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