james is here<p>At the end of Mini & Max, depending on which ending you get, you either exit the storage closet into the party, where this track(reprising Party House) plays:</p><p><a href="https://phlogiston.bandcamp.com/album/ufo-50?t=294" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">phlogiston.bandcamp.com/album/</span><span class="invisible">ufo-50?t=294</span></a></p><p>Or you reverse time and exit into silence.</p><p>There is something noteworthy about this and where this game is positioned in the UFO50 metatext, beyond just having one game reference the other. A core theme of the meta is to discuss the ambiguous nature of work versus play: the general plot arc of UFOSoft is to be founded by dreamers who "play at work", and then gradually fade into drudgery as so many companies do.</p><p>The inciting event of Mini & Max is of a mirror shattering - that's used to explain why Mini is able to talk to her dog and go on a size-shifting adventure in the storage closet. I haven't worked out all the times mirrors are referenced within UFO50 but a major callout comes in the Miasma Tower sequences, where Gregory Milk looks in the mirror and "can't see Pigman anymore, just his tired and grey face" (paraphrased) - seeing the mirror is taken to mean a world put in order, one that has put its fantasy away.</p><p>In most games with multiple endings, the "best" ending tends to be the one with the more miraculous, unlikely things occurring. But in Mini & Max, the cherry achievement, the harder ending to get, is also the one where the mirror is intact, order is restored, you never witness the party happening and just go outside. While in the gold ending, the magic fully escapes and Mini uses her powers to terrorize the party.</p><p>The games chronologically located after Mini & Max start to strip down their credits, eventually just to first/last initials. And the party guests in Party House, which are reprised in that last scene, are "friends of the developers". IOW, this game puts you in control of the "UFOSoft magic". When you cherry clear it, you've put things in order, which means the magic can no longer happen, because it always relied on chaos.</p><p>When you break a mirror, the saying goes, it's "seven years bad luck".</p><p>Barbuta, game 1: August 1982. "Developed secretly on company time"<br>Cyber Owls, game 50: July 1989. </p><p><a href="https://pounced-on.me/tags/ufo50" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ufo50</span></a> <a href="https://pounced-on.me/tags/gameing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>gameing</span></a> <a href="https://pounced-on.me/tags/gamedev" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>gamedev</span></a> <a href="https://pounced-on.me/tags/literature" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>literature</span></a></p>