Playing Every Game in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality
PEGBRJE: U.F.O — ‘Unfortunately Fortunate Organisms’ and ‘Falling Skies’
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U.F.O — Unfortunately Fortunate Organisms is a space action and management game created by Rebourne Studios, an indie team in the UK. Players will pilot a mothership full of an alien race, threatened by an evil warlord hellbent on their destruction. The only way to stop him is to upgrade the ship enough to take him on — if only there was a resource that could help with this… It’s humans. It’s always humans.
Yes, our gameplay is reminiscent of many other action adventures in which the aliens attempt to abduct as many humans as possible. This is done with a small ship, armed initially with a single gun and a tractor beam able to suck up as many humans as the cargo bay allows. Upon entering a planet, humans will spawn from the towers, running around while the defenses fire at the the player.
There are three kinds of humans that can get beamed up, from the blue shirts worth the least (value alters from planet to planet) and gold shirts being worth the most. Black and red humans are part of the defense force, firing upon the player — if they get sucked up, they will immediately do damage to the ship and not count. Take too much damage, and the ship will be returned to the mothership in pieces; and no humans.
Once enough humans have been collected, players will call upon the mothership to pick them up. On the mothership, the humans are dragged to different areas of the ship to be ‘consumed’ for their resource value. Upgrades are in categories, from weapon/hull upgrades, cargo upgrades, and health.
The ship can be repaired as well using humans, which can use up quite a few resources if not careful. The final ‘upgrade’ is the planet unlock, which gives access to the next planet where the humans are worth even more.
Continue on this path, but be forewarned: you only have 30 days, making this the strategy part that ties all of U.F.O together. After 30 days, you will have to face the warlord or die trying, which means that every ship destroyed along the way is a day wasted.
It reminds me a lot of the old FLASH management games, blending little bits of action adventure with an upgrading management system. If that sounds like your jam, it probably is.
Falling Skies is a modern-retro arcade game created by Ironmonger Games, a solo indie dev. Players will battle waves of enemies inspired by classic games in the hopes of defeating the major end boss.
As implied by the style of game, Falling Skies attempts to bring a ‘modern’ take to the traditional arcade space shooters. Across five levels players will shoot ships and asteroids to gain points while dodging out any projectiles to avoid danger. When destroyed, some enemies will drop powerups to assist, like shields or health.
The fifth level is exclusively a boss fight, where players will put their skills to the test to defeat a massive ship spanning nearly the entire top of the screen. The modernization comes mostly in the form of how smooth the game feels and the amount of directions the player can move, as this was usually restricted to 8/16 directional movement.
The game is incredibly short, as it states so on the cover, which is why I don’t have much else to say. For those that played the old arcade games, I can definitely see this feeling nostalgic, especially with the hand-drawn assets and cute little musical nods. If that sounds like you, give it a try and see how you like it.
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