Even after playing all of the games in the collection, it’s still hard to believe Mortol is in the very first row of UFO 50. That makes it just the sixth game that the fictional devs at UFO Soft (née LX Systems) produced, which is quite the achievement! Mortol is the first UFO 50 game that feels ahead of its purported time; wildly creative in its mechanics and leaning toward a more modern “gamefeel” from the very first action.
“How many people will lay down their lives to save Mortolia?,” the description wonders with a tinge of despair. Mortol is a side-scroller that plays like anything Super Mario Bros. adjacent, with a decidedly Dynowarz: Destruction of Spondylus scale to its avatars and enemies. This is UFO 50, though, so naturally at game six we’re already past the simple act of running and jumping. Hurry up, Barbuta! move over, Ninpek! Because these heroes can overcome obstacles with the unbeatable power of suicidal rituals!
In Mortol, you start off with a set number of lives, each representing a new character that parachutes from a ship in the sky. These characters can pull off three key rituals to get past enemies, pits, water and towering cliffs. The Arrow Ritual sends them flying forth like a kamikaze fighter, spearing through enemies and eventually lodging their heads into the side of a wall. At that point they cease to be Mortolians, instead becoming helpful platforms for the next set of suckers soldiers.
The Bomb Ritual is pretty self-explanatory. Hit both up and the action button and your dude goes ka-blooey. The Stone Ritual turns them into a statue that plummets straight down, smashing through enemies and certain obstacles and creating a sturdy block that provides another means of forward progress. All of these rituals can be chained together, giving savvy and skilled players a way to show off some absurdly clever strategies.
As you make your way through 10 stages, you have just as many opportunities to earn lives as you do to lose them. You bank the number of lives you clear a stage with, carrying those soldiers on to the next challenge. Thus, once you improve your strategies, it makes sense to revisit older stages to clear them with more lives in your back pocket. It’s a brilliant system that isn’t overly punishing while offering great rewards and a suicide-bomber safety net to those who put in the work to optimize runs.
From the color palette to the bizarre enemies and another dynamite soundtrack from Eirik Suhrke, Mortol is an easy one to come back to time and time again throughout your UFO 50 odyssey. While I don’t think it will make the Quick Recs lineup, I also can’t help but admire Mortol II for the ways it turns the first game’s concepts on their heads to provide a different kind of playground entirely.
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