There’s a popular acronym that often gets thrown around in professional settings, KISS, which stands for “Keep It Simple, Stupid”. While you can absolutely argue that there are some tremendously successful titles out there that have ignored that principle completely, more often than not it seems like a solid goal to have whenever making something new. When people are pretty well able to pick up and play a title intuitively, without much direction, it’s often a sign of careful and considered design. I bring this up not because UFOPHILIA adheres to this methodology, but instead because it seems to have no concept of it, and the experience absolutely suffers as a result, though the problems are deeper than that.

Playing somewhat similarly to a few titles I’ve run into on PC over the years, though they’ve typically been multiplayer affairs and have featured ghosts, this is a game that tries to build its foundation on making you feel uneasy. Working with a variety of tools, each of which is suited to different types of aliens you may encounter, you’ll be working to first detect, then identify, and then ultimately grab a picture of these often elusive targets. To the developers’ credit, the different aliens that you’ll encounter each have their own vibe, ranging from dangerously aggressive to perhaps a little bit weird, so that does add some flavor, but it really isn’t enough to compensate for the game’s shortcomings.

Getting back to the original point of simplicity being the preferred path for success, reading through the pages of tips you’re presented with on how to play the game, everything gets off to a horrible start. Honestly it’s all written in a way that does not scream confidence in the core game design and almost like it was a late-stage edition put in place for the sake of damage control. Sure, you’ll still need to do the work of picking the right equipment, searching around, and then determining what you’ll need to do in order to get a snap of one of the aliens, but most of the instructions feel like a glance behind the underlying programming curtain, and that does not inspire confidence. Actually playing through doesn’t improve things much either as the game is far too dark in most places, to the point that it inspires more irritation than unease. This and other frustrations tend to mount very early as more often than not gameplay feels like it boils down to wandering around in the dark, hoping the single piece of equipment you grabbed will be helpful, and then needing to continually double back to your base to do almost anything at all. In general this just fails to feel like a complete idea, and instead just a collection of loose concepts.