When Mossmouth introduced the value for UFO 50 it got here as a nice shock. The sport famously incorporates 50 video games—therefore the title—so it is cheap to anticipate a better worth than common for a brand new launch indie recreation, particularly one which’s been in improvement for eight years. However no: it is priced at $25.
I seen lots of people in boards and on social media have been happy and shocked about this, so I figured I might ask the workforce throughout a current interview what the pondering behind the value was. There had clearly been a variety of pondering behind it, starting from the potential problem of promoting it for extra, by way of to the workforce’s want to shock the participant with surprising depth—in the identical approach Hole Knight maybe did again in 2017, or Elden Ring in 2022.
Noting that deciding on the correct worth was difficult, Mossmouth’s Derek Yu pointed to the potential misunderstanding of what was below provide: have been these mini-games or fully-fledged 8-bit videogames?
“I believe there are folks that will pay much more for it,” Yu stated, “however then I additionally assume there are lots of people which are pretty sceptical of the idea of fifty video games. What does that imply, precisely? Are they minigames? I believe there’s a variety of psychological hurdles to recover from relating to what 50 video games truly means for me as a shopper. In the end, I believe we thought of it as one indie recreation, after which we regarded on the panorama, and at different indie video games that we felt have been comparable, which is difficult as a result of not many individuals are making collections of fifty video games in a single.”
Jon Perry additionally notes that the idea itself wanted the sport to be priced pretty generously. “The fantasy that we’re presenting right here is of those freeware discs, these pirate carts, your pal from college’s assortment that you just get your fingers on for an hour. These are usually not conditions the place you will have paid a big entry price: it is a scenario the place you will have this embarrassment of riches the entire sudden. if we had charged $250, it will be like shopping for a elaborate field set of one thing. It will change the entire framing in a approach.”
(Word that I had already, form of as a joke, and form of sincerely, urged the sport would possibly fairly be priced at $250.)
Yu additionally introduced up a extra apparent drawback: the workforce’s want to make it inexpensive to people who need to play it. Mossmouth’s Tyriq Plummer agreed. “At a sure level you’d begin simply pricing out the folks that you just truly need to play the sport and at that time what is the level? What are you doing?”
Eirik Suhrke (who, amongst different issues, might be blamed / praised for Barbuta) added his ideas: “No less than for me there was all the time this sure mission assertion behind my thoughts of desirous to blow minds, proper? Of desirous to go above and past only a shock. I wished it to simply hold shocking on stage after stage after stage. And you may see that within the video games: What? This recreation has an intro cutscene? And what: This has a distinct two-player mode? The value level is setting you up for getting greater than you have been anticipating and being shocked in a great way.”
UFO 50 is out now. You can even learn my function interview with the Mossmouth workforce, the place we focus on the making of this treasure trove.
