UFO 40

Disclaimer. UFO 40 is a fan-made parody tribute. It contains no code, art, music or levels from UFO 50 and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Mossmouth.

Vibe-coded. UFO 40 is a vibe-coded project. It was built by directing an AI coding assistant (Claude Code), which wrote the code, pixel art, music, levels and tests from my descriptions, research notes and play-testing feedback.

What's new (v1.0.0)

• All 50 cartridges. Every slot of the library now holds a full game, each checked against its UFO 50 original by an independent review, then fixed.
• The last three:
  • 22 KIPPER (tribute to Porgy): a little sub in a big sea where fuel is your health, finds only count once you bring them home to a dock, and twenty fuel tanks, twenty eggs, ten pieces of equipment and six bosses wait in three areas.
  • 37 IRONVOW (tribute to Valbrace): seven floors of a keep in first person, real-time side-to-side fights where you counter a foe's wind-up, 17 spells drawn as glyphs with the pad, three bosses and a four-step secret.
  • 40 HELLSPUR (tribute to Grimstone): a Wild West RPG in Hell; pick four of eight strangers, time every shot on a bar, see the foes coming on the map, and ride from town to town by horse and train.
• The main action is on A (Z / Space / Cross) in the new cartridges; each card's CONTROLS page can swap it back.

Earlier in v0.12.0: LANDFALL, ANTIPODE and ECHO UNIT.

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What is this?

UFO 40 is inspired by UFO 50 by Mossmouth, a collection of fifty "lost" games from a console that never existed. It started as a joke port with a shorter name and fewer games, forty cartridge slots on the equally fictional Beamdown Softworks console. Then it kept going: UFO 40 is now a tribute with all 50 of UFO 50's games, one per slot. The name stayed 40; the library didn't.

Each cartridge is a tribute to one UFO 50 game and sits in the slot with that game's number. It plays by the same rules: the controls, systems, foes, items, scoring, goals and structure follow the original as closely as written sources describe it. Every cartridge has a design document in docs/games/ that lists each mechanic and where it comes from. Everything you see and hear is new: the names, characters, setting, pixel art, levels and chiptune music. Where the original builds its levels at random, so does the tribute, with its own generator. Where the original's levels are hand-made, the tribute's are too, drawn from scratch.

Once the tributes are in, the plan is to add some twists of my own on top, such as harder modes, kept apart from the faithful versions.

Everything is written in plain C with no dependencies in the core:

• a 320×180 indexed-colour software renderer
• a four-channel chiptune synthesiser with its own music format
• a scene system and a save system

A thin SDL2 layer runs that same core on a modded PS Vita (HENkaku/Ensō), on Windows/Linux and in the browser through Emscripten. A headless build drives the whole console from scripted input for testing and for every screenshot and GIF on this page.

The console

After the boot animation a main menu opens: Play (the library), Options (music and sound volumes you hear change as you set them, a jukebox with every tune in the console and its cartridges, and window size and fullscreen on PC), Save data (each cartridge's save and goals; delete one save, reset one cartridge's goals, or delete everything after two confirmations; it also shows where the saves live and marks a damaged file), Controls (the buttons on the Vita, keyboard, gamepad and touch), Credits and, on PC, Quit. It remembers where you were. Everything saves by itself, and the music and sound volumes are in every game's pause menu too.

The library (all 50 loaded)

Eight full-size cartridges to a row, five rows at a time: the grid scrolls as the cursor moves down to slots 41–50, and a bar in the left margin shows when there is more above or below. A cartridge you haven't started since it arrived wears a red NEW tag until you play it.

SELECT on a cartridge opens its card over the library: time played, times opened and the day it was last played, its three goals, DELETE SAVE, and CONTROLS, where the A, B and SELECT jobs can move between those three buttons for that cartridge only (its controls list, here and in the pause menu, shows the buttons as you now press them). SELECT or B closes it.

#	Cartridge	Tribute to	What plays the same	What's ours
01	UNDERDELVE	Barbuta	an 8×8 wrapping map, one-hit deaths, six spare lives and no continue, one fixed jump with no air control, a roaming death that moves a room whenever you do, traps, hidden walls and ladders, hint-givers, a death taken on purpose, items that open the way, three paths to the final boss	Mo the mole, a dark mine, the Gloom, the glow-worms, 64 new screens
02	GRUB SHIFT	Bug Hunter	a 6×5 field dealt afresh each morning, seven tools that each work once a shift, a shop open any time, pods that blow up in threes, grubs that grow by colour into adults, queens and eggs, 30 kills in 10, 9 or 8 shifts	Tilly the farm robot, the grub species, 41 tools
03	ROOFCAT	Ninpek	one long auto-scrolling town of stacked rooftops where left walks you back against the scroll, high and double jumps, one star at a time (three, farther and faster, with power-ups), points only from eggs, a spirit that floats back after a death, two bonus stretches, a 35-hit boss hit only in the eye, a harder second loop	Pepper the courier cat, a whitewashed seaside town, Old Crab
04	WET PAINT	Paint Chase	a car that never stops and can't turn round (the pad back brakes), every tile it crosses painted, a clock and a goal share on each of 25 one-screen courses, points for every per cent over, three lives and no continue, foes that paint pink from flashing garages, boost arrows, bumpers, barriers, bollards, belts and four power-ups, a final against a rival with all your tricks, 2P versus	Bo's blue kart, Foxy Fuchsia, the Marshal, smudgers, dusters, gloops, hedgehogs, conkers and jellies, 26 new courses
05	PETAL PARADE	Magic Garden	a 12×12 field where you never stop and turn only at the next tile, a trail you must never run into, each follower left on the moving star tiles saved for 10 × its place, potions by strength, a witch who plants mushrooms when a star area goes unused, 200 to win	Posy the gardener, petalpups, sun circles, Madame Nettle
06	TIN TROOP	Mortol	20 lives that carry through ten levels, the arrow, bomb and stone sacrifices, bodies as ledges and weights, water, fire and plants, a ship that drops the next life	a toy army in a toymaker's house, the Jack of the Chest, 10 new levels

Every cartridge has three goals, which follow the original's own three: a Beacon (a side challenge), the Saucer (beating the game) and the Alien (a secret, harder challenge). Earned goals light up on the cartridge in the library.

01 · UNDERDELVE

Tribute to Barbuta (UFO 50 #1).

An 8×8 mine that wraps round at the sides, in four zones: the Ember Deep at the bottom, then the Crystal Veins, the Glowcap Hollows and the headframe at the top.

• Plays like Barbuta: it boots straight into the mine. Any touch kills; Mo has six spare lanterns, then the delve is over, with no continue. He walks slowly, his pick barely reaches, and his one fixed jump can't be steered once he leaves the ground. Foes come back when you re-enter a room and show no damage until they die. The Gloom moves one room whenever Mo does; if it finds him it rises in the middle and comes at twice his speed. Nothing is explained. The first step right from the camp drops a rock from the ceiling; walls hide gems, cracked rock gives way to the pick, ladders and ledges hide, still pools are safe and churning ones aren't, and one death must be taken on purpose. Glow-worms each give one cryptic hint. Items open the way: a copper pot for drips, a tuning fork for crystal, a gear crank for the lifts, gloves, a brass tally, a canary and a hungry pick. There are three ways up to the Old Lode: a lever, the Deep Gate and a 500-ore sledgehammer.
• Ours: Mo the mole, the mine and its 64 screens, and its plan: which room sits where and how the rooms join (only the coarse structure is Barbuta's). The shopkeepers and glow-worms, every tile and the music.

02 · GRUB SHIFT

Tribute to Bug Hunter (UFO 50 #2).

• Plays like Bug Hunter: a 6×5 field whose ground is dealt afresh each morning, and seven tool slots that each work once per shift. The shop is open any time: swap a tool in and use it at once. Rolls shove grubs and squash them from planters; shots can't go uphill. Energy pods blow up when three share a tile. Each night one colour whose grubs survived grows a level (larva, adult, queen), and its new grubs hatch at that level; queens left overnight turn into eggs, and an egg left at the end of a shift fails the contract. Clear 30 grubs before the shifts run out; stop after a win and the streak waits for you.
• Ours: Tilly the farm robot, the dome, the grub species and the names and looks of all 41 tools. Three contracts in a row make Employee of the Month.

03 · ROOFCAT

Tribute to Ninpek (UFO 50 #3).

• Plays like Ninpek: one nine-minute town that scrolls on its own, built in tiers (the top is the safer way through) and busier the further you get. With no input you ride along; left walks you back (tap it to hold your place) and right runs ahead. Hold A to jump higher, double jump (also after walking off an edge), and drop through ledges. One star at a time; the power-up every third kill drops adds a star and throws farther and faster, and is lost with a life. Points come only from the eggs foes drop (and letters, crowns and snacks). Three lives; a hit stuns you and knocks you off the screen, then a spirit floats down and comes back where it is, with no grace period. Lanterns at 3,000, 7,000 and every 5,000 must be shot for a life. Two bonus stretches are a solid mass of snacks. Old Crab has 35 hit points and only its eye counts; it sits low by the water, so wait for a low leg. Then a harder second loop. Every foe follows Ninpek's roster, and the board keeps the five best scores.
• Ours: Pepper the courier cat and Grandma Rosa's parcel, a whitewashed seaside town (the rooftops, the Spice Market, the fort walls and the harbour), the Magpie Mob, Old Crab and the Night Route. All 52 screens. A demo player in the tests gets through the first area with real button presses.

04 · WET PAINT

Tribute to Paint Chase (UFO 50 #4).

• Plays like Paint Chase: only the d-pad. Bo's kart never stops: it turns at the next tile, can't turn round (the pad back brakes, the pad ahead speeds up again) and halts dead at a wall. Every tile it crosses turns blue; when the clock runs out the blue share must reach the course's goal, and every per cent over it is a point (an extra life each 120). Miss it and a life goes and the course starts again; three misses and it's over, with no continue.
• The foes come out of flashing garages in twos and threes and paint pink over everything: smudgers, dusters that fly over walls and spray, fast tankers, a mother gloop who lays little ones, poppers that burst, hedgehogs you can only hit from behind or the side, conkers that fire their spines when you line up, and jellies you mustn't hit at full tilt. Boost arrows (they stack), bumpers, thorn hedges, swing barriers, bollards and belts, and four power-ups that work while their tile isn't blue: the sprinkler, the tack shooter, the helper and the freeze pop.
• Structure: 25 courses in one go, then the cup final against Foxy Fuchsia, who drives by your rules. Before each five, a cutscene acts out what every new foe does in a little skit on the road. The early courses pay well; 500 points is a real stretch. The score board starts out filled in by the Beamdown staff, and only a finished run goes on it. 2P versus on any course. A demo driver in the tests plays the first courses with real button presses.
• Ours: Bo, Foxy and the Marshal, the town square, park, docks, works and night streets, all 26 courses, every foe and power-up, and the music.

05 · PETAL PARADE

Tribute to Magic Garden (UFO 50 #5).

• Plays like Magic Garden: Posy never stops walking, and a turn waits for the next tile. Pups she walks over follow in a line; running into it ends the run, as does the hedge, a bramble or a toadstool, and a hop clears exactly one tile. Let the line go and every pup standing on the sun circle is saved, scoring 10 × its place in the line; the rest turn into brambles, which look where they are about to hop. The sun circle (a line, a ring or a cross) moves on every 10 seconds, and if nobody was saved on it the witch plants a toadstool. Saved pups fill a six-jar counter; extra pups make the jar riper, and jars ripen on the ground. Eight seconds of nectar let Posy smash brambles for a rising chain (only blue and gold break toadstools). Save 200 to win; scores go on a board of five.
• Ours: Posy the palace gardener, the petalpups and the brambles they turn into, the sun circles, the nectar jars, Madame Nettle and four seasons of garden. A demo player in the tests wins a whole run with real button presses.

06 · TIN TROOP

Tribute to Mortol (UFO 50 #6).

• Plays like Mortol: twenty soldiers are your lives, and spending them is how you get anywhere. B alone flies a soldier into the nearest wall, where he stays as a ledge; up+B blows him up, breaking toy blocks and foes; down+B turns him to stone, and a stone dropped from the air smashes down through every block under it and crushes spikes. Rituals chain in mid-air for the one soldier. Bodies hold switches down, lie on spikes for the next man to cross, float when drowned, and stop laser beams. Burning soldiers can't be hurt and set foes alight, seeded soldiers and creatures grow into vines, a blast sets a vine burning, and a stone stops a bath tap. Pill bugs are rolling bombs whose blast breaks tin blocks a Pop only cracks, and launchers shut down once three of their creatures are killed. The plane waits at the top left of a view that only scrolls forward; the toy chest has doors instead, and no music. Lives carry from level to level, and replaying a level to do better raises every level after it. Ten levels, the last one the final boss.
• Ours: Captain Pip's tin soldiers, the toy blimp, a toymaker's house at night (nursery, bathroom, kitchen and toy chest), wind-up mice, paper darts, tin rams, pill bugs, toy dragons and the Jack of the Chest. All ten levels are new layouts.

07 · SKYWELL

Tribute to Velgress (UFO 50 #7).

• Plays like Velgress: every run is a new shaft, and a spiked roller at the foot of the screen rises whenever you climb past the middle. It is the only thing that can kill you, but creatures and hazards knock you flying so hard that, unless a platform catches you, you drop floors towards it. You come round with your jump in the air still to use. Every platform crumbles soon after you land, and you can bounce off any creature's head. You double jump, shoot the way you face or straight up or down, ride star blocks, and spend coins in a shop between levels.
• Level by level: bats that wake when you pass under them, then TNT, cloud mines and zappers, then bubbles, fish, jellies and squids, then bouncing metal. Shoot down the bird on each level's 12th floor for a key; with all three keys a fourth level opens with a final boss.
• Ours: Kip the scrap-diver, the Grinder, the Roots, the Sparkworks, the Sky Reef, the Tinker's cart, the Keeper Owl and the Well Eye.

08 · LANDFALL

Tribute to Planet Zoldath (UFO 50 #8).

• Plays like Planet Zoldath: every run lands you on a brand-new planet of flip-screen rooms with no map and no instructions. Find three pieces of a star chart (one behind a gate, one sold by a local, one at the end of the dungeon) and get back to your ship. You carry only two of the eight tools (a disc, a rivet gun, a hatcher that turns creatures into hatchlings, blast pods, a thumper, bog boots, a chop press and a talk box), and each gate (bog, a pit, a hole, crystal, foliage, blue blocks, a big shell) wants a particular one. Some tools burn a resource that the planet decides. The locals trade at fixed prices by rarity, half of them speak only in glyphs, and one may be shut in behind crystal and bog. Every planet rolls its creatures afresh: who is friendly, how the rest move, shoot, hurt and die. You have 3 energy and one life, and there are hidden combos to find: cook a chop on the bog to call a gnat, blast the bog to make a teleporter, shrink yourself with a ricochet.
• Ours: Wick and the ship, the planet Yombra, the ten creature looks, the tools and resources, the villages' words and glyphs, and every room layout.

09 · BANNERFALL

A tribute to Attactics (UFO 50 #9).

• Plays the same: a 6 × 8 field between two keeps and one new unit a turn on a random row. While the timer counts down from 9 you drag units up, down or back within your half (forward only to where you picked them up). Then everyone attacks and marches in Attactics' order; when two foes step into the same tile, the side with the longer line behind pushes through.
• The troops: eight units with the original's rules. Footmen in a column of three shrug off melee, bowmen shoot down their lane unless a friend is in the way, wardens stop arrows until they're hurt, riders move twice, and powdermen blow up. Every fifth promotion calls a champion. Battles that bring a new troop open with a line about it, and the campaign map shows what the next battle brings.
• The CPU never moves its troops, but it gets extra ones. The 24-battle campaign uses the original's banners, unit pools and percentages. Ranked, Survival and 2P Versus are there too.
• Ours: the Marigold Guard and the Thistle Host, every unit's name and look, the keeps, the battle names and every line of text, the march and the battle music.

13 · DUSKLING

A tribute to Mooncat (UFO 50 #13).

• Plays the same: the pad has two sides. Every way on the D-pad walks left and both buttons walk right (pad B on the title turns it round); hold one side and press the other to jump toward the side held, longer for higher. Tap and then press both for a low hop, double tap to roll (hold it to sprint, with more time to jump off an edge), double tap in the air to somersault, and press the other side again in the air to slam: a moment's pause with a "!", then straight down. A slam beats foes and bounces you the way you hold (or straight up), drops through pink ledges, and flips walkers next to it so they can be kicked away; spiked prickles can only be beaten that way. One touch ends you, and you come back where you came into the room, as often as it takes. Nothing is saved on the way.
• Secrets: some creatures only just miss you, some are ledges, some can be knocked about. Flowers mean a warp is somewhere on the screen; warps are never drawn until touched. Stone faces show hidden ledges when you jump over them twice, springs hide in plain sight, ceiling eyes drop, roll and leap when you slam, and mushroom caps spring you only when slammed.
• Structure: it opens as an orange dayling drifts down into a dusk wood and falls into a pit whose far side isn't there. Then the duskling's main way runs through the wood (which brings in one thing at a time, and where the Ember Hermit throws sparks and runs off), the mere, the ruins and the machine works to the Brass Warden and the white egg. Warps skip ahead (one goes back to the start), and warps within warps open the amber way to the Ember Hermit and the rose way to the Old Badger, each with its egg: every egg is an ending. 42 rooms, ten of them pockets off every egg's way; two players on PC. A route finder over the real rules recorded a crossing of every room, warp and egg, and the tests play them back with button presses.
• Ours: the duskling, the dayling and its little light, the Hush Wood, the Sunken Mere, the Old Steps, the Humming Works, the Ember Caves and the Windy Heights, every creature and boss, every secret's solution, what the eggs hold, all 42 rooms and the music.

10 · BOOMTOWN

A tribute to Devilition (UFO 50 #10).

• Plays the same: ten nights on a 10 × 8 square. Pieces come three at a time from bags of six (one strong, three middling, two weak); you place as many as you like, then light one fuse, and every piece its blast reaches goes off in turn. A small diagram shows what the chosen piece hits, but once a piece is down its tiles no longer show. End a night with as many folk as bogles, or the town is overrun; clear them all and a new neighbour moves in. Pieces not used, in the cart or on the square, carry over.
• The pieces and the bogles: the original's nine patterns, from the 8-tile starburst and the roman candle that fires to the edge to the skyrocket that flies up and lands on its perch, which joins the row of three in the rocket's place. Big bogles take two hits and stay hurt, old ones heal overnight, and each night brings a new hole and the original's count of bogles and pieces.
• The last night: the Bog King rises in the middle four tiles with ten hits and must go down in one chain. A win scores 10,000, plus 1,000 for every folk and piece left, plus a clock bonus.
• Ours: Hazel the fireworks maker, Mossbury and its folk, the bogles and the Bog King, the names and looks of all eight fireworks, the words and the music. A demo player in the tests wins a whole run with button presses.

11 · HAT TRICK

A tribute to Kick Club (UFO 50 #11).

• Plays the same: one screen at a time, walled round the edges and wrapping wherever a wall is missing, out of one side and in at the other, down a hole and in at the top; every screen the same on both sides. Your only weapon is the ball: walk into it to pick it up, tap B to kick it (the pad, your run and your jump all change the kick), hold B for a fast, flat driven shot, and without it slide on the run (over gaps, on thin air) or head it. Hold A to jump high, tap it for a hop; the pad steers in the air, stiffly. The kid is a big target: one touch of anything is a life. Every screen has its own ball spot to fight your way to.
• The lit ball: touch it and it glows; leave it to come to rest (a second lying still) or carry it too long and it goes dark. Kills while it stays lit drop popcorn 100, a pretzel 200, a taco 500, then a drumstick 1,000 every time, but only once the body lands. Kick the ball through a hidden spot and a dessert drops.
• The clock: 20 counts of 2.5 s; whatever is left is 100 points a count. At zero it is extra time, and the Timekeeper walks in, through walls, and stays, deaths and all, until the screen is clear.
• Structure: four worlds of nine screens and a boss, 40 in all; three lives, more at 10,000, 25,000, 50,000, 75,000 and 100,000, no continues, and back to 1-1. End a screen on your own side and the balloons have you away sooner. Co-op shares the one ball; two codes open the unfinished versus pitch. The demo player in the tests clears all 40 screens and every boss with button presses, and a test keeps the first world gentle and the last a wall.
• Ours: Teddy and Mae of the Hat Trick Club, Sandy Court, Lucky Lanes, the Lido and the Big Stadium, spikers, frisbees, beach balls, pins, bowlers, spinners, buoys, polo players, duckies, props, gloves and bulldogs, King Spiker, the Kingpin, the Lifeguard and his Chair, the Captain, the Timekeeper, the food, the codes, a secret of our own and the music.

12 · FOSSIL FEUD

A tribute to Avianos (UFO 50 #12).

• Plays the same: a war over a 5 × 4 board between two bird nations. You never pick actions yourself: each turn you pray to one of three Ancestors on offer, and its three fixed actions run top to bottom (GATHER, ENLIST, CALL UP, BUILD, MARCH, BARTER or an OMEN). The one you took rests for the next two turns, so every pick is also a denial. Pray to one twice and it blesses one of its actions; each action can be blessed twice. Claim open ground for its grain, toilers or relics, build granaries, roosts, shrines and dustbaths, and march on the Slate Flock. When armies meet, the battle plays itself out on a field shaped by the ground (eyrie walls with one gate, a gorge's bridges, cover, slopes), and you only switch the whole army between CHARGE, STAND, WRECK and FLEE. Five birds with the original's numbers: shielded lancers that shrug off slings, slingers that can't shoot up close, swifts that only shooters can reach. The fog hides their birds. Hold four totems through a whole round to win.
• The campaign: three moults against a sharper Slate Flock each time (the ending comes after the full plume), then five ordeals: extra grain, a second eyrie, a blessing, the Ancestors' actions dealt out afresh, and all of it at once. A custom match sets eyries, peaks and the fog. 2 PLAYERS is on the title, greyed out until the next update. The demo player in the tests wins every scenario with real button presses.
• Ours: the Rust Roost and the Slate Flock, Grandjaw, Plateback, Longneck, Skycrest and Threehorn, the five birds, the buildings, the ground and the omens, the story and the ending, and nine tunes.

14 · CUTLASS CUP

A tribute to Bushido Ball (UFO 50 #14).

• Plays the same: knock the ball past your rival for a point, first to 8. The ball gets faster with every return (a lob slows things down again), up and down aim, and a rolling strike goes faster or curves. The judge rolls the ball out to whoever lost the last point.
• Meter: two strikes fill half a bar. A double tap throws your trick, and holding the button charges a broadside, which spare bars upgrade; one that hits you is caught and must be mashed back.
• Fouls: dawdling, a blade on your rival and jumping the serve (play goes on); the third gives away a point. You may go right up to your rival's circle.
• Modes: six fighters with the original's stats and kits, a five-match tournament with unlimited continues, 2P versus and 2P co-op doubles. Like the original, there's no music during play. A demo player in the tests beats three rivals with real button presses.
• Ours: the harbour and the galley Merry Mackerel, old Bosun Crabbe, and Finn, Mae, Greta, Silas, Wren and Bruno with their coins, sea urchins, harpoon, squall, darts and powder pots. The tunes are ours too.

15 · FENNEC FOUNTAIN

A tribute to Block Koala (UFO 50 #15).

• Plays the same: Sokoban where numbers are weights. A line of blocks moves only if no block is pushed into a heavier one, and a block pushed into a 1 that can't move takes it in (2 and 1 make 3). Five turns grey. The fennec is slow, B undoes without limit and A opens the room menu (start over, leave, or set one undo mark).
• Special blocks: blue blocks move only for other blocks, black ones shrink when you stop pushing them, geckos copy your steps, arrows send blocks one way, stone patches take no blocks, and plates hold doors open.
• Structure: fifty rooms around a garden, with gates at 5, 10, 20, 30 and 40 drops, and a workshop for ten rooms of your own. After three teaching rooms, each room takes 77 to 300 steps at its shortest, with big loops that move the blocks round again and again. Talk to Tuft to swap which sibling walks.
• Ours: Fen and Tuft the fennecs, Lord Humph the camel and his bath, the garden, all fifty rooms and the music.

16 · TINTAIL

A tribute to Camouflage (UFO 50 #16).

• Plays the same: a grid stealth puzzle in real time. Twig takes the colour of the tile she stands on; matching the ground, she walks through a predator's sight unseen. One colour at a time, she's exposed while she changes and can't change in danger, so every crossing is planned ahead.
• The island: toads watch fixed areas, storks walk fixed loops (they block the toads' view, and walk into you whatever colour you are), hollow logs hide you, and sun and rain pads dry or wet the grass. Hold B and every watched tile turns pink, but you can't move. If you're eaten you can undo.
• Structure: fifteen single-screen levels on a branching map, each with two prickly pears and a hatchling that follows one step behind in its own colour. Only the best single escape counts toward completion.
• Ours: Twig, the toads, storks and falcon, Salt Island and the old lighthouse, all fifteen levels (a solver in the tests proves each one), and the music.

17 · BELLHOP

A tribute to Campanella (UFO 50 #17).

• Plays the same: the Tinkler flies side-on on CHIME CIRCUIT's flight model: it falls unless you hold A, a held thrust climbs and a tapped one hovers, and steering builds slowly and drifts on. Thrust burns fuel from the red bar top left; a dry tank means a fall. Any touch of a wall, a floor, an enemy or a shot is a crash. B slashes to the side you last steered: it takes enemies down, breaks blocks, glass and bubbles (most of which put fuel back) and slows your fall a little while it lasts.
• Score is life: three spare ships, and one more every 1,000 points, always. Circlers pay 500 once you have flown close past all four sides, a big coin scatters five timed coins worth 1,000 in all, and every regular stage hides a cup of tea behind an unmarked one-tile spot.
• Structure: fifty one-screen stages in five worlds, each with a crystal room at X-5 and a boss at X-10: a millwheel of buckets, an apple to knock into a cider press, twin cogs whose lamps light one cog at a time, a gumball machine, and Lady Hush, whose blue spike balls are the only thing that hurts her. Four warp sparkles show for five seconds, levers can lock a cup away for good, a crash doesn't undo the damage done to a boss, and a run is one sitting. The demo pilot in the tests plays the whole game with real presses and takes all forty cups.
• Ours: Ansel and the Tinkler (the chime ship of CHIME CIRCUIT), Lady Hush and her stolen bells, tea instead of coffee, Millbrook, the Orchard, the Clockworks, the Sugarworks and Hush Citadel, all fifty stages, the bosses, the owl, the BREW-ROOM code and the music.

18 · LOST LINKS

A tribute to Golfaria (UFO 50 #18).

• Plays the same: you are a golf ball, and every move is a stroke. Aim with the d-pad and hold A: dots light up along the line to show the power, up and down, slower the longer you hold; let go. Only from sand, a divot or a hole does the ball leave the ground. Strokes are your health: twenty to start, three more for each of twenty irons, all of them underground. Run out and you wake at the last pin you touched, keeping all you found; the cave round a pin is a safe zone. Hold B to check the ground ahead.
• The world: one open world on two layers. Every hole drops you to the caves right underneath (or climbs back up). Slopes, rough, greens, sand, water and pits that send the ball back where it was hit from, jumping flowers, bridges, bushes and cracked blocks; larks and albatrosses to roll into for strokes, slicers that burst out of the ground and shove, sippers that suck strokes, and ten scorecrows that watch for five strokes, then fly off. Birds and bugs come back whenever you change layer.
• Structure: you wake in a cave under Lanternby. Four abilities in the four corners (the Hammerhead; Backspin, hold A to brake; the Dune Tread, tap B on sand to jump; the Skipper), eight strays, twenty golf-ball folk, a signpost that keeps count, a hidden village of Keepers, ten pins and the four pieces of the Star Pin. Set it in the crypt under the old clubhouse, light the sanctum's plates, and face the Brass Badger. A demo player in the tests plays the whole game with real button presses.
• Ours: Dimple, the Keepers and their story, the Brass Badger, all 53 places on both layers, every creature and name, and the music.

19 · CHIME CIRCUIT

A tribute to The Big Bell Race (UFO 50 #19).

• Plays the same: the chime ship flies side-on: it falls unless you hold thrust, steers left and right with a drift that carries it on, and never runs out of fuel. Six ships race eight laps round a track that fits on one screen. Walls, floors and ceilings take one of your three hit points; B is a short slash that doesn't hurt, it only knocks a rival away, ideally into a wall. A wrecked ship relaunches from under the start line and flies that lap again, and every finished lap mends a hit point.
• Pickups: stations flash "!!" before a pickup appears, and flying into it uses it at once: bullets in four directions, a trail of mines (they don't spare you), two circling fireballs, a big slash, or a payload on a chain that blows up into three fires.
• Structure: eight hand-made tracks in a fixed order (a tutorial loop, a dip with a slot through it, a narrow loop, three figure-8s, a forked loop and a mile of bends with a tunnel underneath), 9/7/5/3/2/1 points over eight races, the last race's winner starting at the back, CPUs that are slower than you but sometimes turn back to hunt you, and two players at once on the same screen. The stats keep each player's average lap and race; each pilot has an ending. A ship knocked out of the track is relaunched, where the original's could get stuck. A demo pilot in the tests flies all eight tracks and wins the cup with real button presses.
• Ours: the chime ship, Ansel and his sister Clary, visitors from HOMESPUN, SKYWELL and WOBBLE DERBY, all eight tracks and their skies, the LOOT-GALE code and the LAST-LAMP page, and the music.

20 · LIMPET

A tribute to Warptank (UFO 50 #20).

• Plays the same: Limpet sticks to whatever hull it is on. It can't jump and can't fall; it rolls one tile at a time along floors, walls and ceilings, and only ramps take it round a corner: a sheer wall stops it, and it can't drive off a ledge. Its gun fires straight out from the surface (a tap is one shot, holding fires a burst of three, pressing again and again is quicker), and the warp jumps straight along that same line to the opposite surface, throwing flares where it lands. One hit and it is scrapped, but there are no lives to lose: try again from the last C plate, or go back to the station. The camera snaps along in steps.
• The decks: each is eight screen-sized rooms with a C plate in every one, and ends at a pod choked with gristle until a red bulb is shot. Outline blocks turn solid when shot, teal and pink blocks swap, thin plates let a warp through one way, magnet floors hold the tank down, hopper pads fling it across, portals, doors, timed doors, push blocks, platforms and crushers. Turrets fire down their line, lasers on a beat, drones throw bouncing beams, oglers send rings, crawlers roll along the walls like the tank does, sacs let out specks, and a switch worm flips the swap blocks when its head is hit. Three decks are survival rooms of waves.
• Structure: 26 decks and a secret 27th, entered from pods in Spindle Station, a maze of twenty rooms that is a puzzle of its own, with pods hidden under floors, behind a false wall and in a slot only a warp reaches: a crate swings away at 4 decks, two doors at 9, the mid-game boss (the Turncoat, a tank like you, which scuttles out of the line when hit) is up a side way you have to find, and beating it opens a shaft in the first room to the upper ring, where the Dreadnought waits behind a wall until 22 decks; the camera goes to each one as it opens. Twenty-three decks hide a jar of honey in a surface that looks like the rest of the hull, and it only counts if you leave the deck alive; the Dreadnought, hit only straight up its barrel while its core is open, drops the 24th. With all 24 a bridge of honey leads to the Comb. No clock runs in a deck, but each keeps its best time, and the deck and honey counters are the reward for the ending.
• Ours: Limpet, Spindle Station and its four parts, all 27 decks and both arenas, the Gristle, every foe, the Turncoat and the Dreadnought, honey and bees, the station's people (Wren, Gus, Mother Brindle, Rolo and the night clerk) and eighteen tunes. A demo player in the tests plays the whole game from the title with real button presses, to the gold ending and, on a honey run, through the Comb.

21 · TUSKWIND

A tribute to Waldorf's Journey (UFO 50 #21).

• Plays the same: Burl is asleep, and in his dream he crosses a chain of floating islets towards a door at the far end. Every jump is set up on the ground: UP/DOWN swing a "+" cursor, holding A fills a meter under him, and letting go sends him that way (aimed dead flat, he lunges along the ground instead); B calls a charge off. In the air his flippers are all he has: hold A to fly, LEFT/RIGHT trimming his speed, on a yellow bar that only sprats fill. Plain islets let him through from below; rocks bounce him off; pink foam lasts just one full charge.
• The way: a new map every journey, with the same quotas every time: six lighthouses whose terns each pull him out of the sea once, 36 loose shells that are both money and score, two chests and two keys, three stalls of the Duchess Auk (two wares, one visit), 22 signs, wind bells, rams that charge whoever lands on their islet, and mantas gliding high that knock him away, carry him, or drop a key when burst. The sky sets as he goes; a wind rises at about 40 % and a storm wind at 80 % that stays.
• Structure: reach the door, then the hall: spiral shells from the terns he didn't need, a shaft lined with shells, a hidden chest over the chasm, and the old one, whose talk depends on carrying 50 shells. A journey takes a few minutes for the demo player in the tests, which finishes generated maps from the title with real button presses, both endings; 2P brawl on a single wrapping screen, best of 1 to 9 rounds.
• Ours: Burl in his nightcap, Skerry the old one, the Duchess Auk, terns, rams, mantas, cockles and whelks, the bobber, spyglass, grapnel, kite, spinner and sprat tin, all 23 signs, both talks, the hall, and the music.

22 · KIPPER

A tribute to Porgy (UFO 50 #22).

• Plays the same: a little sub in an undersea map, eight ways, slow, from two docks on the surface. Fuel is health and time: swimming burns it (sitting still doesn't), a dash burns more, and every knock from a creature, a shot or a vent costs half a bar and a push. Run dry and the sub is towed back to the last dock, the dive's finds back where they lay. Anything picked up trails behind on the sub's wake, three at most, and counts only once the sub noses up under a dock, which fills the tank, saves, keeps the damage done to the big ones and the blocks blasted, and wakes every creature again (as crossing into another area does). Stun torpedoes don't kill: they pacify. Hold A for a torpedo every 14 frames with the facing locked, or tap it for quicker fire (A is the main action, as everywhere in UFO 40; the original fires with B and dashes with A). Polyps let out thieves while you tow something, and a bloater's clouds knock the trail loose.
• The sea: the Kelpwood (lit, with both docks), the Drowned Arcade (ruins and columns) and the Blackwater (pitch dark without the lamp, eyes in the walls, steam vents). 20 fuel tanks (4 to 24 bars), 20 torpedo kits, 20 eggs for Auntie Roe, who sends a fish along every five (blue ones stop shots, red ones shoot with you), and ten pieces of equipment, two fitted at a dock, three and four as the big ones fall: ram torpedoes (switches, crabs in their shells), the auger (dashes through dirt), the long thruster, sinker bombs (sit still, hold B, let go), upshot rockets (blue blocks from below), seeker fins, the lamp, the sonar, the lean mix and hull plates. Five big ones roam their areas (the Whorl keeps to its chamber) and Xolloth waits at the bottom; beaten, each flees for good and leaves a deep light. Cracked and sealed walls hide things. The goals are driving off Gnasher, beating Xolloth, and beating it with everything found; the demo player in the tests does all of it from the title with real button presses, in 59 minutes of play.
• Ours: Dr. Juno Marlow and Kipper, Auntie Roe, Gullwater Sound and every cavern of it (laid out by hand), all 18 creatures, Gnasher, Inkwell, Longjaw, the Whorl, Nightcape and Xolloth, the equipment's names, both endings, and nine tunes.

23 · TURNIP TRUCK

A tribute to Onion Delivery (UFO 50 #23).

• Plays the same: a top-down city under a camera that never turns, and a truck that does: LEFT and RIGHT turn it to its own left and right, so driving down the screen RIGHT goes screen-left. Hold A for the gas and B to brake (weakly), then reverse slowly; tap a turn to sidestep, hold A+B with a turn for a powerslide that turns you round on the spot, and hold it too long to spin out (mid-spin, any car you touch is smashed). It can't turn from a stand, slides like soap, and walls only bounce and spin it.
• The job: each workday, five deliveries to random named places (a red dot on the radar, a red arrow now and then, a red circle on the road), then back to the depot's small half circle before the clock hits 00, or the truck catches fire. Deliveries one to four add 8 seconds, the fifth 30, overtime ones nothing; crates on balloons over the hazards, reached only by flying off a ramp, add 12. Three hearts: cars, brine, gas canisters and the chaos take them, a stretch at top speed brings one back (watch the speedometer) and every delivery fills them. Three spare tries for the whole week. Zib sits at the wheel at the top of the dashboard, turning it with you.
• Structure: seven days, each opened by the Channel 9 newscast; Monday is quiet, and from Tuesday to Sunday one chaos event a day, each once, in a shuffled order: brine spraying from the hydrants and waves sweeping across the roads, a giant beetroot on the charge, harmless but slowing hordes of mushmen, a gang that chases you and shoots from its getaway cars, rain with puddles that spin you out, and saucers bombing from above. One city, the same every time, that wraps in every direction, with dead ends, alleys, ramps, a brine canal and its bridges. Fifty deliveries in a week is the Alien and an early retirement. A practice code, a reverse-steering code, a secret in the fenced lot and a demo. The demo player in the tests clears every kind of day and two whole weeks with button presses.
• Ours: Zib, Granny Root and her turnip depot, Glenda Glorp, Blipton and all 33 places, its nine districts, the brine burst, the big beet, the mush mob, the radish ring, the downpour, the moon raid and the music.

24 · SHUTTERBUG

A tribute to Caramel Caramel (UFO 50 #24).

• Plays the same: a side-scrolling shooter with no power-ups at all. Hold B and the gun fires by itself; hold it long enough and two dots light, and letting go throws four rings that bounce off rock. Touching rock does no harm; only being pinned by the scroll does. Two hits a life (the armour, then the ship), no spare ships to start with, eight from points (8,000 up to 186,000), and a lost ship starts the stage again with the shown score back at 0.
• The camera: tap A for a photo a third of the screen ahead. What it catches stops still, takes double damage, pays double and goes up with a bang that hurts its neighbours (and takes every foe of its kind from the same photo with it). It cancels green foes' parting shots, drops foes off walls and ceilings onto whatever is below, stops whole ghost trains, makes wisps solid, freezes moving blocks, shakes score orbs out of odd things, turns each planet's red foe into a repair wrench and opens the bosses' weak points. The meter refills slowly, or at once with two pink bulbs, which only fly to you when you stop firing.
• Structure: a prologue that teaches it all, Teatime Planet (Madame Scone, then the Teapot), Comet Rain A, Gloom Planet (Old Croak, who can be left alone, then the Signalman), Comet Rain B and Fossil Planet (laser mazes, two generators, then King Thunderjaw). Photograph the hidden U, F and O, one on each planet, and the Kaleidoscope waits after the king (the F shows only as Old Croak's fight starts, and the camera can't take both the letter and him). The credits name every foe, with a picture of each one you photographed. 1 player, or 2 in co-op. The demo player in the tests wins the whole game from the title with real button presses, by both routes.
• Ours: Poppy the puffer-blimp and her pal Sprig, the three planets and the Comet Rain, all 25 foes, Madame Scone, the Teapot, Old Croak, the Signalman, King Thunderjaw, the Kaleidoscope, every cave and wave, and the music.

25 · OPEN HOUSE

A tribute to Party House (UFO 50 #25).

• Plays the same: open the door and a random guest from your guest book walks in. The guest book by the door works like the rolodex: every guest copy as a tile with its own badges, in three groups (still to come, at the party, out tonight), with a cursor and a box that tells the guest under it; the fetchers pick from the same book. Three rowdy guests bring the police, and guests brought along can overflow the house for the fire marshal; either way nobody pays and one guest misses the next party. End the party in time and everyone pays fame (to buy guests) and cash (to add space).
• The guests: all 46 of Party House's guests with their costs, pay, talents and trouble, from fetchers, bouncers and peekers to drummers, upstarts and the nine star guests. Win by ending a party well with four stars in it, within 25 nights. Fame stops at 65 and cash at $30, as in the original.
• Structure: five set guest lists with the original's pools, then a Random list and the five-win streak. 2P Versus takes alternate nights and shares the shop.
• Ours: the house by the sea, the nosy neighbour's lamp, every guest's name, portrait and line (the Saucer Pilot, the Wish Fish, the Punk Singer, the Goat...), the list names and the music.
• Owner's additions: B ends a party (after a YES/NO); a party with nothing more to happen ends by itself; a guest-by-guest tally with a tick for every point (hold A to hurry it); a shop and a list grid where every move wraps (B jumps to NEXT PARTY); and OPEN ALL NIGHT, an endless mode on any list or a big random mix of the whole roster: no last night, one more star needed for each star party, three shutdowns and the lights go out, with a best kept for each list. Two guests of his own, dealt by the Random list and OPEN ALL NIGHT: the Crooner (cost 10) scores a guest on the spot and gives everyone else their action back, once a party; the Albatross (cost 6, +6 fame, +$1) makes everyone who comes in after him RUCKUS!. And a custom list: an editor with every guest and star, where A puts one in the shop or takes it out (the neighbour, cousin and rowdy mate are locked in), with CLEAR ALL, RANDOMISE and an ALL NIGHT toggle. It needs a star and six guests, is saved, and keeps its own record.
• Easy to read: every guest wears small badges (fame, cash, RUCKUS!, a star and an icon for its ability, dimmed once used) in the house, the shop, the guest book and the editor, with an ICON GUIDE to explain them (SELECT in the guest book, or the START menu). The guest book opens over the party with the top bar and the door in view, counts the RUCKUS! and stars still to come, and marks each copy's own (a tailor's +1s, a real name). Shutdowns say why in red (OVER CAPACITY!, TOO MUCH TROUBLE!, with the culprits marked), the banned guest wears a red BANNED tag until the party they miss, a peek leaves the guest waiting by the door while the party goes on, stars show a no-limit sign in the shop, and every list is open from the start, turning gold once beaten.

26 · SKID KIDS

A tribute to Hot Foot (UFO 50 #26).

• Plays the same: two on two in a school gym, seen from above, your team on the left of a centre line nobody may cross. Beanbags skid along the floor, bounce off the walls and stop, and a sliding bag that touches a kid of the other team is a point; first to 15. One button does it all: tap B by a bag to pick it up, tap it with a bag to pass (and swap), tap it with nothing near to swap kids, hold it to wind up (rooted, the pad aims), and let go. A quick tap-and-let-go tosses the bag by your feet; a full wind-up knocks the kid it hits flat. A jumps, and your partner jumps with you; A during a wind-up calls it off and jumps. A bag held too long throws itself. Your partner only fetches bags and holds them: swap to it (or over and back) to get one.
• Stars: jumping over a sliding bag, or a juice box, is half a star, so one jump can earn both kids one. With a star, a full wind-up is the kid's special throw, and A again in the air its special move. The Coach starts play with a bag on the line and keeps throwing in bags and juice boxes, mostly onto the line; the CPU chases every one, ambush or not, steers round puddles and can't read a wiggly throw.
• The kids: the original's twelve kits one for one: wiggly throws, getting up fast, high jumps, arcing lobs, a quick wind-up, stars shared with a partner, two bags, speed that never slips, quick hands, a kid who ignores the line, the Coach's pet and a kid who runs rivals over, with the comet, ripple, yo-yo and popper throws and the stomp, gust, reel and splash moves, each on three kids.
• The tournament: TAKE TURNS (five kids at random: you pick one, the other side two, you one of the last two, and the one left over cries) or HAND-PICK, then six matches with no second chances: the CPU's two picks first, three more teams, a kid with Boomer the kangaroo, and at last the kid nobody picked with the robot it built to get even. 2P co-op (the goals count) and 2P versus, a demo that plays when the title sits, the kids played and crowned, and our own codes (no saving or goals while on). A demo player in the tests wins the whole tournament with button presses.
• Ours: NOODLE, PIPPA, HOPS, MILO, SPARKY, NELL, KIKI, ROXIE, TOBY, SID, BUZZY and MOOSE in red and blue bibs, Boomer and his marble bag, Benchbot and its sweeper wall, the Coach, the Hornets' gym, every line of talk and the music.

27 · SOUNDINGS

A tribute to Divers (UFO 50 #27).

• Plays the same: a raft on a dark sea is the only light: its three unlabelled pictures are the shop, the kit and the ladder down, and the log beside them shows the level, gold, the deepest dive and eight kinds of relic. Under it one hand-built cave of eight regions lies in darkness and silence; the diver sees only a little way and swims eight ways, slowly until the fins turn up. Creatures are visible and one sprite can be several: some dart, some shoot (a sting, never a death), nippers burst from their nest and chase, smog eels and clampers come out of vents, haunts pass through rock. A opens chests (gold and relics at once, items as pearls that open at the raft; some chests can't be seen), pulls levers and reads the walls; B opens the item menu; a charge breaks cracked rock.
• The fights: first person, the creatures above. Moss, Reed and Skip are given their orders in turn (left hand, right hand, wait, run), then the divers act left to right and the creatures after them. Every use costs one use, a miss or a wasted guard too; running is a flat 25 % and a failure throws the whole round's orders away. Shields take their share off every hit and cover whoever their holder defends; two bulwarks and a defend take a blow to nothing. Reef beats zap beats ooze beats reef. Clampers look before they strike, needlers prick, fronds mend, haunts bring friends back, dusksquids pick on the weakest, glimmers change colour every round.
• The log: written only at the raft. Surfacing heals, brings the fallen back, refills every use, banks the relics and opens the pearls; a wipe (or leaving mid-dive) loses everything since. One XP bar to level 16, gold and relics for better gear, the Abbot and his fronds in the sunken shrine, two levers in the deep for the last door, the Gloamheart at the bottom and two endings, the better one with the three hidden heads. The demo player beats it from the title with button presses, with and without the heads; the code MOON-WAKE starts with three eggs.
• Ours: Moss, Reed and Skip, the raft and its shed, the whole map and its eight regions, 18 creatures, the Abbot and the Gloamheart, every item and relic name, the heads (two of them nod to UFO 40's own Barbuta and Mooncat tributes), the notes on the walls, both endings and the music.

28 · DUNE EXPRESS

A tribute to Rail Heist (UFO 50 #28).

• Plays the same: rob a moving train and escape to your mount at the back before the train reaches town. Each heist opens with a look along the whole train, inside and out. While every guard stands still it's real time; once one is up and about it goes in turns, ten seconds for you (the clock runs) and three and a half for the lawmen (it stops).
• The rules: a guard shoots an outlaw he sees straight ahead, once, and then can only punch and throw; his bullet takes whoever is first in line, another lawman too, and a gunshot wakes everyone nearby. Duck behind anything a tile high, punch through walls, floors and ceilings, push, carry and throw barrels, crates, anvils, powder sticks and geese, hide and roll in a barrel, stand on a guard's head, and load the gun slowly. Levers flip every iron gate, the crank gun turns on the lawmen from behind, and rams run down whoever is in front.
• Structure: twenty missions in order for the same three outlaws, one or two a mission (a pair starts at opposite ends and takes turns), with loot, a rescue, a full belt of bullets and the Governor to finish; three stars a mission (no kills, every guard down, and Rail Heist's own time goals); 2P Versus on a longer train dealt fresh each time.
• Ours: Wade, Hush and Pearl, Old Hettie and Biscuit the camel, the Salt Line and all twenty trains (every one is won by a scripted run in the tests, without a kill and under its time goal), the powder sticks, geese, rams and the lucky horseshoe, and the music.

29 · ANTIPODE

A tribute to Vainger (UFO 50 #29).

• Plays the same: a side-on station of rooms joined by doors. Press jump again in the air and gravity flips: the suit falls to the ceiling, which is a real floor to walk, crouch and jump from, and it can flip as often as it likes; one-way plates hold it from the side its feet are on, and red and purple spike balls are live only one way up. Hold A for automatic fire with the facing locked (A is the main action, as everywhere in UFO 40; the original fires with B and jumps with A), aim over the head or, in the air, under the feet. Armor starts at 75; spikes do 100. At 0 a spare body takes over at the door you came in by, the room as you left it; with none left it's back to the last cradle. Cradles save, refill, and are the only place to see the map or move the four mods between FLIP, FRAME and GUN, each mod doing something else in each system (a heat wave, a heat-proof frame, double damage; a shadow that fires with you, a drone, three-way fire; a lightning ball, armor from harm done, shots through walls; a heavy drop, spike-proof soles, double range). They stack, but past one a system (two or three with dampers) flips, shots or hits cost extra armor.
• The station: the Gantry, the Brine and the Coil, joined by teleporters, and the Crown behind four ciphers held by four bosses (two minor fights besides); a spare body finds the boss with only 250 back. Every one of the 98 rooms is drawn by hand to be read both ways, floor and ceiling. Pass levels 1 to 3 open doors; barrels burn, cracked concrete breaks under the heavy drop, the lightning ball carries the suit through electric fields for up to three flips until it lands, targets inside walls take shots through walls, sentry orbs hold nano-walls, and heat and spike halls want the right frame. 25 armor cells (75 to 200), three spare bodies (2 to 5), two dampers and the four mods, six of them hidden; a quiet vault whose grey wall opens to a pad in the floor and one in the ceiling pressed at once; a code scratched under the first terminal. Halloran's walker raises the floor, and his last form's storm comes and goes at random. The goals are a mod, Halloran beaten, and Halloran beaten with every room and upgrade, after which the credits show who wears the suit. The demo player in the tests takes all of it, from the title to the end of the credits, with real button presses.
• Ours: the AP-2 suit, its pilot, Director Halloran and Obverse, Tallow Station on Mira-6 (the Gantry, the Brine, the Coil and the Crown: 98 hand-drawn rooms on our own maps, our own hidden spots and vault), every machine and boss, the mods' names, fifteen terminal logs, both endings, and thirteen tunes.

45 · DOT & DASH

A tribute to Mini & Max (UFO 50 #45).

• Plays the same: locked in a room during a party, a girl and her dog get small. Hold down to shrink into whatever is under you, hold up to grow back; the room at full size is the map, and where you shrink is where you arrive. Every speck of the room holds a micro world, the same for everyone, and the second tonic makes Dot tiny inside it, small enough for gaps one speck high.
• The rules: lift what you stand on and throw it, up in an arc or down under your feet to build steps, even at full size; what you hold makes you taller. Crackers, darts, boomers, rollers, quake blocks, hourglasses, venom that spreads, the Big Bang, and the dog himself as a weapon. Dash roams on his own, stops and goes when told, gives tips, and his nose points out spots worth shrinking into. Hearts, energy that makes throws hurt, falls too long for someone so small, a clock that ticks on every time you grow back, and at no hearts you are simply full size again.
• Structure: 39 upgrades (tonics, the mitt, the satchel, bug commands, kicks, spins, sprint, armour, wings, hearts and energy eggs), each kind in many places that give the next level; five shops; flyports; favours for the tiny towns; big glints two to a dangerous cave; 500 glints to the cat in the door knob, a clockwork knight stopped from the inside, and after the escape, 1,000 more to put the room in balance.
• Ours: Dot and Dash, Granny Thimble and Professor Crumb, Queen Tabitha and Sir Sprocket, Tock in the clock and Nib in the keyhole, the lumber room and every town in it (Tuftville in the rug, Fernby and Loamton in the pots, Tickburg on the clock, Glimmer on the reading lamp, Wormwood between the walls, Latchtown on the door knob), the generator, and the music.

46 · MANDIBLES

A tribute to Combatants (UFO 50 #46).

• Plays the same: you are one blue soldier ant, slow on purpose. B spits the way you face in eight directions. Hold A for the command cross: up lays workers or soldiers (from anywhere) or withdraws, right is Fall In, down Free Will, left Halt, each with a soldiers-only version a second press away. Commands reach the ants within a few tiles (they show "!"). Soldiers on Fall In spit when you do, so a stack of five and you one-shot a red ant, but orders go stale in two seconds, one step in four goes astray and an ant that loses sight of you forgets you. Carry green sap to your queen: a worker costs 1, a soldier 2. Only your ant comes back, free, after a moment, as long as your army has an ant left; the field is lost when none is. A dead queen stops hatching and leaves food, as do dead longlegs.
• The reds: twice your health and about twice your numbers, food by their queens, few soldiers. They beeline for sap and turn for home the moment they pick some up, come straight at you when their jaws are empty, send the odd scout, get stuck on corners, and every soldier locks its aim, so an angle beats it. Lure a red worker onto your queen and it gnaws at her from then on while you pick it off. Ants that touch brawl in a cloud of dust; health, type and luck pick who walks out. The longlegs eat anybody; lead one into the reds.
• Structure: twelve fields on a branching road to the capital (a hard wall on the west road, an easy one north, side roads to a wide lawn and a garden of longlegs), a pointless bonus field, and 2P versus on three fields. The demo player in the tests wins every field with button presses.
• Ours: the Bluebell Colony and the Rust Horde, General Stag and his letters, the longlegs, every command's name, all 16 fields and the music.

30 · FLINTHOLD

A tribute to Rock On! Island (UFO 50 #30).

• Plays the same: beasts come down fixed roads to the cave, wave after wave; the cave has 30 hearts. Build for as long as you like, then sound the horn facing the road. Pim walks eight ways, fairly slowly, and holds B to throw the way she points, diagonals too; her arm and weapon (bones, a stone axe, a fire axe through armour) are bought at the cave between waves. Any beast that touches her costs the cave a heart. Each spawn point pays 20 meat a wave, ticking in over a short pay-out when a wave ends; kills pay at once, and 99 is the most you can hold.
• Hunters, hens and fire: a thrower climbs to spear, barb or bow, sling, hurler or boulder, or torch, blaze or pitch, with the original's damage, rates and reach. They throw straight at where a beast is, so quick ones get away. A fire pit beside a hunter adds half again; hens pay 5 a wave raw and cook by one pit in two waves or by two in one (or at once, if you set them down during the pay-out), then sell for 30.
• Structure: ten stages and three villages on the island map (two found only by walking off the map), each stage's last wave a boss, twenty waves and all Four Lords at once to finish (a quarter of an hour), and no music while you build. The title plays a demo when left alone, and the demo player in the tests wins every stage and village with real button presses.
• Ours: Pim, the Hearth Clan and Flint Isle, all 13 layouts and their waves, the nippers, redbacks, fangcats, clubtails, gliders, gnats, the shagtusk and the Four Lords (Snap, Jaw, Plate and Gale), the villagers and the music.

31 · TILTSHOT

A tribute to Pingolf (UFO 50 #31).

• Plays the same: golf seen side-on on courses built like pinball tables. LEFT and RIGHT turn a dotted guide; hold A and the meter fills and stays full, but hold it there and the golfer flashes red (EASY NOW!) and blows up, and the stroke is gone. Let go to swing. While the ball flies, A slams it down once a stroke, keeping its speed across (a SLAM lamp on the dot-matrix display shows it is ready); slammed onto a slope that falls away it races off on fire. Sand stops it dead, water and pits send it back to where it was hit from (the stroke counts, nothing more), a fast flat ball skips across water, and the hole counts the moment the ball is in the cup. SPLASH!, KA-BOOM!, BIRDIE! and the rest flash up on the display, pinball style.
• The courses: bumpers, spring pads and spring lines that throw far harder than bumpers, orange movers on thirteen holes (blimps, hop-bots, kites, fish, sparks, trundlers on the ground and lanterns on chains) that break at a touch and nearly stop the ball, purple junk that breaks and slows it a little, pegs, roofs, tunnels, bridges, a pillar hanging from the sky, and a red block with a strange message. No hole but the par 1 can be aced without a slam, and the tests prove it.
• Structure: eighteen fixed holes in order at the original's pars (61 in all, with the par-1 TOSS-UP at 9 and the par-6 LAST ORBIT at 18), eight golfers on the board, lowest total wins; the CPU rivals are weak and random (the best of them ends 4 to 13 over par). 1P or 2P versus, five golfers who all play the same, the original's two stats, and a code in the credits that works like a terminal code. The tests replay a route round every hole with real button presses (34 strokes in all).
• Ours: the Comet Classic, Nova, Digby, Peaches, Tuck and Moss, the twelve regulars, Wick (HOMESPUN) and Kip (SKYWELL) by the code, all eighteen holes, the movers and junk, the words on the display, and the music.

32 · FORLORN HOPE

A tribute to Mortol II (UFO 50 #32).

• Plays the same: 99 volunteers wait on the counter over the troop's door, and there is no way to get more. Each life you pick a trade there: the mason swings a mallet and turns into a stone that stays where it is made, in mid-air too; the hunter shoots far (20 shots) and leaves a pouch that refills ammo forever; the runner double-jumps, throws knives (5) and leaves the one waystone, which UP on the pad by the door goes to and back; the tinker throws spanners in an arc (15) and leaves a chute down through the ground; the sapper has no attack and blows up for 15. Tap B to attack; hold it until the volunteer flashes and let go to give them up; the charge carries through a waystone or a chute and can be let go there (a mason's stone just under the waystone, again and again, is the endless climb), and dying while holding it sets the gift off anyway. Nothing is put back: foes keep their wounds and stay dead, and keys, open doors, stones, pouches, chutes and the waystone stay for the whole run. Seventeen kinds of foe with the original's hit points, three plates raising yellow, green and blue blocks only while weighed down, drains, combs and bells you can block or break, loose rock and out-of-place brick that blasts open, three tall gulpers you feed a volunteer each, and four thorn hearts of 30, which alone stay on the black screen between lives. One sitting, no saving.
• Structure: one fixed map of 190 x 170 tiles (about 6 x 10 screens). The obvious way on from the camp is a blind drop into spikes. The tower way (three plates, the gulper, the stingback, the slime and the fly maker, a sealed wall), the bottom-right chimney (every plate held, then bombed into the hearts' room) and the castle way (keys, doors, the bloater's corridor, the dungeon) all lead to the hearts, past a bottom-left pocket of keys and plenty of dead ends. Win having lost fewer than 50 for the Alien; the title keeps the original's two stats, the most doors unlocked and the most plates pressed. Two players take turns from one pool; a code lets out only three trades. With real presses the demo player wins having lost 21, an expert plan wins having lost 12 (the original's best known is 13), and the chimney and the castle way are walked too.
• Ours: the volunteers of Holloway and their five trades, the camp and the Old Yew, the meadow, the undercroft, the caves and the vault, the deep, the sump, the roots, the undermarsh, the chimney, the tower and Thornkeep, the whole map, every foe (wall-eyes, oozles, midges, hornets, shellbacks, hatcheteers, squawkers, tuskers, idols, drakes, hornet bells, rust knights, bloaters, broodhens, hornheads, stingbacks, gulpers) and the thorn hearts, the words, and eight tunes, one for each trade.

33 · DUKES UP

A tribute to Fist Hell (UFO 50 #33).

• Plays the same: pick one of four fighters (POWER, RECOV, TOUGH and THROW from 1 to 3, the original's four spreads) and walk the street left to right. A punches: four jabs, then a kick that knocks down; take a breath after the fourth and the string starts over, so four, a breath, four more keeps anything stunned, bosses too, and a kill always brings the kick. A blow reaches further up the street than down it, so a little below a ghoul you hit it and it can't hit you. Nothing ever shields you: not a dodge, not the floor, and a jab on anyone lying there stands them back up, stunned. Hold A for a charged punch, A on the run for a dash attack, A in the air for a flying kick; A and B together spin, which costs health only if it hits a ghoul. Walk into a stunned ghoul to grab it: hit it, throw it (into others, or into a hole), or jump with it for a slam. Each fighter has a move of their own. Ghouls come on as the view scrolls past their mark, whoever is still standing, so walking on slowly splits them up.
• The town: five fixed nights with a boss each (Big Ram, the Boar Baron, the two Visitors, the Undertow, which you can only hurt by throwing ghouls into it, and Alderman Grist in two forms after a five-wave lift), the original's twelve kinds of ghoul, food that heals or pays at full health, coins, weapons that are mostly a trap, a car, mines, holes, a runaway thresher, chandeliers. One health bar for the whole run: it never refills by itself, and the corner shop between nights sells a heal for $5 or a stat for $20.
• Structure: continues are unlimited and restart the night with your cash and stats, but only a run with none brings Gran home. Walk left as night 1 begins and you find the gym: endless waves, passers-by every third one who drop food, weapons or a dog. The goals: hold out for nine waves in the gym, beat the game, beat it without a continue. Two players at once. The demo player in the tests beats all five nights and the gym with real presses and no continue.
• Ours: ROOK, PIP, MACK and DOLLY, Gran Bess, Lampwick (Market Street, the roller rink, Canal Row, the night ferry, the waxworks, the old orchard, the graveyard, the visitors' ship, the promenade, the fishing jetty, the dunes, the Grand Hotel, its lift and penthouse, and SKID KIDS's gym), every ghoul and boss, every layout, the story, the words and sixteen tunes.

34 · BRAVADO

A tribute to Overbold (UFO 50 #34).

• Plays the same: one fixed arena, the same every fight: you start in the middle, monsters come in a few at a time from the four corner pads (never more than twelve on the floor; the bigger the prize, the quicker, up to a prize of 900), and lava pools sit in the way. Six health, and nearly everything takes six. Tap A to shoot the way you face; hold it and the gun keeps firing the same way while you walk, so you strafe. B drops a bomb that kills everything in its blast outright, you included. Lava bites every half second; monsters don't care.
• The bet: fight 1 pays a fixed 100. Before fights 2 to 7 the next fight starts as one random pack for 100, and every UP THE STAKES adds 100 and another random pack, named only once it's in, up to 16 packs and 1,600. Fight 8 is always full: twelve packs, then the Pit Boss, for 3,200. The back room sells sixteen kinds of gear at the original's prices (7,900 for the lot), one of them on sale and another hiked by 100 every visit: health, medkits that heal past full, blast and shot guards, faster, harder, fanned and bouncing shots, a shove, a drone that copies you a moment later (its bombs included), lava walking, a dash (fire twice on the move) that flattens anything, more bombs, a detonator, nail bombs and bait bombs.
• Structure: eight fights, then the ending; dying ends the run. The goals: win a fight worth 500, come out of all eight standing, and walk out with 4,500 or more. Two players share the pit, the purse and the gear. The demo player in the tests wins whole runs from the title with real presses, and on its cherry plan banks 1,300 for the last fight and walks out with over 4,500.
• Ours: Dice, who bet her ship on a pair of sevens, and her brother Domino; the Glass Pit and the back room; mites, gasbags, brutes, powder kegs, stilters, peepers, slag, the Pit Boss and its fizzers; every piece of gear's name and icon; the story, the words and ten tunes.

35 · CLARION CALL

A tribute to Campanella 2 (UFO 50 #35).

• Plays the same: the Campanella ship (CHIME CIRCUIT's flight model, BELLHOP's numbers): gravity, a held thrust (B), a drifting steer, the slash (A) to the side you last steered, DOWN to fall faster. Now it has a bar of 8, walls bounce it (and hurt at anything over a nudge), enemies take two points, and it can set down: slowly, on level ground (grey pads take a little more), where the mark shows, and Clary hops out; any harder touchdown costs a point. One tank of 800 for the whole run, and it runs low; dry, it burns a coin a frame; with none, it falls and bursts. Outside on her feet Clary has no bar: one touch or a drop of more than a tile ends the run. UP at a door goes in, and the view comes closer: side-on caves left to right with a skull at your back, blocks, barrels and a chest of three free things, one to keep, and rooms: shops (icons and prices, no names, one buy each), health stalls, friendly folk with free fuel and advice (and a rude one), the wriggler trial, the cursed encounter, a sexton in every second area. Every door but the gold one shuts once you're back out. In there Clary uses the bar, fires her pistol (three shots in the air at most; nothing has a grace after a hit), aims up, crouches, drops through thin floors. A is the main action, as everywhere in UFO 40 (the original has thrust on A).
• The run: nine areas: the Cellars, the Arboretum or the Icehouse, the Gullet, Cogtown or the Cloister (chosen on the station map), then the Spire and its fixed Crown. Every other area is generated for the run. Fourteen notes in each: the tenth shows the gold door, locks the rest, turns the spares to plum coins, brings out clock rings and hatches the pods, and a clock reading 60 runs down at double speed; at 0 the latecomers come. Each region has its own enemies (gold champions among them) and its own doors (a charm stall, a boon, free armour, a shortcut, a mega store, the dark and its light switch, magnets and their switch); the Cellars drop loose stones on you, the Cloister's walls drink your fuel. Sixteen upgrades, a yellow key for one yellow door, the Lobber and three Hush Engines keeping Ansel locked away, Lady Hush, and behind the sextons' chain of peal sheets, straight on to the secret Grandsire Tock. Then the escape, and one of three endings; any win over Lady Hush earns the gold goal, Ansel or not. The demo player in the tests reaches all three on generated runs with button presses.
• Ours: Clary and the Clarion, Ansel, Lady Hush, Grandsire Tock, the Carillon and its seven regions, the generator and all its cave pieces, the Crown, the sextons, the dozing tortoise, every enemy, the sixteen upgrades, the music and the FULL-PEAL code.

36 · HOOPLA

A tribute to Hyper Contender (UFO 50 #36).

• Plays the same: one screen, two fighters and no health. Everyone starts with one hoop; one drops in at GO and every 15 seconds after (the count is bottom centre), on fire for a moment, so touching it is a hit. Hold five at once and the match is yours. A hit stuns you briefly and knocks a hoop out to bounce round the pit for whoever touches it first; if you were dizzy, two. Hold DOWN to block: a lunge into a block leaves the attacker dizzy, but shots go straight through it, and a lunge (DOWN + A) goes straight through shots. A is each fighter's weapon and UP + A its alt shot; B is their own way of moving: TANSY's double jump (the spin turns knives, her own bounce off two walls and can cut her), CLAMP's claw line (its first swing hits, it takes hoops), MOSS turning his gravity over, BRISTLE's spring traps, PEWIT's wings, COLLIER's cage lift (it stops level with ledges; his charge held is a shield), ASTRA's rocket pack and GULP's charged leap (a glowing uppercut after a second; his dart is aimed while held). A is the main attack, as everywhere in UFO 40 (the original has the move on A); the card's CONTROLS page can swap them back.
• Structure: the tournament: pick a fighter and beat all eight in a random order, the last your own double in the other colours; lose and you get one rematch with that opponent. On the RIOT challenge each match brings a second foe. The draft battle: seven on the board, a snake draft of three each, then matches, each side fielding a different one of its three, to five wins, against the CPU or a friend. Exhibition: two players, one match, back to the pick. Options for the challenge, MOSS's upside-down controls and the hoop rules. Twelve fixed pits come in a random order and colours. The goals (on standard hoops): win a draft battle, win the tournament, and win it with four different fighters. The demo player in the tests does all three from the title with button presses.
• Ours: TANSY, CLAMP, MOSS, BRISTLE, PEWIT, COLLIER, ASTRA and GULP, their weapons, colours and endings, the Glass Pit's twelve pits (BRAVADO's pit on ring nights), the night porter's note, the old-rules code and twelve tunes.

37 · IRONVOW

A tribute to Valbrace (UFO 50 #37).

• Plays the same: first person on a grid: UP and DOWN step a tile, LEFT and RIGHT turn a quarter, and every step and every action passes a turn (the clock on the right moves). A opens the menu: the pack and PASS TURN always, and whatever is in front (a door, a lever, a torch, a chest, a well, the throne, the pedlar, the knight). Health never comes back by itself; mana does as you walk. The foes float down the halls as flames and hunt you; touch one and the fight is real time, side to side: line up, strike (A, again for a combo of three), guard (DOWN, for stamina, until the shield gives), roll (DOWN, then LEFT or RIGHT), and wait for the wind-up, because most foes guard until they strike. Run dry and you're exhausted. B starts a spell: trace its glyph with the pad before the time runs out (the fight waits). Seventeen glyphs; the walls teach sixteen of them, but any works from the first step if you know it.
• Structure: seven floors, 0 to 6, in three parts, a throne on each from floor 1 (three points for motes, the last free), the Wraith Warden at the end of floor 2 (light every torch of the Gaol and he starts at half health; put them all out and he leaves his shield), the Comb Matron at the end of floor 4 behind her two claws, and on floor 6 three stones to find and set in a pillar to wake the Pit Regent, then the climb out. The game saves when you reach a floor, and only then; death starts the floor again. Four secrets lead from the old armoury's oathblade through the Amber Knight's coin and a wish to the Dawnbrand. The goals: 8 in any stat, slay the Regent and escape, and slay him with the Dawnbrand. The demo player in the tests does all three from the title with button presses, and plays a short demo when the title is left alone.
• Ours: IRONVOW, Blackspire Keep and its seven floors, the knight, the pedlar, the Amber Knight, the Pit Regent and his stones, the Wraith Warden, the Comb Matron, every foe, item and glyph, and nine tunes.

38 · RESTLESS

A tribute to Rakshasa (UFO 50 #38).

• Plays the same: one hit kills, and there are no lives. You start dead: every death, that one included, sends Gaunt's wisp into the Low Glow to gather 1, 3, 6, 9, then 12 pieces of his soul, each circled by a guardian that lunges; a piece taken keeps the wisp safe a moment, and a guardian's touch ends the run for good. Come back and you rise on the spot, the screen swept clean, with the plain staff again. Every death also changes the world: lackeys come thicker and more of them throw spears, gnats go frantic, torches spit fire, the first boss turns blue and tougher, gloomcrows fire three volleys, and from six deaths the clock runs at double speed; treasure gets likelier and richer, so dying on purpose early is a real plan for points. Old Gaunt walks at one slow pace, jumps one fixed arc he can't steer, freezes a moment on every landing and aims only ahead or on the slants. A taps a shot or, held, charges one (A is the main action, as everywhere in UFO 40; the original shoots with B). Torches hold treasure, hourglasses, lilies, eggs and wheels of three weapons (seeker, ember, scatter); pits drop you into a room of foes rather than killing you; bells call Grandmother Ash up to take a death back; Blink the owlet takes a hit and points out hidden spots; every 5,000 points the next foe drops a gift.
• The run: three stages, each in two halves of 150 seconds, a fight at the end of each half: the Bridgekeeper, Old Rattle, Three-Tongue, Gust and Gash, the Rammer and the Hollow King, with the original's hit points. Five high scores with initials; the goals are three comebacks in a run, the King laid to rest, and that with 50,000 points. The demo player in the tests plays from the title to the ending with real button presses.
• Ours: Old Gaunt and Mossfold, the wisp and the Low Glow, Blink, Grandmother Ash, the Hollow Host and all its foes, the six bosses, the Greenwood Gate, the Old Shrines, the Toad Warrens, the Sunken Court, the High Falls and the Hollow Crown (64 screens and six pit rooms), and seventeen tunes.

39 · BUZZBOLT

A tribute to Star Waspir (UFO 50 #39).

• Plays the same: a fast vertical shooter over the whole wide screen, where one hit is a loss and two ships is all you start with. Tap A for the ship's wide spread at full speed; hold it for focused fire, and the ship slows right down. Most shots are aimed where you were, so they can be herded; green ones home in. Foes that aren't shot leave; bosses don't, except wave 1's pair, which flies off if left alone.
• The letters: every kill drops one, always in the order B, Z, Z, B, Z, Z (a boss drops three), and you fly into them. Every three make a word: BZZ puts the multiplier up by one with no limit, ZZZ brings an option (two at most), BBB and ZBB are the ship's own specials, and any other word puts the multiplier back to x1. The multiplier carries on from wave to wave and is cashed in on the bosses and the golden swarm. Losing a ship costs the multiplier and every gift. More ships come at 25,000, 100,000 and 200,000.
• The ships: the lacewing's weaving pairs and its lance, charged by not firing; its drone dives at foes, its orbs soak up shots, its hiveship beams. The shieldbug's wide fan and crescent; its drone shields, its power-up and its screen clear. The firefly's three streams and laser; its drone fires rockets, BBB gives it a bomb for B, ZBB a dragonfly ally.
• Structure: five waves, each ending in a boss and a time bonus that is never multiplied; wave 3 is the hard one, wave 4 has walls with gates and a golden swarm worth a fortune, wave 5 is the last boss alone, all aimed fans to weave through. An opening of our own comes before the title; after the last boss, the ending, the credits and the high-score table. The demo player in the tests clears all five waves with each ship, pressing real buttons.
• Ours: the Hive Wing, the B and Z letters, the Blight and its bosses (the Ironbacks, the Bloatfly, the Queen Tick, Scythewing and Dustwing, the Sporeheart), every wave, the opening, the table's names and the music.

40 · HELLSPUR

A tribute to Grimstone (UFO 50 #40).

• Plays the same: a full-size Western RPG in Hell. In the burning saloon the angel reads each of eight strangers and carries out four at most (one, two or three is allowed); the rest burn, and the posse is yours for good: a cowhand, a spiritwalker who learns from ten animals (each offers a choice of two), a one-armed surgeon whose medicine goes further, a scholar who learns foes' tricks by watching, an outlaw who picks pockets, a homesteader with shotguns, heavy guns and bribes, a showgirl whose dances lift the whole posse, and a hound who does as he pleases. No random battles: wisps appear on the map and in the dungeons, step once for every step you take toward the nearest of the posse (the fallen trail behind in their pine boxes and still count), and a touch starts a fight; on hired horses they step once for every two. Every plain attack is a timing bar: yellow hits, red is a critical that can't be dodged, anything else misses; pistols that fire twice or thrice put that many marks on it, a shotgun has one big yellow, a heavy gun fires while A is held and must reload, a bow is all red in anyone's hands but Sage's, and holding RIGHT runs it faster. Turns by speed, ATTACK, SKILL, ITEM, DEFEND, RUN; the front two get hit more. Levels to 50 on shared XP, equipment in two hands, neck, body and feet, twenty things in the bags, hotels, chapels at 20 a level, a bank paying two in a hundred after every fight, trains, wipes that send you to the last chapel with an empty purse, saving only in towns. Every town door but the station's and the stables' opens on a room with a counter, and hotels have an upstairs. Eleven towns, twenty dungeon floors, nineteen boss fights, four riders in a bone tower whose last gives you winged horses, three spikes to pull, and the last fight won when Zenith falls. Gift at level 10, gold for the ending, the cherry for ending it with every one the angel saved still standing. The demo player plays the whole game from the title.
• Ours: the Territory of Calico and its eleven towns, all twenty dungeon floors, Tucker, Sage, Hollis, Quill, Vera, Hattie, Cora and Biscuit, the angels Wren, Ambrose and Cassius, the widow Tallow, Brutus, the Tallyman, Jackal Jack, the Mimic, Black Molly, the Storm Crow, the Cinder Worm, the Saguaro Mother, Blight, Carnage, Hunger and the Reaper, the Governor, Zenith and Nadir, all 77 kinds of foe, 83 items and 37 skills by our names, bits for money, every word and twenty tunes.

43 · SHOWSTOPPER

A tribute to Elfazar's Hat (UFO 50 #43).

• Plays the same: a top-down run-and-gun. Clover walks eight ways; A fires her wand at once, and held it keeps firing in bursts with the aim locked while she walks any way (tapping fires faster but lets the aim follow the pad); B dashes, safe while it lasts, over pits, stunning what she passes through (A is the main action, as everywhere in UFO 40; the original fires with B). Foes, crates and barrels drop cards; every third card is a hand: a pair gives that colour's small power, three of a kind its big one, three different nothing. Purple heals or raises her to four hearts, green spreads and then enlarges her shots, orange brings a helper that fires with her, red drops bombs from each dash, blue sets spiked balls circling her. Powers last until a life is lost. Three hearts; a pit takes a life at once; a lost life brings her back on the spot in a bubble. Three lives a credit (two spares on the counter, nine at most), and continues as often as wanted, each starting the stage again.
• The run: five stages in the original's shape: Frostbell Lane (the Snow Engine and Granny Goggle), the Night Freight (fourteen waves on a train's roof), Lanternbury in two halves (the Boiler's chase up a winding road, then the Doppels), the Glass Palace in two halves (Old Wicks, the Ribbon and Morrow the Marvellous), and Morrow's Tower (twelve waves on a lift, then the Morrowmaw). Nine star passes hide in odd spots, three in each of stages I, III and IV; after a stage they pay for the Hop, where Jelly hops a board for coins and each mark on the meter is a life. On a run with no continue the Morrowmaw breaks open into the Heartstack, and beating it is the true ending. The goals: a life won in the Hop, the Morrowmaw beaten, and that with no continue. The demo player in the tests plays from the title to the true ending with real button presses. 2 PLAYERS (the original's co-op) is in the menu, greyed out until the next update.
• Ours: Clover, her helpers, Jelly, Morrow, his true face and the Heartstack, all 22 kinds of foe and the six other bosses, every row of the five stages, the cards' faces and the powers' names, and nineteen tunes.

44 · HOMESPUN

A tribute to Pilot Quest (UFO 50 #44).

• Plays the same: at camp Wick's yo-yo knocks glints out of the Glowstone, one a hit, and she has to walk over them. Old Burl plants six glintbuds (10, 40, 160, 640, 2,560 and 10,240 glints), each making a glint every 2 s; the workbench turns 1,000 glints into a bar; huts give up to six hands for six anvils (a bar every 2 minutes) and the Thinker (data), once a gear comes home; bins raise what camp can hold; Dr. Orrery researches better yo-yos, Fertilizer, Big Bins, the Pep Pill and Starfuel. All of it keeps working in real time while the console is on, in the menus or in another cartridge, but not while it is off.
• The Wilds: Tolly lets Wick out only with jerky, and every strip she carries becomes two minutes on the clock, which is also her health: a hit costs 30 s (more from the worst), and if it runs out she loses everything she found. The Wilds are one map, but each save shuts its own roadblocks and shuffles which caves hold the dungeons and the folk; a new game plus shuffles them again. Three dungeons each guard a ship part; odds from foes, pots and chests (at the original's loot rates) pay for hopstones, noodlers and Madame Shuffle's chests; Hush's letter to Tanger earns the thunderpipe; the Volthog guards the way to Mother Loom, who spins thread at camp once beaten, faster for every idle hand. Then Mawbo roams the Wilds: beat it six times in one trip for the Alien.
• Ours: Wick and the Tumbleweed, the moor-moon Oddmoor, Old Burl, Gristle, Dr. Orrery, Tolly, Kit, Hush, Tanger and Madame Shuffle, the Wilds and their six regions, the three dungeons, all 19 foes and the six bosses, and the music.

41 · RIMSHIRE

A tribute to Lords of Diskonia (UFO 50 #41).

• Plays the same: two layers. On the board the banners take turns stepping along the roads, one space on the first turn and two after, every move used; a banner can't cross its own trail, holding B takes it home, and stepping onto the other banner, its home or its trail starts a battle there, the side that stepped acting first. Inns hire out the same three disks all war and close after three visits, tomes teach one of three skills, seams pay for ten turns, chests pay once. The loser of a battle goes home, calls up its reserves and moves next; a war is won when a battle would start and the other side has no disks.
• The battles: the field's corners come from the four board tiles round the fight (woods with trees, tents and huts, crags with cliffs, dunes, lakes); a fight at a home has its own yard, and a castle's stone floors lie between bastions. Pick one of the first three disks in the queue, turn the aim, hold A to charge the pips, let go. A foe struck by one of your disks takes that disk's melee; two foes knocked together take 1 each. Water drowns, the haze closes in after five turns each, and five quiet rounds are a stalemate. Hold B to look round the field.
• Structure: fifteen disks for hire with the original's numbers (the ferret's three dashes, the brute's stun, the adder's poison, the piper's stars, the leech's thirst, the menhir that can't be moved...), eight skills, ten campaign wars that each bring one new idea, the random streak (both armies start alike; only the computer's aim gets sharper) for the cherry, and two players. The demo player in the tests wins every war with real button presses.
• Ours: Rimshire, the Brass and Plum banners, the Plum Empress and Lady Brass's letters, all sixteen disks and eight skills, the ten boards, the streak's board maker and the music.

42 · WITHERLEA

A tribute to Night Manor (UFO 50 #42).

• Plays the same: one still picture a room, seen through your own eyes, and a hand you steer slowly with the pad in eight directions; it turns into an arrow over a way out. A looks at things, takes them, and with a thing held uses it; in the bag (B) a held thing goes onto another to put them together, and every thing leaves once its job is done. Upstairs and the cellar are pitch black until the lamp is lit, and then you see only a ring of light round the hand. The Keeper comes when enough time goes by (later after every escape) or 2.5 s after any noise: the radiogram, the toilets, the pianola, the gramophone, breaking glass, the garage door, the car, a wrong turn in the hedges (6.5 s). That countdown stops between rooms and while you hold a thing. Near him the hand slows and shakes, too much to use anything. Hide (eight breaths on a sweeping bar, three misses and he finds you; four places are wrecked after one use, two last), run four rooms in a row, or knock him down twice each with the knife and the poker. Caught, you wake on the straw in the cold store with everything you had.
• Structure: 31 places, 54 kinds of thing, 17 diary pages; the car ending, the cellar ending after the loaded crossbow and the sprayer (the house burns behind you), the never-caught ending, and a face in the mirror after the credits for anyone who was ever caught. The goals: escape the Keeper, drive away, kill what grows under the house. A (Z / Space / Cross) does every action, as everywhere in UFO 40. The demo player in the tests plays from the warning screen to each ending with real button presses, and to the best one without ever being caught.
• Ours: Witherlea and the Morrows (Ada's diary, Tom, Pip, Barnaby and their dog), the Keeper in his bee veil, all 31 pictures and every puzzle (the hinges on the wrong side, the four brass bees in the ice, the well, the rocking horse and the wasps' nest, the key sealed in a hive, the rotor arm in the water butt, the flooded cellar and its pump, Tom's tape, the copper spray), and twelve tunes.

47 · WOBBLE DERBY

A tribute to Quibble Race (UFO 50 #47).

• Plays the same: you and two rival punters bet on races you can't touch. Before the meeting twenty races are run unseen, and their results set the odds. Each race you back one of three runners (only a win pays), with a cap that rises race by race and no limit on the last. Then the machine runs the race: speed, clumsiness and luck decide it, and a runner that tumbles over the line still wins.
• Between races: one look a race at the tip booth shows a runner's speed and footing and warns of meteors, garbage spills or smog. The Fixer does one job a race at the original's prices: a pep snack, litter, a nobble for good, pills that send a runner wild at its neighbours, or nightshade, which kills at the first fall. A minder stops them all but litter and fines the meddler. The Lender charges 15 % a race, compounded. The stables offer three runners for future races: sponsor up to three for $500 each time they win, and train them at the coach.
• Structure: meetings of 3, 6, 9 or 12 races, CPU rivals who fix races too, and up to three players at one pad. A demo punter in the tests plays a whole meeting with real button presses.
• Ours: Crater Downs under two moons, the 26 wobblers (each keeps the speed and clumsiness band of one of the original's runners), the sixteen punters, five of them cameos from other UFO 40 cartridges, the Tip Booth, the Fixer, the Lender, the Coach, Dot Dial and the Wobble Wire, and the music.

48 · DRIFTLINE

A tribute to Seaside Drive (UFO 50 #48).

• Plays the same: a red convertible locked to the road at the bottom of the screen while the coast goes by. Driving is aiming: the gun swings the way you steer, through a 90-degree cone, and stays put when you stop; UP brings it back to straight up. Hold A for the roof gun's stream, B for side pairs along the road, the only thing that reaches cars on it. One hit loses the car; the next drives in from the left, fully charged, and sweeps the screen.
• The meter: grey, green, red: the section sets how hard, how often and how fast the guns shoot, and nothing within it counts. It fills only while you drive left (the power drift, with sparks) and drains slowly otherwise, so the drive becomes a rhythm: surge right to shoot, drift left to charge.
• Structure: four fixed stages, morning to sunset to midnight to the open sea, each with its own foes and a boss you can see in the background all stage. Clear a stage without losing a car and a Breakout bonus stage follows: the car is the paddle, a coin in a bubble the ball, gunfire breaks blocks too, and clearing them all gives the coin, worth two more cars (the only extra cars there are). 1P, or 2P in one car: player 1 drives, player 2 aims and fires. A run takes about 13 minutes; the demo player in the tests wins it from the title with real presses, alone and in co-op.
• Ours: Lou and the Gull, Dee on the gun, Harbour Road, the Sundown Strip, the Moonlit Mile and Open Water, every foe and wave, the whales' swells, the three block layouts, the Zephyr, the Orrery, the Man in the Moon and Old Crab (visiting from ROOFCAT), a Beamdown saucer, and the music.

49 · FULL PEAL

A tribute to Campanella 3 (UFO 50 #49).

• Plays the same: the bell ship flies into the screen, free on a flat plane of 6 × 4 lanes, with no gravity, no fuel and no walls (orange marks warn of the edges). A fires into the distance down the lane you're in; B fires the side blaster along the plane, away from the way you're moving, and holding it keeps its aim: far off, the forward gun; here on the plane, the blaster. One hit costs a ship; the next is there at once.
• Grades, not points: each of the twenty waves is graded by the share of its foes you shot down, 0 to 100 (an owl for a 100). A 100 or a 0 in a stage brings a balloon round after its boss: red 1, orange 3, more orange for every 100, and 50 points buy a continue. Three ships a credit, never given back between stages; losing them sends you back to the stage's first wave. The final count is the twenty grades plus 100 for every continue left; 1,500 is the third goal.
• Structure: five fixed stages of four waves and a boss, sixteen foes (some come in from the distance and sit on the plane, some keep their distance and lob crosses, some can't be hurt at all), five bosses with one weak point each and a nastier second half, the last one healing until your sister flies in. A code takes your guns away. A second controller holding A turns the cockpit monitor into Clary's console: fifty four-colour micro-games, playable whatever the main game is doing (even on its game-over screen), each with a high score. The demo pilot in the tests wins the whole game from the title with real presses.
• Ours: Ansel and the Tinkler with his sister Clary on the radio (from BELLHOP and CHIME CIRCUIT), the bell-planet Knell, Outer Belfry, Tin Nebula, The Murk and Tollgate, all sixteen foes, the Gloameye, Knucklebell, the Inkwell, Shellback and Queen Sordina, every wave, all fifty micro-games, and the music.

50 · ECHO UNIT

A tribute to Cyber Owls (UFO 50 #50).

• Plays the same: four bats, four genres, picked in any order from a mission board. FLINT brawls through Marseille: one jump height (he faces the same way all through it), punch, punch, kick, a crouching jab, a jump kick that sends grenades back, a ki blast charged by holding A standing still until he flashes (it wipes out bullets and carries him forward), barrels to lift, throw and kick on, and more points for each extra foe one blast or barrel takes; troopers keep coming while he lingers, hazards flash a red "!" before they come, jetpackers shoot down at him, rats run low, and gulls left alone are worth 100 each; a key trooper (knock him down off the screen and the key is gone for good, the original's bug), a locked wall, a lift ride, Scrapjaw. VESPER holds the Andes pass: tap A to shoot as she walks (tapping fast is a little faster), hold it to plant her feet and steer the sight, always within a stretch in front of her; a tap on an item picks it up, and a grenade lobbed at her can be picked up and thrown back; B dives aside; a combo meter that multiplies points and damage, tanky troopers, red barrels to soften and set off, and two bosses at once. DART rides Cairo's ring road: tap to shoot, hold and the gun heats until the bike glows red, keep holding and it blows up (a whole life), B to jump cones and hurdles, a semi truck worth 500, Hog Wild. SABLE sneaks through Istanbul in eight directions, her items used only straight ahead, with three darts and three rounds (the kit at the bottom left): guards walk their beats, come to look at a noise or when she passes close, wake a darted friend, hunt her once seen (not cleverly: they keep one way and fire along it) and forget when she leaves the room; cameras raise the whole room unless she breaks them or blows the fuse box; stun grenades are silent and fly over walls; a room left unseen is worth 100 (50 if it heard a noise); cards, a cracked wall, Cipher. A is every bat's main action, as everywhere in UFO 40.
• Captured: two lives a mission. Lose both and that bat is captured, its mission locked, until another bat wins a jailbreak: a rolled, turn-based grid of one to three rooms, the bat's health and two skills on the left (a used skill counts down the turns until it is back, and does nothing till then); crates push; five colours of guard with health (chasers with guns or knives, sentries, grenadiers who blow up their own side, jetpackers, gatlings), shots that fly across the grid and hit whatever they meet, each other included; Flint's punch knocks a whole row down, Dart dashes through guards, Sable darts them asleep or turns invisible; take the card, bring it to the cell. Fail, and the rescuer is locked up too. With all four caught, the game is over.
• The Caldera: with all four missions done, Sable leads the raid on V.I.P.E.R.'s volcano, a second half as long as the first: 32 halls in three zones (and the long way round to the red door), Flint's climb up the Magma Works to Dr. Talpa for the red card, Dart's flight over the lava sea to Major Rattle's missile jet for the blue one, and Vesper against Madame Coil's gunship. No second chances there: game over shows the Dawn Cannon firing at noon. Nothing is saved but the best scores and the rescues. The demo player in the tests plays the whole game from the title, and once without losing a single life.

Install on PS Vita

You need a Vita running HENkaku / h-encore / Ensō with VitaShell.

1. Download ufo40.vpk from the latest release.
2. Copy it to the Vita:
   • USB: in VitaShell press SELECT to start USB mode, then copy the file to ux0:.
   • FTP: press SELECT for FTP, then upload the file with any FTP client.
3. In VitaShell, find ufo40.vpk, press Cross and choose Install.
4. Start UFO 40 from the LiveArea bubble (title ID UFOF00040).

Saves live in ux0:data/UFO40/. The game runs at 960×540 (the 320×180 framebuffer at exactly ×3) with 2-pixel bars top and bottom.

Windows

Download UFO40-windows.zip from the releases and run ufo40.exe.

• Saves go to %APPDATA%\UFO40. If you put an empty portable.txt next to the exe, it keeps them in a saves folder beside it instead.
• F11 or Alt+Enter toggles fullscreen. The window scale is in Options.

Controls

Console	Keyboard (PC / web)	PS Vita	Gamepad
D-pad	Arrows or WASD	D-pad or left stick	D-pad or left stick
A	Z, J or Space	Cross	A (bottom face button)
B	X or K	Circle	B (right face button)
START	Enter or Esc	START	Start
SELECT	Shift or Backspace	SELECT	Back / Select

• START opens the pause menu in every game: Resume, Restart, Controls, Quit.
• SELECT on a cartridge in the library opens its card: time played, times opened, goals, DELETE SAVE and its own CONTROLS, where A, B and SELECT can swap jobs for that cartridge only. B goes back to the main menu.
• Two players: the 2-player modes of Wet Paint, Bannerfall, Duskling and Cutlass Cup take two gamepads, or split the keyboard: player 1 on WASD + F/G, player 2 on the arrows + K/L. On the Vita (one controller) those modes are locked.
• Full Peal's hidden console is for a second player while player 1 keeps every usual key: a second gamepad, or the numeric keypad (8 4 2 6 to move, 0 or Delete for A, . or End for B).
• On phones the web page shows an on-screen D-pad with A, B, START and SELECT.

Building

The core is portable C11. Local builds on Windows use the portable w64devkit toolchain (gcc + make), and nothing needs installing.

make headless     # the headless runner
make test         # build it and run every scripted test in tests/
make shots        # regenerate the README screenshots and GIFs into docs/shots

# Windows desktop build (w64devkit + SDL2 mingw development libraries)
make sdl SDL2_DIR=C:/path/to/SDL2-2.32.10/x86_64-w64-mingw32

# Linux desktop build (uses sdl2-config)
make sdl

CMake does the same job for Vita, the web and CI. It reads the same file list (sources.mk), so there's only one list to maintain:

# PS Vita (inside the vitasdk/vitasdk docker image)
cmake -S . -B build-vita -DUFO40_VITA=ON && cmake --build build-vita    # -> build-vita/ufo40.vpk

# Web (with emsdk activated)
emcmake cmake -S . -B build-web && cmake --build build-web              # -> build-web/index.html

# Desktop + CTest
cmake -S . -B build && cmake --build build && ctest --test-dir build

The Vita and web builds run in GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/):

Workflow	What it does
test	builds the headless runner with gcc on Ubuntu and runs every test (Make and CTest)
vita	builds the .vpk inside vitasdk/vitasdk:latest
web	builds with emsdk and deploys to GitHub Pages from main
windows	cross-compiles with mingw-w64 and zips the exe with SDL2.dll
release	on v* tags, attaches the .vpk and the Windows zip to a GitHub Release

Architecture

src/engine/            platform-independent core (no dependencies)
  gfx.c                320x180 8-bit framebuffer, 32-colour palette, sprites with
                       flip / palette swap / outline, clipping, camera, dithering,
                       palette fades and flashes
  font.c               original 5x7 proportional font + 3x5 tiny font
  audio.c              4-channel synth (2 PolyBLEP pulses, 4-bit triangle, LFSR noise),
                       ADSR envelopes, vibrato, sweeps, arpeggios; UFO-MML sequencer
  input.c rng.c        pressed / held / released / auto-repeat; PCG32
  save.c scene.c       CRC32-checked saves; scenes with palette-fade transitions
src/shell/             the console: boot, main menu, 50-slot library, options and jukebox,
                       save data, pause menu, goal toasts
src/games/*/           one folder per cartridge: rules, art, audio, levels
src/platform/sdl2/     PC + PS Vita + Emscripten in one file
src/platform/headless/ scripted test runner, PNG / GIF / WAV writers, Vita LiveArea art

• Rendering. Games draw palette indices into the framebuffer. Once per frame, the platform layer runs the 57,600 pixels through a 32-entry colour table into one streaming SDL texture and scales it by a whole number. That keeps the Vita's 444 MHz ARM (which the game clocks up to) nearly idle. Palette fades and white flashes happen in that colour table, so they cost nothing.
• Timing. The game logic always steps at a fixed 60 Hz. A frame that lasts a whole number of 1/60 s ticks (within a millisecond) runs exactly that many steps, so a 60 Hz vsync gives one step per refresh with no drift or judder; other refresh rates fall back to an accumulator. 120 Hz screens don't change the game's speed.
• Audio.
  • Output is 48 kHz stereo, rendered in the SDL audio callback (or on the main thread on the web).
  • Music is written in UFO-MML, a compact text notation. For example @14 v12 o5 c8 e g ^4 [d e]2 sets instrument, volume and octave, then plays notes with lengths, ties and repeat blocks.
  • Sound effects use the same notation and take over one channel for a moment, just like old hardware.
  • Every track and jingle is original: 537 compositions across the console and the fifty cartridges.
• Art. Sprites are written as strings of palette letters in the C source (k ink, y yellow, C cyan and so on), so there are no binary assets at all. The Vita LiveArea images are drawn by the engine itself (ufo40_headless --vita-assets vita/sce_sys) and saved as 8-bit indexed PNGs.
• Saves.
  • Global progress (goals and settings) goes in one CRC-checked file.
  • Each game saves its own run or checkpoint (or, like Roofcat, just its high scores).
  • The main menu's Save data screen deletes one game's save, resets its goals (which clears its save too, since games rebuild goals from their saved progress) or deletes everything, play counts included.
  • Where they're stored: the exe folder or %APPDATA%\UFO40 on PC, ux0:data/UFO40/ on Vita and localStorage in the browser.
• Testing.
  • Tests are plain text scripts (tests/*.ufs) that press buttons, wait, use cheats to set up situations and then expect game state.
  • Grub Shift keeps its rules in one pure struct. An autoplay bot that looks two moves ahead plays whole contracts from it as a balance smoke test.
  • Underdelve checks its mine with probes built on its own physics: every room walked and jumped from every way in, the rooms reachable from the camp with each route into the tower, and no way into a room that drops a returning Mo onto spikes. Its opening and the smith's way into the tower are also played by buttons alone.

Example test (tests/ud_02_hazard_death.ufs):

# UNDERDELVE: spikes kill in one hit; a lantern goes out and Mo comes back
# where he entered the room.
game underdelve
wait 15
cheat no_gloom
cheat room 1 0 170 130
cheat clear_enemies
wait 5
expect lanterns == 6
hold RIGHT 60
expect deaths == 1
expect lanterns == 5
wait 90
expect state == 1
expect px < 180

Credits and license

• A vibe-coded project by @naniiic137: the design, code, pixel art, music and levels were generated with an AI coding assistant (Claude Code), directed and play-tested by naniiic137.
• Inspired by the idea and games of UFO 50 by Mossmouth. Go play the real thing.
• SDL2 (zlib license) handles windows, input and audio on every platform. vitasdk and Emscripten handle the Vita and web builds.

UFO 40 is non-commercial. You may play, share, study and change it for any non-commercial purpose, but you may not sell it or use it commercially.

• One licence for everything (code, pixel art, music, sound, levels and text): the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0.
• UFO 40 is free and stays free: no sales, no donations, no ads.
• It is an unofficial fan tribute, not affiliated with or endorsed by Mossmouth; "UFO 50" and its game names belong to Mossmouth. Rights holders with any concern can open an issue and it will be changed or taken down.
• SDL2 keeps its own zlib licence.