Greetings Patrons! On this month's Patreon podcast ep I am joined by Boghog to discuss our feelings about UFO 50 and the guiding philosophies and concepts around the release that we feel end up stifling retro gaming as an art form, despite the clearly effective BIGNESS philosophy that the game utilizes. So put on your berets and turtlenecks because this podcast is not a review of the game, but rather a discussion of the philosophy behind the game's design that is only really suited to be heard by indie game hipster ears ha.
As a bit of a background, the creator of UFO 50, Derek Yu, wrote an article about indie game design and marketing that both Bog and I have discussed a lot over the years -- prior to UFO 50 -- as it puts forward a lot of ideas about how to make indie games marketable and even has a section explaining why Dodonpachi isn't a marketable game. And while I think Derek is accurate in his description of the situation in the article (and consequently UFO 50), I find the methods he proposes to make "High Risk" genres (like shmups) marketable as artificial and ultimately reduces the future of the genre into a novelty.
Here is the article and it's fascinating to see how many of these ideas are directly placed into UFO 50. INDIE GAME DEV: ASSESSING RISK.
And while Bog and I don't agree with the ideas Derek proposes, we definitely respect UFO as a statement of his view of game design, it's just a shame that a dev of his talent didn't focus more on individual game depth, rather than nostalgic concepts and volume.
Thank you so much for supporting the channel and remember that this discussion is some ultra nerdy type of stuff and we don't bear any ill will towards UFO 50 or anything like that.
Sincerely,
Mark