What a journey!

When I first played UFO 50, my honest review was "This is great, and Matthew will adore it." I'm glad to see you did!

Rock On! Island has grown on me now that I figured out that you can you know, build stuff. The first time I played it I couldn't figure out anything but stabbing.

Honestly most of my top games in the collection are the strategy games. I think short and sweet is such a perfect format for strategy games. Especially when I think of how bloated Fire Emblem games have gotten.

@Zero
Remember to cook your chickens! You get a good meat return on them and it's a good way to work around the 99 meat limit.

Rock On! Island is my "hidden gem" of the set.

Remember? Did I ever know that?

I know chickens give you meat and fire seems to help the people around it in some form but how do you cook chickens?!

@Zero
Yeah, the opening village area has someone mention it but it's easy to forget amidst all the other mechanics. At the end of a round, a chicken will produce 5 meat (presumably it lays eggs). If the chicken is near a fire by the round's end, she'll turn red. If a red chicken is near a fire, she'll turn into a roast chicken that you can sell for 30 meat. And if you have a chicken adjacent to TWO fires (say, one above her and one to the side of her), she'll cook automatically at the end of the round. Making a 2x2 "chicken farm" of two diagonal fires and two chickens is a good way to invest and get lots of extra meat.

@TriforceBun

What's the secret to making progress in Grimstone? Grinding required?

@Secret_Tunnel
I think I got a little lucky with Grimstone because apparently I ended up with some of the strongest characters. Bull (a good warrior type), Maria (a solid ranger), and especially Umbra (who by all accounts is the most versatile and useful possible member). Doc is less consistent but helped round out the party and give a second healer. At the beginning, I decided the ethically correct thing to do was to save the first four people I came across, rather than overthink their backstories and decide on who lives and dies based on that. Also, I love dogs but c'mon, I'm not saving a dog over a person (because I'm not a mid-20s misanthrope who lives on Reddit).

Grimstone has a few difficulty spikes, particularly in the second half, but I didn't find that I necessarily needed to grind that much. Typically I'd leave my teeth in the bank then just attempt a trek. Most of the time I'd make it, but if not, the Dragon Quest-ian revival system ensured I'd still make some steady progress (EXP, sometimes new items, sometimes more money than what I'd previously had) even when I got kicked back to the last town. Banking teeth pays off really well (some percentage per fight, I believe) so I'd definitely recommend it.

The game has a pretty good number of little secrets and extra scenes, which is good considering the genre. They didn't skimp on the content even though it's just one of 50. Poking around the world map is often worth it. Make sure your TV is on Game Mode too. Hitting the red area is way better than the orange, which seems to miss half the time.

@TriforceBun

Thanks!

Think you'll go for all cherries?

Ok I finished Night Manor. Got the bad ending and the other bad ending but I have no interest in playing through again to get the good ending. I had to use a guide for a few things.

This puts me at:

4 Cherries:
Camouflage
Porgy
Party House
Night Manor (wait how is this a cherry when I didn't even get the good ending?!)

3 Gold:
Rock On! Island
Mini & Max
Quibble Race

I'll probably for sure finish Avianos but other than that I feel like I'm reaching the point where I'm about ready to move on. There are a lot of other good ones but I don't quite have the motivation to keep at them, especially the ones that restart you from the beginning every time you lose.

@Secret_Tunnel
Probably not due to the amount of effort involved and as much as I like UFO 50, I don't particularly like a handful of its games much at all. I would like to eventually Gold all the games; I think that's doable enough without pulling my hair out.

@Zero
Yeah it does require mastery for some of the games which is a big ask for players who don't love that particular game. For Night Manor though, you pretty much beat it. I consider what you call the "good ending" to basically be a bonus easter egg thing; for all intents and purposes you saw the story to the end.

@TriforceBun Yeah but isn't the "good" ending well... good? Both endings I got did not end well for my character...

@TriforceBun

Did you get the physical version? I'm tempted to pick up the guidebook.

@Secret_Tunnel
You bet! It's awesome. Fantastic package worth of a fantastic game. Guidebook is really nice; if I had to be picky I wish it was even longer (it's 1-2 pages per game) but what's there is superb.

I also grabbed the physical version. This game is worth the double-dip!

We got this from the library and I watched a friend play through about 10 of the games. It seems really well done! I like that each is pretty unique. None of them grabbed him in such a way that he kept playing for more than a few minutes, but it was entertaining anyway.

@ploot

I have the physical too, as a single dip, but I haven't touched this since my trip to Romania in March. I started Pipistrello and the Cursed Yo-yo run then and just been stuck on other games since. I want to go back soon to see more of this one.