Part Time UFO (Switch)
One part crane game, one part balancing act, Part Time UFO certainly seems built with a formula perfect for frustration, but despite combining two touchy styles of play, it knows how to keep its scope and goals in check so it doesn’t end up defined by irritating collapses. In fact, a good amount of the game is already tipped in the player’s favor, Part Time UFO feeling more focused on the unique goals it devises rather than requiring the player to move things around just so to stack things up in this light and colorful puzzler.
One day, a sentient UFO comes crashing down to Earth, and before he’s had much time to acclimate to our world, he learns he’s upended a farmer’s orange delivery. Luckily, the farmer doesn’t get too worked up over it, even willing to pay the little alien craft if it loads the oranges back up into his pick-up truck. Appropriately known as Jobski, this is just the first in a line of paying jobs the UFO decides to undertake during its time on Earth and it is perhaps one of the simplest in concept. Starting with loading up a truck is reasonable, but along the way Jobski will be asked to help stack up cheerleaders, construct ice cream sundaes as tall as a man, or even help animals perform atop a tight rope. There are a few that seem more like work like some construction jobs, although you might find yourself under attack by ninjas during them or the pieces you put together can end up building a giant fighting robot. There is almost always a bit of wackiness to be found in your goal either in its scope or its base concept, and if there isn’t you can maybe expect it to come from the characters in the background cheering you on as they react in strange ways or are occasionally joined by odd individuals.
Jobski isn’t outfitted with too much for interacting with the world, the little UFO not even utilizing a tractor beam so it can’t abduct things in a traditional sense. Instead, a large claw emerges from the bottom of the UFO to grab and move things about, and luckily, Part Time UFO doesn’t usually want the grabbing to be the difficult part of the job. Sometimes you will need to latch your claw onto the right part of an object to carry it in a conducive way, especially as your stacks grow larger and more precarious and require new objects to be placed just so. However, even with an odd grab angle, you can usually jostle and swing it well enough without it getting unwieldy or slipping away, and small adjustments feel achievable so you can slip things in just so with a good degree of patience and finesse. Cooperative play exists as well, a second player able to help move and place objects with you as long as you’re both willing to accept some blame will fly should a mistake lead to a stack collapse.
Most jobs will focus on constructing stacks that will hold together, all of them having some items that absolutely must be placed in the pile you’re building in order to clear the stage. While the required objects are a baseline for success, there will often be additional tasks layered over top that goal such as needing your stack to reach a certain height or having it fit within a specified area like a toy box where the lid must be able to cleanly shut afterwards. Some food based stages will instead turn the focus to letting you pick the ingredients that go in so long as there’s a certain amount before you ring the bell to indicate you’re done and others like fishing stages are more about catching as many as you can without the fish rolling overboard, so while balance is always going to be important to clearing a job, it’s certainly not the only focus thanks to a creative array of level concepts.
If you only want to clear a stage, there is actually no limit on how long you can take and even if items fall, drop, or get bruised or a little busted, you can gradually make your stack and move on to new levels. However, there is also a medal system at play that encourages you to play better and achieve additional goals. Every level has a timer, and while it running out doesn’t lead to the stage ending save for cases like the fishing derby, completing your job within the time limit will earn you a medal. The other two medals will vary with the level type and will often include appropriate concepts or complications. When you’re asked to rebuild a totem pole for example, getting it to match its original design can earn a medal. In some levels you might need to find a hidden thief to pluck from the background, while others instead ask you to throw additional items on the pile. Already you get extra cash for throwing optional items onto the stack, this allowing you to buy outfits for Jobski from a friendly alien shopkeep that can even have little perks like faster movement or a claw that is less likely to swing around. Medals add that extra bit of difficulty that can keep you coming back to a stage to try and clear the extra objectives or really needing to think how you lay out your stacks, but the medal goals are only shown through a picture so sometimes interpreting them can be a little rough. For the most part the game does have a good sense for conveying a clue through a small image though, so it’s usually easy enough to engage with a level’s full breadth, the player even unlocking a harder version of the stage should they earn all three available medals in it.
Beyond the medals, there are also Feats of Glory, these comprising of extra objectives completed mostly for the sake of earning a little commendation from the game. A board of 40 feats will gradually unlock “memories” that are just short animations based on places Jobski has been, but these Feats are either good markers of game completion or encourage you to play levels in interesting ways like only using your claw so many times. The Tower of Infinity exists as a difficult challenge to tackle as well, the goal to pile items as high as possible without the tower toppling demanding a strong sense for how the strange items you’re given can be placed together to hold together to the heights it will reward you for. While simply clearing Part Time UFO’s story won’t take too long if you focus purely on the main objective of a level, the medals, feats, and Tower of Infinity plus far more outfits than you can purchase with just a casual run do make Part Time UFO a good game to return to from time to time, chipping away at a set of tasks that mostly feel like they’re building on the base gameplay well and in sometimes novel ways.
THE VERDICT: Part Time UFO may be a game about balancing objects in a big stack, but its range of goals make that activity more entertaining than merely finding out the best way to place them together. Creative level concepts and the extra medal objectives help levels stand out and entertain with even levels in the same location still trying to ask for a new way to approach piling up items. Forgiving enough that you never get stuck and full of extras to pursue after you’ve cleared its story, Part Time UFO is a delightful approach to a balancing game that can even appeal to those who might have thought the concept too frustrating normally.
And so, I give Part Time UFO for Nintendo Switch…
A GOOD rating. While it is a shame that Part Time UFO overuses its theme tune throughout just with instrumental variation and a varying focus on the wordless vocals, that’s likely the only area where its charming presentation lets it down. Part Time UFO is adorable, bright, and lively, and to match that look it’s made sure that even though you’re doing building work and making piles that could topple if bumped wrong, you’re not being pushed to play perfectly or let down by the mechanics at play. The claw is reliable and its limitations reasonable, and beyond things like the Tower of Infinity, stages keep their scope small so even though there’s a timer ticking away for that medal requirement, you can sometimes find you don’t feel its presence since the task doesn’t require you to be too slow or careful. There isn’t a huge focus on perfect placement compared to a game like Art of Balance, Part Time UFO having some wiggle room in how you arrange things so that it can feel like you’ve found your own solution rather than doing things exactly as demanded for the most part. Some levels do admittedly focus on placing the objects just so, but they tell you how to do so or make the puzzle more about seeing how things fit rather than agonizing over actually making things stay in place. Part Time UFO won’t be completely free of those heartbreaking moments where things start to tip over and topple because of a minor error, especially if you’re trying to get all three medals in a level in one go, but the fun concepts and goal variety throughout the experience means there are often enough shifts in format that you won’t keep rubbing up against struggles with balancing objects.
Part Time UFO’s imaginative level concepts combined with a keen sense for how involved its balancing jobs should be keeps it brisk and entertaining with the extra layers of play there for people looking for something more difficult. Part Time UFO is looking to embrace the fun of stacking a pile high rather than focusing in on the precision usually required when your options are limited, but it also isn’t a total pushover so you can’t play too sloppily either. While Part Time UFO’s Switch version is a lightly expanded release compared to its start on smartphones, perhaps its origins there lead to the design team trying to find the right balance for a quick and casual experience, leading to levels that are short and sweet but not shallow. It’s little surprise that the team behind the Kirby series, HAL Laboratory, were behind this game, as it feels like it embodies that series’s ethos of making games easy to play for all players but more robust for those looking to get more out of them, Part Time UFO able to be just as challenging as the player wants it to be.