Porgy My Beloved

I heard of this UFO 50 thing while participating in Galactic Puzzle Hunt 2024. The idea of 50 fully-fleshed games was something I could not ignore - it’s too good to be true! So December last year, I went ahead and grabbed it.

My first pick was Porgy because the fish looked cute. It also ended up being my first gold and cherry, before golding anything else. I’ll just say, I loved every moment of the 7 hours I spent on this game! And I’m not even a fan of Metroid-vania. Porgy just clicked well despite that. Granted, I did look up the map on the internet for a tiny bit.

Tip

The Porgy experience gets tremendously better once you realize:

• Your fuel bar is not a timer. It’s actually an odometer. You don’t use fuel by staying in place. Feel free to take it slow!
• You don’t use fuel by firing torpedo either. Spam torpedo.
• You can hold B to keep firing torpedo, and lock your direction (e.g. move left while shooting to the right).
• When you return to the base without dying, you save your progress; this includes upgrades, destroyed 2x2 big rocks, and damage dealt to bosses. Seriously, 2nd layer bosses are pretty much impossible without realizing this.

A common complaint with Porgy seems to be that there are too few equipment slots, but I think it was fine? I saw a main challenge of this game as establishing and mastering your exploration strategies under various limitations. Equipment choice especially was a fun puzzle and I think it made the gameplay a bit more interesting for me, in spite of having to run back and forth a lot. I mentally named a few of those sets as “Observer Porgy”, “Excavator Porgy”, “Combatant Porgy”, “Treasure Hunter Porgy”, and so on.

My only wish is that the buster upgrade could have been permanent because it’s almost always necessary. All in all, the first experience with UFO 50 was a delight and I can’t wait for the other 49 games.