UFO 50 - Seems good. "Commitment to the bit" ranges from high to extreme, with a few patches that just make no sense in context. The game is (initially) laid out like a chronological history of the developer, and sure enough the games late in the chronology are way more advanced. Maxi 15 or Microsoft's Game Room are much better touchstones than the more obvious Action 52. There seems to be "more to it", but I've gained no insight into this part of the game.
There's something I'm seriously not vibing with though. I feel like it sits somewhere between the fact that I appreciate Spelunky, but don't enjoy playing it as much as most do. And something like Immortality where the game's RNG can and does regularly decide that your only meaningful experience with the game will be a terrible and incoherent one. It feels like there's something more tantalisingly out of reach that I can't access.
My hope here is that I just need to play more (I've played 12 games, for a little over an hour total).
Judero - I've returned to it on it's proper release, and its still superb. The combination of Jack-King Spooner's incredible art style, cryptic storytelling and dry wit, with supposed "Normal" game works perfectly.
I had a lot more fun with the game second time around. It probably has a lot to do with actively seeking out the games that sounded interesting, rather than trying a random sample as I went. I'm really enjoying Night Manor, a 'point and click' horror adventure.
I think I also identified one part of what was rubbing me the wrong way.
In the era depicted (console) games could be a simple "move square from one side to the other and dodge the circles game" and it would still have a 10 page manual with detailed instructions and probably a page or two of back story, with lore for each of the different colour circles.
Contrast with the games of UFO 50. While they do generally look like they could have released in that era, they are often far more polished and complex than any actual games of the era. Despite this, the descriptions of the games rarely exceed "This is a game to do good in! DON'T BE BAD!", and the instructions are just "A - Gyrox Manouver, X - Fake Gyrox, Hold X - Feint a Fake Gyrox". When there is in-game tutorialising, it's way more like what you'd see in a coin-op arcade game than anything else.
Anyway, game is great. But it sure is a lot.
