Derek Yu Envisions a Human-Driven Games Industry Through UFO 50's Development Story

Booting up UFO 50, a collection of 50 games with 80s-inspired roots and modern design sensibilities, can be overwhelming. The collection, released on September 18, 2024, to critical and commercial acclaim, is a testament to the power of collaboration and creativity in game development. To understand the development process of this vast homage to gaming and its history, we sat down with Derek Yu, the renowned indie developer behind Spelunky and Spelunky 2. Yu worked on UFO 50 with a team of five other indie developers for over eight years, including Jon Perry, Eirik Suhrke, Paul Hubans, Ojiro Fumoto, and Tyriq Plummer. We began our discussion by exploring how the team managed to wrangle the scope and perspective of such a massive project while dealing with the usual challenges of making one game, much less 50. Yu emphasized the importance of regularly zooming out to ensure that the team wasn't getting too lost in one small part of the project. Setting regular deadlines where they'd try to bring each game to a certain level of completeness helped the team stay on track. As far as collection-wide design principles went, it was crucial to Yu and his team to connect games together when possible. However, the first priority was making sure that each game could generate its own unique appeal. "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," Yu explained. The team's collaborative efforts were structured around setting expectations and respecting one another's ideas. While Yu and John Perry directed most of the games in the collection, Ojiro Fumoto specialized in one title: Sunset Drive. Even Suhrke, who did music for the game, has a few credits to his name, as do Hubans and Plummer. This kind of collaboration underscores the team's ability to work together and respect one another's ideas. "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 said. "By release, every game had gone through multiple passes by different people." Yu highlighted the importance of flexibility in indie game development, which allowed the team to scrap projects that weren't working and focus on the ones that showed promise. "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," Yu noted. The team's decision to base UFO 50's lore on a fictional video game company that published titles from 1982 through 1989 was inspired by the DIY-spirit of games at the time and the creativity they brought out in players and designers alike. "I think everyone on the team enjoyed the excitement and freedom of 80s gaming – when game design was less established and less dissected," Yu said. "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." The development of UFO 50 took longer than expected, with Yu originally envisioning the project launching in 2018. However, the release of Spelunky 2 in 2020 and the team's decision to focus on that game first before turning their attention back to UFO 50 contributed to the delay. Despite the delay, Yu wouldn't change a thing, citing the well-received launches of both Spelunky 2 and UFO 50. "I wouldn't change a thing, since both games launched and have been well-received. And sometimes you need to miss a deadline to put things in the right perspective," Yu said. The team's approach to game development is a refreshing counterpoint to the usual industry story of games being crunched on and launched at the last minute to meet corporate earnings goals. Yu would caution new indie developers against making such a vast project, instead advising them to treat game development as an iterative learning experience. "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," Yu explained. Yu's philosophy on games as works of art emphasizes the importance of empathy and people-driven development. "Games are made by people more than skill sets, so find people you trust and enjoy working with first and foremost," he said. The experience of working on UFO 50 validated many of the lessons Yu learned from previous projects, including the importance of working with people you trust and providing meaningful experiences that aren't necessarily what players expect or find immediately comfortable. Yu's vision for the games industry is radically simple: continuity should be valuable but not forced, and developers should work together because they want to. The impetus for UFO 50 was born out of a desire to accomplish a simple yet lofty goal: to have fun making games. "I think continuity can be valuable, for sure, but it shouldn't be forced – developers should work together because they want to," Yu said. "And, at the end of the day, the impetus for UFO 50 was born out of a desire to accomplish a simple yet lofty goal: to have fun making games."