One More Go

Mortol, a game developed by UFO Soft and released on the elusive LX-1 in 1984 is a game about sacrifice. A quirky puzzle platformer where death is not only inevitable, but necessary. Each run starts with 20 chances to reach the end of the game, a number that may look generous at first glance, but you’ll soon realise that to make any progress in Mortol you’ll need to perform a number of rituals. Rituals that require sacrifice.

Spend a life to fling your character headfirst across the screen, skewering enemies and embedding themselves into the wall. Or maybe your efforts will be better served by encasing your character in stone to crash down on foes, levers, and spike pits alike. Or, when a more destructive force is required, the ritual of the bomb will detonate your character, destroying everything in their vicinity.

At first the use of these different abilities seem clear, but its not too many stages before the game starts testing their limits. Introducing environmental hazards that limit certain uses, or in some cases, allow entirely new ones. Then there are the pick ups that will add precious retries to your pool, placed in such a way that will prompt experimentation and precision gameplay in equal measure. Those totals carry over into the next stage, a persistent count that can be increased by replaying earlier levels.

Mortol, then, is a game about efficiency as much as it’s a game about sacrifice. Not only about finding the cleanest path through a stage, but knowing when to grab those pick ups, and understanding the cost of reaching each one. Mortol is a tidy little game, that has an exceptional soundtrack, an interesting difficulty curve, and some late game twists, but what makes Mortol truly exceptional, is that it’s just one game of fifty, that all show the same levels of creativity and polish.

You see, UFO Soft never really existed, and neither did the LX-1. They’re both the brainchild of Spelunky developer Mossmouth. Creators of UFO 50, a project that has been in the works for eight years.

UFO 50 is a collection of fifty games, charting the fictional history of UFO Soft as they release titles across all genres. Twists on arcade classics, idle clickers, grand strategy, tower defence, dungeon crawlers, sports, JRPGs, and deck builders. The variety on display is staggering, with each title polished to such a high standard that any one could capture your attention for hours.

By default the games are arranged chronologically, which means you can see the progress of their fictional development team, and how some games inform the design of others. While the technology that powers each game continually improves, they are always confined by the fictional specifications of the consoles that would have run them. They are not however, confined to the design principles of the time, with modern sensibilities folded in to create genuinely novel and surprising twists.

It’s a hugely inspiring piece of work, where Mossmouth repeatedly show the value of a good idea, creating a number of games that easily surpass the 8-bit games they are paying homage. There is enormous depth in UFO 50, and that’s to say nothing of the meta layers and the wrapper that each game is packaged within. It is an astonishing collection of games, and while not all of them will align with your tastes, you’re sure to find a few that will resonate, and will find plenty of intrigue in those that don’t. An absolutely essential game.