After seven years, Spelunky creator's retro compilation UFO 50 will release in the second half of 2024
For real this time
It's been a hot minute since we last wrote about UFO 50, the 50-games-in-1 8-bit retro collection from the makers of Spelunky, Downwell and friends. It's been MIA for several years now (and no wonder, given these are 50 full-sized games being made by several different, and likely very busy, developers), but at long last, Spelunky creator Derek Yu has posted an update on Steam saying the project is finally nearing completion. "We should have a complete game in a few months but are planning for a release in the second half of the year to give us time to do more testing and then marketing," he said.
In case you're unfamiliar with UFO 50, the setup is that it's a collection of games created by a fictional company in the 80s "that was obscure but ahead of its time", as described on the official website. In reality, the development team consists of Derek Yu, Eirik Suhrke, Jon Perry, Paul Hubans, Ojiro Fumoto and Tyriq Plummer, who have respectively worked on Spelunky, Downwell, Time Barons, Madhouse and Catacomb Kids. It's an exceptionally neat-looking project, with games covering all genres, from platformers and RPGs to sh'mups and puzzle games, as well as single player and multiplayer experiences.
It was first announced back in 2017, with an initial release window set for the following year, but quickly sailed past it as the size and scale of the project grew. You can see glimpses of some of the games in both the announcement trailer above, and over on its Steam page, which goes into a bit more detail about five games in particular - the "full blown JRPG" Grimstone, car shoot 'em up Seaside Drive, pinball golf game Pingolf, sci-fi horse racer Quibble Race, and Campanella 2, the proc-gen platformer sequel to Campanella 1 (which is also another game within UFO 50).
With development nearing completion, Yu goes on to say in his Steam update that "polishing seems like it's a bigger share of the remaining work than I thought. We're having to clean up some prehistoric code and confront decisions we made for speed (?!) in the early days (in GameMaker Studio 1, no less). Thankfully, it's been nothing too crazy and to be honest the housekeeping feels quite satisfying - it's nice that we're finally at the point where we can make it a priority."
Just don't ask him to pick his favourite game from UFO 50. "I love them all!" he professes.
Exciting times ahead, then, so please do excuse me while I go and pore over its Steam page again while we wait.