Derek Yu’s vision for a human-driven games industry in the story of UFO 50’s development
When booting up a recreation like UFO 50, a assortment of 50 titles whose 80s-inspired roots belie the fashionable design sensibilities that make them particular, it is easy to really feel overwhelmed.
The gathering was launched on September 18, 2024 to vital and industrial acclaim in spite of how uncommon it’s in the indie panorama, and it is exhausting to think about how one would go about tackling the development course of of such a huge homage to gaming and its historical past. So, we sat down with Derek Yu to do exactly that.
Yu, the rockstar indie developer behind Spelunky and Spelunky 2, labored on UFO 50 with a crew of 5 different indie builders for over eight years.
“Everyone on the team enjoyed the excitement and freedom of 80s gaming – when game design was less established and less dissected”
Jon Perry, a childhood pal of Yu’s, is thought for board recreation design, however turned to video games for this challenge. Composer Eirik Suhrke has collaborated with Yu in the previous, doing the music for Spelunky and Spelunky 2. Paul Hubans is a pixel artist and indie recreation dev recognized for Madhouse, Ojiro Fumoto is thought for the smash cell hit Downwell, and Tyriq Plummer is a pixel artist and animator additionally engaged on Catacomb Children.
We start our dialogue with Yu by diving into how this crew managed to wrangle the scope and perspective of such a huge challenge whereas coping with the common exigencies of making one recreation, a lot much less 50.
“When you’re working on a game, it’s important to zoom out regularly to make sure you’re not getting too lost in one small part of the project,” he says. “That’s even more crucial when it’s a collection of 50 games! What helped us zoom out was setting regular deadlines where we’d try to bring each game to a certain level of completeness.”
So far as collection-wide design ideas went, it was essential to Yu and his crew to attach games collectively once they might. Nevertheless, the first precedence from which all the things else flowed was ensuring that every recreation might generate its personal distinctive enchantment.
“The most important thing for us was that the games were fun and interesting to work on, so that’s where we started when it came to design. But we were always looking for opportunities to connect the games together and reuse connections we’d already made.”
Connections between completed games is one factor, however how did the crew go about structuring their collaborative efforts to create connective tissue between builders whereas UFO 50 was a work in progress? Yu says all of it got here all the way down to setting expectations.
Whereas he and John Perry directed most of the games in the assortment, Ojiro Fumoto specialised in one title: Sundown Drive. Even Suhrke, who did music for the recreation, has a few credit to his title, as do Hubans and Plummer. This sort of collaboration underscores the crew’s means to work collectively and respect each other’s concepts.
The gathering’s builders
| Picture credit score: Mossmouth/UFO 50
“The understanding was that a director of a game would have final say on its design, but everyone was open to collaborating and sharing their work,” Yu explains. “By release, every game had gone through multiple passes by different people.”
He continues: “Everyone on the UFO 50 team has a broad set of skills, but we each have our individual strengths and areas of special interest, too. We leveraged those unique skills in a very organic way – there was a lot of encouragement to just take the initiative if you had a good idea.”
A number of initiatives had been scrapped throughout development, however Yu factors out the underappreciated benefit indie recreation builders have: flexibility.
“I recall only around a half dozen games that were scrapped, and they were all scrapped early on in their development. So we didn’t leave too much on the cutting room floor, in the end. I think that’s an area where indies can really take advantage of their flexibility to work efficiently – you don’t have to make it difficult to implement an idea or to cut one.”
In line with Yu, this flexibility prolonged into UFO 50’s 80s-inspired design. After we ask why the UFO 50 crew selected the period, Yu emphasizes the DIY-spirit of games at the time and the way their gameplay and interfaces typically introduced out creativity in gamers and designers alike. Basing UFO 50’s lore on a fictional online game firm that revealed titles from 1982 via 1989 felt like the pure selection then for such an formidable celebration of what games may be.
“I think everyone on the team enjoyed the excitement and freedom of 80s gaming – when game design was less established and less dissected,” Yu says. “And even accounting for instruction manuals, I feel like games were less handholdy, sometimes for the worse but often for the better. There was a raw energy that was very adventurous and the technical limitations didn’t get in the way – if anything, it bred a lot of creativity. We wanted to capture some of that feeling while also applying the good lessons we’ve learned since then.”
Capturing such a feeling in 50 games, although, took longer than anticipated. Yu had initially envisioned the challenge launching in 2018. He says a quantity of elements led to the recreation taking for much longer to come back out than he initially deliberate, half of which being the launch of Spelunky 2 in 2020.
“Partly we just underestimated the work, which is common enough when you’re working on one game, let alone 50 at once! Also, for me, that initial release window was based on a slightly different idea of the collection, where the individual games were allowed to be a little more raw. After we passed that date, though, it became clear that this was one of those projects that needed to cook as long as it needed to cook.”
UFO 50’s title display
So Yu and Suhrke determined to concentrate on Spelunky 2 and ship that first earlier than turning their full consideration again to UFO 50.
In spite of the delay, when requested if he’d do something otherwise if he might return in time, Yu’s reply is definitive: “I wouldn’t change a thing, since both games [Spelunky 2 and UFO 50] launched and have been well-received. And sometimes you need to miss a deadline to put things in the right perspective.”
Yu says that playtesters offered worthwhile ideas on make the recreation really feel like a fulsome expertise in the yr main as much as its launch.
“We added most of our exterior playtesters in the final yr of development – up till that time we had our arms loads full simply working off of our personal ideas. As soon as the games had been all playable from starting to finish and it felt like a full assortment, we began inviting associates to attempt it out.
“Sometimes you need to miss a deadline to put things in the right perspective”
“For the most part, our testers validated the core principles behind UFO 50. Despite the overwhelming nature of having 50 games available at the start, the overall concept seemed compelling to people, especially as they engaged more and more with the fictional history. The hard part was massaging all of the details into the right places and making sure that everything – the games, the library, the fiction – worked well together and felt coherent. Design-wise, a lot of our discussions around the testing were about balancing different ways to approach the collection.”
The crew’s strategy struck us as a refreshing counterpoint to the common industry story of games being crunched on and launched at the final minute to fulfill company earnings targets.
Nevertheless, in spite of this fascination and all the achievement he discovered making UFO 50, Yu would warning new indie builders in opposition to making such a huge challenge. Whereas smaller games can nonetheless be a highly effective automobile for people seeking to hone their craft, he says, treating recreation development as an iterative studying expertise is way extra rewarding (and sustainable) than banking on one encompassing thought for years on finish.
“I don’t think UFO 50 is a great example for new developers to follow, because ultimately it’s still a single large game that took [over] eight years to make! That requires a lot of experience and runway. But you could plan to release, maybe not 50 games across eight years, but several games across a few years. Treating game development like a craft or discipline that needs to be learned over time, across multiple released projects, is a solid way to minimize your risk.”
Battling monsters in Valbrace, recreation 37 of 50 | Picture credit score: Mossmouth/UFO 50
Listening to Yu’s philosophy on games as works of artwork contextualizes the prospect of future innovation in the indie area and the place the craft goes from right here. So far as the UFO 50 crew is worried, the recreation ought to stand by itself, and post-launch assist will solely come in to repair bugs and streamline the expertise.
“To me the game itself is the main dialogue we’re putting out there – as an artwork, UFO 50 wasn’t designed to be something that keeps changing too much after release, barring any issues that are preventing players from engaging with it in the first place. Mostly we’re enjoying watching the community experience the game together and are trying to make ourselves available to support that as best we can.”
Yu lights up whereas discussing why he makes games. He places ahead a perspective brimming with the type of empathy that permeates the typically zany but completely polished merchandise for which he is recognized. His viewers has solely grown since he first launched Spelunky, a recreation that has bought over a million copies and delighted followers throughout the world. In line with Yu, games are a people-driven industry and ought to be handled as such, particularly in the indie area.
“The game itself is the main dialogue we’re putting out there – as an artwork, UFO 50 wasn’t designed to be something that keeps changing too much after release”
“Games are made by people more than skill sets, so find people you trust and enjoy working with first and foremost,” he says.
He continues to espouse this strategy once we ask him to elaborate on what he discovered throughout UFO 50’s development course of.
“I obviously learned a lot from the other members of the team, who sharpened my eyes in pretty much every area of game-making. The experience also validated a lot of lessons I’d learned from previous projects. For example, the importance of working with people you trust and the joy of providing meaningful experiences that aren’t necessarily what players expect or find immediately comfortable.”
Yu has a radically easy vision for the games industry as knowledgeable by his expertise engaged on UFO 50. He created the challenge with a shut group of collaborators and associates, so – once we ask what worth continuity has in recreation making – he shortly replies with the following: “I think continuity can be valuable, for sure, but it shouldn’t be forced – developers should work together because they want to.”
And, at the finish of the day, Yu says the impetus for UFO 50 was born out of a need to perform a easy but lofty purpose: to have enjoyable making games.