When Derek Yu, the creator of Speleologyhas teamed up with a team of brilliant designers to bring out a collection of 50 games (yes, 50 Video games!) I assumed I knew the outcome: I would lose my job, fail as a father, and be discovered in a few years in an abandoned cabin in the woods, holed up in my filth, muttering, “You can’t take me away! I have four more games to play through!”
And yet here I am, just one day after UFO50reading about this massive video game collection instead of playing it. Is that self-preservation? Personal growth? Of course not.
After hours of frantically jumping from one game to the next, I accepted that a person is not, no, should not responsible for the appreciation of this gigantic masterpiece. Rather, the appreciation of UFO50 is a team sport. And the UFO50 Subreddit is his field.
Like this year Animal fountain and Yu’s previous Speleology games, the collection is full of codes yet to be cracked and treasures still hidden. In addition to 50 games, UFO 50 includes a backstory of a fictional developer, UFO Soft, as well as a terminal where players can enter code. How these two facts relate is what the subreddit hopes to unravel.
In a recent episode of Simon Parkins My Perfect Console PodcastYu spoke at length about the magic of the mystery – as neither The Legend of Zelda still Dark Souls There were simple answers, as both games invited players to explore and map their worlds. Now Yu, along with childhood friend and fellow designer Jon Perry (and a host of other creatives), has passed that experience on to a new generation that is solving the puzzles of a video game not at home, but on a massive social platform.
I am grateful to this subreddit community for saving me from going into the wilderness alone. I will keep my job. I will live up to my standards as a loving parent. And I mean, of course, I will have a disgusting amount of UFO50‘s idle game Pilot Quest —all while reading through the threads of the subreddit where thousands of fans come together to turn 50 games into one unified adventure.
