A Minor One-Button Blip for the Series, But Still a Fascinating Experiment
You have to hand it to Xitilon, ABA Games and m1s3ry: they can really churn these one-button compilations out. One Button Games 5-in-1 vol. 5 is the third volume that they have released in 2026 alone.
But rather than being a backhanded compliment, we mean it as a front-handed one. You’d imagine there would be some compromises to achieving three games in three months, but no. These may be curious experiments, but they are worthwhile ones, and the quality is roughly consistent across all three of the 2026 releases.
Let’s waste no more review space on banter. Let’s get onto the games you’ll find in One Button Games 5-in-1 vol. 5.
R Wheel – 4/5
As is customary, the best one-button games get shunted to the front. The headliner is R Wheel, and it’s a doozy.
It is, effectively, Flappy Bird in a hamster wheel. Or an ouroboros endless runner. Your little runner chap is in an endlessly rotating barrel, and you can tap A to jump over any spikes that head your way. You can also tap A to continuously jump in the air: a kind of double, triple and quadruple jump.
You would think that the endless jumping would make the game trivial. You just keep bobbing away in the middle of the hamster wheel. But no, R Wheel is too clever for that. The spikes grow bigger the more you jump, and – by virtue of rotation – the stalagmites you jump over soon become dangerous stalactites. You have to be careful not to spit-roast yourself on the spikes above.
It’s devious, more-ish, and extremely well thought out. Love a bit of R Wheel.
Divarr – 3.5/5
Next best is Divarr. It’s one of those games where watching someone play is a hypnotising, disorienting experience. It can look more like an early ‘00s screensaver than a game.
At its heart, Divarr is Missile Command (which will get referenced once more in this collection). Bombs fall to the ground, and you’re a missile battery that wants to stop the bombardment. But your missiles are both complicated and devastating: every time you press the A button, the missiles split into four, travelling in the four cardinal directions. Keep tapping A and you have a screen of tiny missiles. I can think of several autocrats who would like to get their hands on them.
The splitty missiles would make things rather easy if it wasn’t for the “Don’t hit me!” guys. There are people falling down the screen for reasons that I can’t fathom. You’ve got to let them reach the floor rather than explode them, so you have to keep the missiles under some form of control.
It’s a neat concept that’s only slightly undone by the chaos. It can be very difficult to keep track of your net of missiles, and it’s too easy to explode the falling dudes before they’ve even appeared on the screen.
Throw M – 2.5/5
Throw M is emblematic of the wider One Button series as a whole. It’s a great idea that doesn’t quite coalesce into a game that you’d play for more than two minutes.
Your character bounces around on the right side of the screen with a balloon hooked into their pants, and you can press A to lob axes. There are other dudes with balloons, chucking arrows at you, so the axes are necessary. The longer you hold A, the more powerful and high-arcing the throw. Tap A and you do a limp little axe-lob.
Pressing A also pauses your balloon chap, so there’s a defensive use for the one button. If an arrow is heading for your head, you can wait a moment for the danger to pass.
Throw M sounds great, but the inaccuracy of the axes, mixed with the maelstrom of arrows, can make it an unsatisfying experience. It’s inordinately difficult and demands persistence if you want to master it. We found it difficult to build the enthusiasm to bother.
Wiper – 1.5/5
Now we’re into the dregs.
Wiper is more a concept than a game. What if your ship in a SHMUP was a windscreen wiper? Er, yes Barry, but how does that actually work?
Not very well, as it happens. You tap A to trigger the left wipers then A to trigger the right wipers as they alternate. But there are lots of left wipers and lots of right wipers, all in varying positions around a semi-circle. So, you’re anticipating which wiper you will need to destroy a falling meteor that’s on the farthest left or right.
You see, even as I write this, I am only 90% sure that’s how Wiper works. It’s not particularly good at informing you which wiper is in play at which time, and the meteors fall at such speed that you can’t react quickly enough anyway.
Wiper’s a bit of a conundrum. Outside of building a game out of windscreen wipers, I couldn’t tell you what it was trying to achieve.
D Missile 1/5
At least Wiper works. I’m not convinced that D Missile does.
It’s a simple old bean. Yet more bombs drop down, but this time your missile battery has remotely controlled missiles. You hold A to rotate the missile clockwise, trying to guide it into the bombs where it explodes.
Tapping A releases another missile which, in theory, opens up a wealth of options. You could have multiple missiles in play at once, or wait till your previous missile goes boom. But it never happens that way. Sometimes, I will tap A and the missile won’t release. Other times, it will release when I’ve been holding A, not tapping it. If the missile explodes offscreen, my missile operators will give up and go for a fag break. They won’t let me do anything.
I MUST be missing something in D Missile. There’s a rule that I’m neglecting. But when the intro screen only says “Hold A to Turn, Tap A to fire”, I don’t have a huge amount to work with.
Somewhere in the Middle of the One Button Pack
Totting up the scores and comparing with One Button Games 5-in-1 vol. 3 and One Button Games 5-in-1 vol. 4, this is a slight downturn. It contains the highest high (I’m a flag-flying fan of R Wheel) but also some of the lowest lows, with one game that I am fairly confident doesn’t work as intended.
But I still carry the same feeling that I do from vols 3 and 4: One Button Games 5-in-1 vol. 5 is a fascinating exploration of what you can achieve with one button. The result sounds gimmicky, and in a few cases it is. But when it comes off, the result truly scratches the score-attack and achievement hunting itch.
Important Links
Push It With One Button Games 5-in-1 Vol. 5 – https://www.thexboxhub.com/push-it-with-one-button-games-5-in-1-vol-5/
Buy, Optimised for Series X|S – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/one-button-games-5-in-1-vol-5/9PB0GHL8Z2Q3/0010
There’s an Xbox One version too – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/one-button-games-5-in-1-vol-5-xbox-one/9NQ7GJPV9FSB/0010
Want to play on Windows PC? – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/one-button-games-5-in-1-vol-5-windows/9NM2KQFCCTH9/0010
