When Mossmouth introduced the value for UFO 50 it got here as a nice shock. The sport famously comprises 50 video games—therefore the identify—so it is cheap to anticipate the next 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 observed lots of people in boards and on social media had been happy and shocked about this, so I figured I would ask the crew throughout a latest interview what the pondering behind the value was. There had clearly been a number of pondering behind it, starting from the potential problem of promoting it for extra, by means of to the crew’s need to shock the participant with surprising depth—in the identical method Hole Knight maybe did again in 2017, or Elden Ring in 2022.
Noting that deciding on the suitable worth was difficult, Mossmouth’s Derek Yu pointed to the potential misunderstanding of what was underneath supply: had been these mini-games or fully-fledged 8-bit videogames?
“I feel there are individuals that may pay much more for it,” Yu mentioned, “however then I additionally assume there are lots of people which might be pretty sceptical of the idea of fifty video games. What does that imply, precisely? Are they minigames? I feel there’s a number of psychological hurdles to recover from in relation to what 50 video games really means for me as a shopper. In the end, I feel we considered it as one indie recreation, after which we seemed on the panorama, and at different indie video games that we felt had 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 good friend from faculty’s assortment that you simply get your arms on for an hour. These are usually not conditions the place you could have paid a big entry price: it is a state of affairs the place you could have this embarrassment of riches all the sudden. if we had charged $250, it will be like shopping for a flowery field set of one thing. It will change the entire framing in a method.”
(Observe that I had already, kind of as a joke, and kind of sincerely, urged the sport would possibly fairly be priced at $250.)
Yu additionally introduced up a extra apparent drawback: the crew’s need to make it reasonably priced to people who need to play it. Mossmouth’s Tyriq Plummer agreed. “At a sure level you’d begin simply pricing out the individuals that you simply really 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: “A minimum of for me there was at all times this sure mission assertion behind my thoughts of eager to blow minds, proper? Of eager to go above and past only a shock. I wished it to only hold stunning on stage after stage after stage. And you’ll see that within the video games: What? This recreation has an intro cutscene? And what: This has a distinct two-player mode? The worth level is setting you up for getting greater than you had been anticipating and being shocked in a great way.”
UFO 50 is out now. You can too learn my characteristic interview with the Mossmouth crew, the place we talk about the making of this treasure trove.
