Conspiracy theorists everywhere rejoice before they get abducted and never return to their planet.
Developer: Rebourne Studios
Publisher: Back to Basics Gaming
Genre: Action
Type: Single Player
Release date: June 2, 2017
It has been highly debated whether intelligent life resides on another planet. If Earth happened to be at the right distance from the sun and had the right resources to sustain life, why not another? If they do exist somewhere out there, how advanced are they? It is believed that they are way more advanced than us, being able to freely travel through space according to reports of people saying they spotted a UFO, or UFO lights, in the sky. Even some state they were abducted, with their only evidence being strange markings on their body and missing a chunk of memory. Some even say that aliens took their family members and never returned them.
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In UFO – Unfortunately Fortunate Organisms, you play as an anonymous alien sent on a mission to defeat your species’ greatest enemy, an evil galactic warlord named Christos. This galactic meanie is threatening your alien brethren by building a weapon set to destroy your whole alien race. Luckily, the mothership noticed Christos before his weapon was fully constructed, only leaving you 30 days to bring him down.
Before you go out to fight Christos, you need to become stronger. So, neighboring planets are the way to go. It seems these aliens not only abduct humans but grind them up to use them as resources to put into upgrading their worker bee ships. Sorry to all those families missing your loved ones, but we need it more. Each human is clad in different colors showing their status. Blue shirted humans are not as valuable as gold shirted humans, having a 5:1 comparison on how many resource points they provide. Sadly, the planets are not hopeless to your abductions. It seems they visited these planets often enough to have red armored humans ready to shoot you down, whether on the ground or if you try to take them as resources and build turrets on their planet. If you lose all of your health, all the resources you gathered at the planet will be lost.
Your ship, a UFO, is very simple to control but is slow in some aspects. It feels slow to just go up and down and takes a while to accelerate, but you can outrun blasts if you just keep rotating around the planet. It takes a while to get used to it, and even longer on other planets, but once you get on a roll you are seriously on a roll. After a while, you will be accurate enough to pick up only one human in a group of three. Directing your shots is easy enough, but they curve based on where you are and where you are aiming at. Though you will most likely aim directly at something unless you miss, and it seems like it has a formula to it but it will mostly end up you guessing and hoping that shot will hit the human on the edge of your screen. Be careful when you have humans beaming up as it will most likely hit them. Also, before you exit the game, make sure you use the humans as it will assume you had none when you return.
For upgrades, you need humans and you needed them yesterday. You have four different places you can put humans in. One area is just for repairing your ship, five points equaling one health point restored. Another area is to upgrade your shots, temporary health, and bomb storage. You are not able to choose which one you want to upgrade first, but increasing how many shots you can do at once and having temporary health as well as your own is very helpful. I never used the bomb, as the enemies will just pop up again anyway and just shooting at them was faster for me, but you do need to accurately be above your enemies for the bomb to do damage. You can also upgrade your health to survive longer on planets and upgrade your storage so you can get more humans before you leave a planet. The last upgrade is to get to the other two planets. It takes 1,000 points to fully upgrade a station, 100 to access all planets, but they are valuable in their own way. At first, you’ll make decisions based on your needs, but once you get close to everything being upgraded you are basically golden.
On the human’s side, they are pretty flexible on their shooting end. Once you get on the same screen as the red armored humans or turrets, they will automatically aim at you and start shooting. No matter where they are, they will aim perfectly at you, never missing or the shot hitting the planet. Even if they are one pixel on your screen, they will still aim for you and shoot with pinpoint accuracy. I can swear it slightly clips through the planet surface, where your own shot will hit the planet otherwise, I do wish the armored humans and turrets had a narrowed shooting range. Once you get overwhelmed you are confirmed dead, especially on the later planets. After you get to the second planet, the shots increase to a two health point damage and seem to increase in number towards you. On the last planet, there is an insta-kill tornado, with tentacles blocking your way, turrets take more hits to destroy, and more enemies that hit for three health.
I do wish there was some visual representation for stronger shots and turrets. Once you go into a planet for the first time, it is baffling seeing the sudden difference when it looks the same as the one that only hit for one health. So perhaps a darker hue when the shots hit harder and making the turrets look more armored to indicate that it takes more hits would be helpful. I do also wish planets became reliable on their environment, killing aliens rather than increasing the number of red armored humans and turrets, as it more than likely ends up being overwhelming being shot down as you hit one of the environment hazards. I know that the humans are worth more on these planets, but it just makes destroying all the enemies on the screen before trying to go down and collect the humans the best strategy for the rest of the game.
Once you upgrade your ship all the way or hit the 30-day mark, it is time to fight Christos. I do like this battle up to a certain point. As you saw, in the beginning, the planet Christos resides in is protected by a force field, though it seems Christos is not smart enough to keep the power source inside the force field. You can attack the huge turret buildings, and Christos will eventually be revealed when the one he was in is destroyed and you can directly hit him. Lastly, he will go up in his own spaceship, which is where some problems come in. The red armored humans and turrets do three health damage to you but Christos does only one, which is weird. Up to this point, it is unlikely you get hit as it really is just a matter of going around the planet the whole time. However, Christos can spiral into an attack and the only opening you have to attack him where you can risk staying put is by getting hit by everyone or hoping a cheap shot does not get you. The enemy shots can completely go through the planet if you continue going around the planet, with a few specifically going in front of you when you least suspect it. Staying while he does his attack is beneficial but it opens you up to being shot down. I’m not sure if at the last stage the humans and turrets respawn, but I do wish it was a one-on-one especially when Christos told them to bugger off.
I do recommend not attempting to kill the boss without going to any planet just to get three achievements at once as it will definitely not end well. If you want to complete all achievements, leave that one for last as you do need to see the different stages to have a chance. Als, do not try to get to the third planet as fast as you can to fully upgrade everything early as you will fall into a cycle of death.
Overall
+ Upgrading system is easy and makes you make decisions on whether you need this or that first
+ Easy to control and get the hang of
+ Perma-death if Christos defeats you
+/- I do wish the third planet relied on its environment rather than how many enemies there are.
+/- More one-on-one battle on the last stage of the Christos battle
+/- Population can get a little out of control if you stay on a planet for a long time
– Enemy shots can go through the planet
– Enemies have pinpoint aiming and wide aiming range
UFO – Unfortunately Fortunate Organisms is one of those games you play to waste an afternoon if you have no desire to play others. There is really no reason to play again after defeating the boss unless you want to get achievements. I do like how you have a perma-death if you do not defeat Christos, alluding you to only stay in a worker bee status, but I do not really get the good ending in terms of what we were told. This is not a bad game, but it can be frustrating with enemies being able to shoot through the planet to perfectly hit you anywhere on the screen, even if it is folding onto itself. With how cheap it is, and being able to get a few hours out of it at least, it is worth checking out if you have nothing else to play.
