UFO 50

UFO 50 is a masterful compilation of retro-style games that invokes the sense of delightful discovery at the heart of the 8-bit era.

A collection of new-old sports games, RPGs, platformers and puzzlers: what is all this sweet work worth?

A superb retro-style smorgasbord in real danger of drowning out its own consistently good work.

This bundle of 50 new games from the creator of Spelunky offers an electrifying range of retro genres rebooted, from point-and-click horror to Pong

The 1980s reimagined as a collection of 50 "small" games, ranging from arcade racers to full-blown RPGs.

It’s not the biggest budgets or the most polish. It’s creativity and experimentation, a willingness to try new things and keep pushing a young medium forward. With any luck, we’re just getting started.

What stands out about UFO 50, Mossmouth's delightful collection of retro-styled games, is not that so many of them are absolute bangers – although they are – rather, it's the fact that it genuinely all comes together as a single experience. In this game, you are a visitor in some wonderful exhibition, and UFO 50 is your 8-bit time machine. It's magnificent, and a perfect fit for Switch.

UFO 50 is like stumbling across a time capsule and discovering a wealth of lost knowledge inside. And yet, it’s entirely a singular work of fiction. That by itself is deeply fascinating and makes this thing worth playing. Even if you pass over most of the games and only find a few that stick with you from a fun perspective, the depth on a conceptual level is absurd and gratifying to simply think about. We’re living at a time in which older games are vanishing from both physical reality and our sort of collective cultural well at an increasing rate, when remakes are seen as replacements for original work and curiosity to seek out history is dwindling unless there’s a purchasable remaster. UFO 50 is fun to play and take at face value, but it also highlights how age really isn’t a detriment to having a great time and engaging with games.

UFO 50 will remind you why you fell in love with video games in the first place.

UFO 50 is a fantastic collection of retro-inspired games that takes on the aesthetics of the '80s but with game design advancements of the modern era. The games included cover such a wide breadth of genres and playstyles that there is bound to be a title to meet all tastes. Plus, the whole package is wrapped in a cute metanarrative about a fictional game studio and console that developer nerds will adore. UFO 50 has tens of hours of content and provides some of the tightest gameplay concepts seen in a long time.