The UFO 50 Diaries: Attactics
Fire Emblem for the Tik Tok generation
There’s a conflict at the heart of UFO 50, one that weighs heavily on the minds of some players and, I guess, not at all for others. Anachronism. A sense of these games being out of place; a made up version of history whose roots are very much settled in the future; teetering ever so slightly on the edge of breaking the spell of the whole work of art as it is meant to be taken.
But in that same breath I don’t think it’s right to say that the games of UFO 50 are modern, and I especially do not think that this anachronism is down to error, or a failure of design. In fact, I would strongly argue that, given the name of the project evokes some outerworldy experience, the whole endeavour is explicitly designed to feel ‘alien’.
With game number nine in the collection, Attactics, I feel even moreso this strong sense of temporal liminality.
Attactics is a game of strategy, only it’s a peculiar kind of strategy you have to get to grips with at lightning speed and not necessarily with a clear understanding of how your actions will affect the game in the future.
Minimal in it’s engagement, you are tasked with corraling an assortment of troops across multiple lanes as they attempt to make it to the enemies stronghold. You can only move up, down and back, and you only have a short window to commit to a lane before the game makes the choice for you.
As a first impression, I found this particular constraint a bit too stressful to enjoy. It’s quite hard to parse everything on the battlefield all at once, especially in later rounds when there are dozens of players to have to consider, and making tactical decisions requires you also to consider the time it takes to actually move your units too, which often is not very long.
Attactics is a game where the constraint is the killer mechanic though. It’s like a window into the life of chess grandmasters, committing to turns in a matter of seconds, and I think without that proverbial boot up the arse this would end up feeling like a very different, and arguably worse, experience.
The gold cartridge goal of Attactics is to complete the twenty-four skirmishes of the main campaign, and thankfully this is where the game is at its most generous.
Where Paint Chase had a three strikes and your out policy for its campaign and Mortol had a sort of soft lock on progress based on how well you did in previous missions, success in Attactics’ campaign mode is permanent, and as a result each siege is allowed to be this bespoke tactical dilemma built in the absence of any prior successes or failures.
It’s been quite refreshing to play something with such a fixed sense of progress after many weeks of bashing my head against obfuscated mechanics and design principles built from the ground up on layers of mastery. Here I can dip in and attempt a challenge, either beating it or living to try another day.
On top of this, Attactics marks the first entry in the collection to have other modes from the start. Ranked mode is all about building up a satisfying win-loss ratio in consecutive bouts, with a score system that ebbs and flows with your personal strategic prowess. Survival mode is one continuous skirmish where the longer you hold out against enemy forces the higher your score.
There’s a lot to engage with in this game, and I think its more modern considerations allow it to have legs that it otherwise might not have.
Sometimes the anachronism works in your favour!