UFO 50is perhaps the single most ambitious indie game ever made. With a development time of 8 years, it was a true labor of love from the team. It will also be a labor of passion on the gamers' side of things, as many of these titles are exceptionally brutal. This should not be surprising to fans of Derek Yu’s previous games, particularly Spelunky 1 and 2.
Though not every game in the collection is hard to approach, many of them deliberately lean into the retro difficulty of the 1980s. They tend to be hard for different reasons, be it no checkpoints, random level generation or clunky controls that feel like the game actually came out in 1982. For people who miss that very specific kind of gaming challenge, here are UFO 50’s nine hardest titles.
9Golfaria
There is something inherently more challenging about 2D golf games versus their 3D counterparts, and Golfaria is a golden example of this. It’s hard to categorize, but it seems to have some sandbox and open-world elements that have you exploring multiple dungeons and homes looking for NPCs and permanent upgrades.
What makes Golfaria challenging is that your lives are tied to your movement. Once you run out of strokes, you will restart and go back to the beginning of the game, but you at least get to keep any upgrades you discover. It will take a lot of practice to master this game’s aiming and movement.
8Pingolf
Pingolf is probably the most appropriately named game in UFO 50: it’s part pinball, part golf. As much as that might make it sound like one of thecoolest golf games out there, it is deceptively challenging, as learning the power meter’s nuances on the dot matrix display is tricky.
Pingolf has some great music and visuals that transport you to a much older era of gaming, but the gameplay itself will probably transport you there even faster. It is very hard to come in the first place, and some of these courses are so elaborate that you’ll be wondering if you seriously have to make shots that tricky just to make it to the end.
7Cyber Owls
Being the last game chronologically released by UFO 50’s fictitious software company, Cyber Owls is in many ways the most sophisticated game in the entire collection. It has the most advanced sound and graphics, some voice-overs, and looks more like a SNES game than an NES game. This sophistication makes it feel more like an8-bit remakethan anything else.
Cyber Owls has four playable characters, and each one feels like its own game with its own unique rules and controls. There’s a bit of Metal Gear, Contra, and Metal Slug inside this one game. However, that’s part of what makes it so hard, as you have to play as all four characters and complete all their missions in one session to beat the entire game.
6Onion Delivery
Onion Delivery is easily one of the weirdest games in UFO 50 - not just for its bizarre premise and characters, but because of its controls and how fast it throws you into the action with barely a moment to pause and catch your breath.
It will take multiple attempts to get used to Onion Delivery’s driving controls, let alone get used to the layout of the map so you can make successful deliveries. It’s a very fast and high-octane game, but it refuses to hold your hand, so be prepared to feel confused on your first few attempts.
5Mortol
Mortol is the kind of game where every action counts. With several soldiers navigating a stage full of spike traps and monsters, you will have to sacrifice your men to advance by turning them into blocks and platforms or detonating them to get rid of blocks in your path.
What makes Mortol brutal is that your number of lives from one stage carries over to the next. You need to be extremely efficient in how you spend your expendables so that you can have a fighting chance in the next areas. It’s very fun and unique, but getting good will take a lot of time and skill.
4Valbrace
If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to combine Punch Out withDark Souls, Valbrace is the answer. It’s a 2D first-person dungeon crawler, but the combat and the leveling system make it very unique - and very hard.
There are checkpoints at the beginning of each stage, but each stage is quite long and full of booby traps and random encounters. Items aren’t very sparse, but your inventory is small, so you may’t hoard very much. There are also lots of traps and tricks that are out to get you, so don’t be surprised if most of your deaths occur outside the combat screen.
3Lords of Diskonia
Lords of Diskonia may not be like any other action game you’ve played. It’s more like air hockey, except if air hockey was medieval fantasy-themed and took place on battlefields instead of small tables. Each stage has you progressing towards your enemy base, trying to prevent them from expanding and fortifying across other territories.
Like other games in UFO 50, Lords of Diskonia throws you right into the action with little explanation. The goal of the game is obvious enough, but knowing which troops to purchase and judging when you should go on the offensive is something only experience can teach. Plus, the idea of controlling giant disks instead of actual soldiers is a little hard to wrap one’s head around.
2Overbold
Believe it or not, this game is a sequel to another game in the collection. Overbold sees a Samus-like warrior fighting monsters in a colosseum and earning money to purchase upgrades in between rounds. It’s fast, addictive, and has immense replay value, but it’s also super, super hard.
Overbold’s final round has you fighting against upwards of 90 enemies in one wave, which feels like an impossible challenge most of the time. you may only buy so many upgrades to your shields, health, or bombs along the way, and even then you’re still going to die in one or two hits. If you want a challenge, just be careful what you wish for.
1Campanella 2
Being another sequel, Campanella 2 is part of a trilogy of space adventures who are the landmark mascots of UFO 50 and UFOsoft. This seems to be fitting, as Campanella 2 is unbelievably unforgiving, which arguably captures some of the essence of UFO 50 itself.
What makes this game so hard are the sensitive flying controls and the extremely low health both your character and your spaceship have. On foot, you pretty much die in two hits. In your spaceship, you had better land very slowly and delicately, or you could crash and burn in under a second. Plus, when you die, the stages reset and randomize intensely, so there’s no relying on memory to get you through this one.
