and period-accurate technical restrictions with sounds, there were no limitations from a design perspective.
As Perry pointed out, the deck-building genre wasn't invented until 2008 with the card game "Dominion," which would make "Party House" somewhat of an anachronism if it were truly created in 1986. But Perry also noted there were no technological obstacles that could have stopped "Party House" from existing then: the idea just wasn't there yet.
"The ancient Greeks could have had a deck builder," Perry said. "Whereas they could not have had 'Pong.' There is something fascinating to me about this 'what if,' like 'what if somebody stumbled into this design pattern or knowledge early?' The conceit we had with this company we're imagining (UFO Soft) is that they're ahead of their time."
Though "UFO 50" invokes a different era of video gaming, it wasn't meant to purely be a nostalgia piece, but rather something truly unique.
"We want to make something that felt like its own weird sort of alien artifact," Perry said.
"UFO 50" is only available on PC, but Perry said the developers hope to bring it to modern consoles eventually.
Perry said he and his wife are considering a move back into the city, and while he needs some rest after the lengthy development time of "UFO 50," he is keen to make more games in the future, albeit ones that don't take eight years to finish.
"Definitely the next video game I make, I'd like it to take a lot less time," Perry said.
Watch a trailer for "UFO 50" below.