UFO 50 changed the way I think about my backlog

UFO 50 is a wild little package bursting to the seams with bite-size discoveries. It has the potential to inspire different types of nostalgia depending on the player, and it also helped me totally reconsider how I approach my ever-growing backlog of games.

If you haven’t played UFO 50 yet, the elevator pitch is simple. It’s a collection of 50 games from a fictional ’80s developer, and you can tackle it any way you see fit. You could play everything chronologically, essentially living in the meta-narrative to see how each game built upon the proposed tech of the time. You could also treat UFO 50 as the grab bag it is, dipping in and out of games like an all-you-can-eat buffet. 

This is going to hit differently depending on the timeline of your nascent years of gaming. For some, UFO 50 will drum up memories of early 8-bit consoles and arcade cabinets, discovering gems hidden among the crowd and highlighting favorites you’ll revisit time and time again. Others may recall some dusty old Hong Kong bootleg carts, which somehow squeezed a ton of titles of dubious origins into one modest circuitboard. 

For those who came up later, UFO 50 might be more akin to old flash game sites like Newgrounds, or even a more modern digital storefront stuffed to the gills with indie delights. No matter what angle you approach from, the work of UFO Soft — from the very real folks at Mossmouth, including Spelunky creator Derek Yu and more — might have you looking at the rest of your collection in a new light. 

I can’t speak for everyone, but I’ve always had a contentious relationship with my backlog of unfinished or unplayed games. Buying new games is just something that comes with the territory of loving this stuff so much, especially when it’s also your job. But there’s always that nagging sensation that you’re doing your existing games dirty in the process. Should I really be playing Sonic x Shadow Generations when I never even got a third of the way through Star Wars Jedi: Survivor? Why am I even playing UFO 50 in the first place when I need to finish Silent Hill 2? 

Despite those nagging thoughts, I continued to prioritize UFO 50 above most everything else, and I’m glad I did. While dealing with decision paralysis in an isolated 50-game collection is far from the same as staring straight at 50 separate games in your Steam library, it’s really just a microcosm of game libraries writ large.

But in the halls of fictional UFO Soft history, I never had the same hesitations. I never once thought, “should I really move on to Bug Hunter when I haven’t even solved the exploratory conundrum that is Barbuta?” Of course I should! There’s a lot more fun to be had in this collection, and the very nature of it encourages dipping in and out to see what really grabs you the most. You’re not going to like everything. It might not sound like it, but life would be hell if you did.

As it turned out, there was a lot that grabbed me. I might not have had the same experience if I hadn’t been playing along on a game-by-game basis while listening to the Eggplant: The Secret Lives of Games podcast. They’ve been going through UFO 50 in a book-club-style format, tackling each game in the fictionally chronological order they were “released” from the early to late ’80s. That means playing a different game each week, starting with Barbuta and running through Bug Hunter, Ninpek, and on and on.

In that process, which is ongoing, I’ve discovered a few notable gems, including a couple I probably would have bounced off of sooner if it weren’t for the book club format. Focusing on a game at a time has allowed me to tackle them on their own terms, exploring some genres I might otherwise not be that into in the process. 

This approach has had a profound impact on how I think about my backlog, too. By “taking my medicine” and extensively playing games I wouldn’t normally spend more than a few minutes on, I realized I don’t need to do that in the greater context of video games as a whole. If something feels like a chore, it’s no longer fun, and delaying joy shouldn’t come into the equation when you’re trying to escape. 

So, do I need to finish some of my older games before I start the new ones? Only if doing so is the most fun thing I can be doing at any given moment. I don’t want to feel the need to slog through something just to tick it off a list so I can move on to something else. There will always be time for that later, if we’re lucky. And if there isn’t, then at least I got the fun out of the way first.