• Game: HAL Laboratory's Part Time UFO
• Release Month: October.
• Quick Look: N/A.
• Started: 8/12.
• Completed: 9/12.

Yeah, I'm technically breaking the rules again: Part Time UFO originally released on Android devices in 2017. However, this year saw its debut on a video game platform (the Switch) so it - along with Assemble With Care from earlier in this feature - qualifies for this year's GOTY, as per the rules of this site in case my own assertions were insufficient. Part Time UFO is a product from the small division of HAL Laboratory who are freed from the perpetual toil in the sugar mines needed to make Kirby games, creating instead such bite-sized portable delights as Picross 3D and the BoxBoy! series. Built for simplified touch controls, the goal of Part Time UFO is to float around as the titular alien temp worker and grab and drop objects into their appropriate locations, contingent on the current task given to you. This might involve putting vegetables on the back of a farmer's pick-up, or re-assembling a priceless statue, or angling up a JRPG mini-game's worth of fish from the ocean. Since all you need controls-wise is a single button for catch and release, and the free-floating movement, the complexity instead comes courtesy of the tasks themselves as well as some frequently tricky bonus conditions that increases your paycheck.

I tweeted about the game a few hours after starting, and I feel it concisely covers what I dislike most about the game:

In other words, almost all the puzzles involve finicky physics puzzles where a stack of unstable trash has to stay standing without running afoul of gravity or your own careless swinging around of whatever it is you might be holding. Objects plummet to the ground if they lack support, and carried objects sway as you'd expect with every movement; coupled together, it makes for a very challenging scenario (or, indeed, many consecutively with little relief) that demands a level of concentration and precision I'm not sure you're likely to get with the various distractions that come with mobile gaming. As the tweet suggests, many players might approach this game having been long acquainted with the nuances of claw-catcher arcade games: where best to hook a rounder toy, for example, or using the sides of the machine to push an object into a position where it might be caught. Nintendo themselves have had a long-running F2P arcade claw-catcher sim on the 3DS, complete with a bunny who keeps demanding more money from you (which was something of a theme for the 3DS), and I've gotten fairly good at it over the years. The claw machine concept's a compelling one, but physics-based puzzle games are usually anything but; in my estimation, unless you're playing in a raucous group or trying to entertain an easily amused child (or stream audience), physics games like Human Fall Flat or Octodad are best avoided and the same rings true for Part Time UFO.

It's not all doom and gloom. As with BoxBoy! (and Kirby, I suppose) HAL Laboratory has cornered the market on cuteness, with the heavy-lidded UFO giving off a world-weariness that is at odds with its adorable appearance and universe full of oddball characters. Little recurring jokes like an enigmatic statue with a nervous look - involved in a great deal of puzzles as a frequently-hidden bonus objective - or a master thief who poorly disguises herself as any number of background objects give the game a quirky personality, as do the range of employers that the UFO works for which include a mad scientist and a circus apparently run by the animals. The game has thirty job assignments overall (or at least the Switch port does) but expands the longevity with each job's three bonus tasks, an achievement-like set of meta challenges that might involve milestones or completing jobs in oddly specific ways (such as assembling a statue or castle upside-down), and "hard mode" versions of all the jobs that add more obstacles like a higher total of objects to balance or more distractions to deter you. The money you earn, meanwhile, goes towards a fashion store run by a genie: many of the costumes will provide additional abilities like making the claw faster or heavier objects easier to lift, though most are simply cosmetic. Needless to say, they're all very cute as well.

The wholesomeness of Part Time UFO makes it a hard game to dislike, and yet I managed to get there regardless because of how often I was forced to watch a carefully assembled pile of garbage tip over because the game's tenuous grasp of gravity had deemed it structurally unsound. Even minor comedic quirks like the way the last ten yen coin in the pay packet needed an extra shake to come out grew to become deeply annoying, as it meant the animation added an extra couple of seconds each time and I was desperate to retry the task (because I missed a condition) or move on to literally anything else. I feel the same way towards it in general that I did about the original Scribblenauts: it came out of the gate with such an inspired approach to puzzle-solving and then proceeded to craft every puzzle with the same deeply frustrating format, instead of expanding the idea as far as it could go. Later Scribblenaut games were infinitely better because they found a broader, superior application of their particular conceit of summoning items to complete objectives, and extrapolating from that experience I imagine Part Time UFO 2 won't be something I detest with all my heart. Here's hoping, eh?

GOTY Verdict: It's visually and musically cute, controls well, provides a great deal of longevity if not variety, and is chock full of kooky personality. However, in my experience at least, loathed games don't usually do so well in finalized GOTY lists.

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