Derek Yu's Vision for a Human-Driven Games Industry: The Story of UFO 50's Development

When launching a game like UFO 50, which features 50 titles blending 80s-inspired roots with modern design sensibilities, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. The collection, released on September 18, 2024, to critical and commercial acclaim, is an unusual yet remarkable homage to gaming and its history. To understand the development process, we spoke with Derek Yu, the renowned indie developer behind Spelunky and Spelunky 2, who worked on UFO 50 with a team of five other indie developers for over eight years. The team included Jon Perry, known for board game design, composer Eirik Suhrke, pixel artist Paul Hubans, Ojiro Fumoto, known for the mobile hit Downwell, and pixel artist and animator Tyriq Plummer. We began our discussion by exploring how the team managed the scope and perspective of such a massive project while dealing with the typical challenges of game development. Yu emphasized the importance of regularly zooming out to ensure they weren't getting too lost in one small part of the project. The team set regular deadlines to bring each game to a certain level of completeness, which helped them stay on track. In terms of collection-wide design principles, Yu and his team prioritized making sure each game had its unique appeal. While connections between games were important, the primary focus was on creating fun and interesting games to work on. The team's collaborative efforts were structured around setting expectations, with Yu and Perry directing most of the games in the collection. Other team members, such as Fumoto, Suhrke, Hubans, and Plummer, contributed to specific titles, demonstrating the team's ability to work together and respect each other's ideas. Yu explained that 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. By the time of release, every game had gone through multiple passes by different people. He continued, '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.' Several projects were scrapped during development, but Yu highlighted the underappreciated advantage indie game developers have: flexibility. He recalled that only around a half dozen games were scrapped, and they were all scrapped early on in their development. According to Yu, this flexibility extended into UFO 50's 80s-inspired design, which was chosen for its DIY-spirit and the creativity it brought out in players and designers alike. The team wanted to capture the raw energy and adventurous feel of 80s gaming while applying the good lessons they've learned since then. Capturing such a feeling in 50 games 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 dedication to perfecting UFO 50 led to a delay. When asked if he'd do anything differently if he could go back in time, Yu's answer was definitive: '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 emphasized the importance of playtesters in the year leading up to UFO 50's release, who provided valuable thoughts on how to make the game feel like a fulsome experience. The team's approach to game development was 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 suggesting that treating game development as an iterative learning experience is far more rewarding and sustainable. He believes that planning to release several games across a few years, rather than one large game, is a solid way to minimize risk. Yu's philosophy on games as works of art contextualizes the prospect of future innovation in the indie space and where the craft is going from here. As for the UFO 50 team, the game should stand on its own, and post-launch support will only come in to fix bugs and streamline the experience. Yu lights up when discussing why he makes games, putting forward a perspective brimming with empathy. He believes that games are a people-driven industry and should be treated as such, especially in the indie space. 'Games are made by people more than skill sets, so find people you trust and enjoy working with first and foremost,' he says. Yu has a radically simple vision for the games industry, informed by his experience working on UFO 50. He created the project with a close group of collaborators and friends, so when asked about the value of continuity in game making, he replies, 'I think continuity can be valuable, for sure, but it shouldn't be forced – developers should work together because they want to.' At the end of the day, Yu says the impetus for UFO 50 was born out of a desire to accomplish a simple yet lofty goal: to have fun making games.