GN Expansion Pak: Mooncat breaks your brain in the best ways

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I have been waiting over 7 years to get my hands on UFO 50. The developers have been waiting even longer to release the game, as they’ve been toiling away on the project for 9+ years now. Thankfully, all their hard work has finally paid off, as UFO 50 has now seen release on PC. I’m still working through the game’s many amazing titles, but nothing has knocked my socks off to the level that Mooncat has.

First up, here’s a quick breakdown of UFO 50 itself. This is a collection of 50 original games created in a style reminiscent of the NES. UFO 50 is inspired by the Action 52 NES cartridge, which was an unlicensed product filled with mostly lackluster games. Think of UFO 50 as an alternate reality version of Action 52 where the end result was a grouping of games that were all great to fantastic.

I’ve played/messed around with 20 of the 50 games in UFO 50 so far, and there honestly hasn’t been a bad game in the bunch. There are some I like more than others, and a few in genres that don’t tickle my fancy, but there’s nothing even close to a bad game here. Everything is made with the utmost attention to detail and quality, and somehow they’re all gameplay experiences that pay homage to NES classics while offering their own unique hooks and ideas. It’s been an absolute blast to delve into this release, but without a doubt, Mooncat is the game that wowed me…and multiple times over.

Mooncat very much channels the era of NES games that didn’t explain a damn thing. Some might see that as a negative, but it’s clear the team behind UFO 50 feels quite differently. When you first fire up Mooncat you know it’s a platformer, but literally from the game’s opening section, everything you know is thrown out the window. Any muscle memory or familiarity with the genre is actively used against you, and while that might sound frustrating, it leads to an incredible adventure.

It’s tough to talk about Mooncat without spoiling what’s going on here, but I want to try and keep the game’s many surprises intact. I will say that playing the game is almost like an out-of-body experience. You go through the motions of playing a platformer, but everything you do is wrong, and the game feels like it’s flat-out broken. You’re going to press buttons and get completely different outcomes from what you’d ever expect. It’s bewildering and throws you for a loop. You honestly might think that something has gone wrong with the game and you need to reset, but that is very much not the case.

The real magic in Mooncat is figuring out what is going on, and that includes every facet of the adventure. The closest I can get to detailing Mooncat without ruining it is by saying that you should go in with a clean slate and open mind. Yes, some base-level gaming knowledge will help here, but try to take everything you know about platformers and push it out of your head. Things you think of as an enemy, a pitfall, a door…they could all be turned on their head. What you know is right, wrong, broken, or completely different.

Working through Mooncat embraces the spirit of UFO 50 unlike any other game in the collection (so far) in the sense that it truly embodies the alternate reality lore. All the games created for UFO 50 exist for a console that isn’t real. Again, it’s a platform (named the LX) that’s obviously inspired by the NES and its library, but it lives in its own timeline and world. Mooncat fits in with that so damn well, as it shows you what platformers could be like if everything was approached differently. Even other games in UFO 50 don’t play like Mooncat, which only helps it to stand out that much more. Hell, Mooncat makes me wish that there were a universe out there where more platformers took this game’s off-the-wall approach!

Making Mooncat that much better is the game’s soundtrack, which somehow perfectly captures the feeling and emotion of the game. Some of the tunes here are incredibly melancholy, yet absolutely beautiful. The game’s opening tune gives me a staggering amount of anemoia (the feeling of nostalgia for a time period that you never experienced), so much so that I actually started to tear up. The rest of the game’s soundtrack fits in with those vibes expertly, adding yet another layer to this mystifying journey.

I’ve seen Mooncat through to one end, but the game very clearly lets you know that there’s more to see and do. I truly cannot wait to hop back in and find those secrets, as I know there’s going to be some really fun stuff to discover, and I’m going to have to think way outside the box to hunt them down. I’ll no doubt be confused and baffled at times, but that’s where the deepest joy resides.

UFO 50 is unbelievable so far, but Mooncat is on a whole different level. This is a game that deserves to be shouted from the rooftops, studied by developers, examined by longtime gamers, and generally recognized. It’s not very often you come across something like this, and while I have no doubt some will be turned off instantly, others will peel back the layers on this onion and be nothing short of enamored. If you pick up UFO 50 and give Mooncat a go, I can only hope you fall into the latter.

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