Five One-Button Games, But Only Two Worth Playing
I get that making single-button games is impressive. It can’t be easy to build a game solely around the A button (no face buttons, not even the analogue stick), let alone five games. Then you have to wrap those five games up into something that people want to pay for.
It’s just…why? Jeff Goldblum pops into my head with that Jurassic Park quote: “you were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn’t stop to think if you should”. I have a game controller. I have multiple buttons. If ABA Games and Xitilon were making games for light switches, I could understand.
One Button To Rule Them All, And In The Darkness Bind Them
We didn’t spend the same amount of time with each game in One Button Games 5-in-1 vol 2. That’s not because of some kind of journalistic neglect. It’s because some of the games are so slight, so impossible to sink your teeth into, that they fall by the wayside almost immediately.
And whilst we worked from ‘best’ to ‘worst’ in our review of the original One Button Games 5-in-1, this time around we’re working in ascending quality order, so that we end on a good note.
Bomb Up – 1 / 5
Kicking us off is Bomb Up. With one tap of the A button, your goober fires out a bomb. With another tap, the bomb explodes. It’s a fair idea that borrows from remote mines/grenades.
The goober is then thrown down a well. That complicates things. Now there are enemies hurtling upwards, so bombs need to be thrown in anticipation. If you’re successful, the enemies die and they don’t one-shot you.
The idea has promise, but the game explodes in the hand. Enemies come from everywhere, but bombs can only be thrown in one direction. We became masters of a quickfire detonation to destroy enemies that come from below or right. But if enemies come from above or behind? There are no counter-measures. Presumably you are meant to anticipate them and dodge or kill them with a wall-bounce. But that would require psychic powers.
We gained achievements from Bomb Up, but only out of sheer luck. Not once did we enjoy the process.
D Pistols – 1.5 / 5
We’re still in the realm of ‘does it qualify as a game?’. The little gremlin character from Bomb Up is back, but this time he’s bouncing up and down the centre of the game screen. The A button sends bullets firing off in a row, while also moving the main character in the opposite direction of where they were travelling.
It’s another one that sounds good on paper. Enemies centipede their way down the rows. You don’t have much time to move parallel and fire a bullet that obliterates them. If you’re slow, they chase you down the middle of the screen, which needs a vertical shot. This is a long button-press that, when released, sends projectiles in a cross pattern.
What hamstrings D Pistols is the hold-button. If it held you in place and took a millisecond, it might have worked. But it requires long-press AND moves you in the opposite direction. That becomes hard to predict and slow. In the time it takes to fire, another column of enemies is chasing after you. We fumbled with D Pistols like a bar of soap in the bath.
Embattled – 2 / 5
Imagine D Pistols, but with defence instead of offence. The only way to kill enemies is by dodging missiles so that they hit their friends. The hold-button isn’t a cross-fire: it’s a shield that gives you respite from the bullet hell.
Embattled is much better than D Pistols, but still not good enough. A rhythm starts to form. You’re hunkered in your shield until a brief gap appears in the projectiles. Then you’re legging it, bouncing away so that a salvo of missiles heads for your enemies.
Again, I don’t like how the hold-button is implemented. It shields you, but it also bounces you in the opposite direction. That’s counter to what the player wants: they want to get out of a corner, not head back into it. But even with a fix, we can’t shake how one-dimensional Embattled is. Nobody could spend more than five minutes on it, achievements included.
Totoge – 2.5 / 5
Continuing the incremental improvement is Totoge. Like Bomb Up, you’re thrown down a well. This time, though, you’re a duck. That gives you a little more control, as the A button is a Flappy Bird-style flap. You can halt your descent with repeated presses of the A button.
Some helpful UI lets you know where spikes are going to come from. That gives you some time to bounce out of the way. Slightly too much time, as it happens, as Totoge bucks the ‘impossibly hard’ trend by being a little too easy. You can effectively pause the game by floating, maneuver yourself into position, and dodge the spike. It’s a little too benign, too easy to survive, as there’s no stamina bar or limit on the flaps. Whenever we died, it was because we got impatient.
Tappump – 3.5 / 5
Tappump is my jam. I love the madness of it. “What if Flappy Bird replaced the bird with an inflating circle?”. Of course, Jeff. Go make it.
Your little circle flaps with the A button, but it stays in place when you hold A. Then the circle inflates for as long as you’re pressing the button. It’s a game of chicken: how long can you keep the circle inflating without snagging it on some spikes?
This push-your-luck mechanic works well. You can get cocky, inflating to full size and hoovering up a chain of gold coins. The coins multiply in score, as there are combos at play. But you will need to deflate quickly if you want to avoid an incoming spike trap. Tappump is simple but moreish – for at least, ooh, fifteen minutes.
Not The Sum Of Its Parts
You may have done the maths. The average score isn’t a high one.
I can see the appeal in making One Button Games 5-in-1 vol 2. There’s a challenge in creating these games. You can see how the designers have done back-flips to make them function, incorporating hold-presses of the A button just as much as taps.
But as fun as they must have been to make, we are the ones who have to play them. And I rarely found that process to be fun. Bomb Up and D Pistols are one-button failures; Embattled is appropriately named, as it collapses under its flaws.
Here’s hoping that One Button Games 5-in-1 vol 3has more to offer than vol 2. At the very least, we hope the emphasis is more on making playable, enjoyable games, rather than faint slivers of an idea.
Important Links
Buy from the Xbox Store, Optimised for Series X|S – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/one-button-games-5-in-1-vol-2/9np5t064l4p3
Or take home an Xbox One version – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/one-button-games-5-in-1-vol-2-xbox-one/9ntp472r23wq
There’s a Bundle too – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/one-button-games-5-in-1-vol-2-bundle/9P5H7SH7FLMS/0010
