I’m a firm believer that games should be simple. If you make a game that needs 9 buttons your probably doing something wrong especially if those buttons need to be used at once. Here is how Silver Dollar solves that problem by introducing a game that can be played with literally 1 finger, meet One Finger Death Punch.

One Finger Death Punch does it’s best to recreate a bad and poorly translated Kung-Fu movie in 2D and that’s oddly enough a good thing.

Story:

Why do all the games I play have no story? Probably because I don’t care

Sound:

While most of the sound is simple it does do the job of acknowledging hits and the sound of your character as well as the enemies is something that you would expect from a horribly translated Kung-Fu movie. The “ye”, “ya”, “hiya” sound that your character makes when he is bashing people are fun as well as the screams that enemies make as they fly through the air while usually un-noticeable are fun when you pay attention to them.

The sounds of weapons and powers on the other hand are extremely bland and are probably sounds you have heard a thousand times before. The sound a sword makes as it flies through enemies is exceptionally dull and forgettable.

The sound track is nice though, with music by “Chinese Dance Machine”… I’m not making that shit up! It is really nice music that holds you to the game and matches really well with the pace of the games especially at higher difficulties

Graphics:

The graphics are extremely simple, the main character and all the enemies are the stickman children draw when they are 4 at most. When you hit enemies your character gets a nice old school blur over his fists and the hits too have a quick spark except for some randomly created ones which are similar to a huge flash of light with a picture of a tiger and other animals in the middle.

The background on the other hand looks like it had something resemble an artist create it. It is just a well-drawn picture with the only effect being the character shadow displayed on it. This is also true for the objects lying around the levels that you can hit enemies into.

Gameplay:

One Finger Death Punch is the rank and file of simple gameplay till Nintendo figures out how to make a single button game. You use the left and right arrow keys (or mouse buttons) to make your character hit in that direction, the catch is that they must be within a certain range for the hit to succeed else you miss and leave yourself open for what feels like half a second.

Most enemies die in a single hit but there are some that need to be hit in a single direction multiple times and others that will move around the screen as you hit them making them a bit tougher but just need around 4 hits. There are also brawlers who take quite a few hits and the game does a semi pause for you to fight them (no other enemy will attack when you are fighting a brawler) so the full screen fills with the buttons you need to hit to defeat the brawler.

The game also has weapons and power ups. The weapons increase the range of the standard hit for a few successful shots at which point they break and you are back to using your hands. Power ups on the other hand are activated after a fixed number of kills and do stuff like kill all enemies on screen, freeze all enemies on side of the screen or throw your weapon through multiple enemies. These make a decent strategy for the game to use and help you in your fight.

Lastly, each time you do well in a fight the game speed increases. If you do badly in a fight the game speed decreases so the game does adapt to your skill set, you need a damn good combination of reaction time and use of your powers to do well especially in the survival mode which throws everything at you including your worst enemy.

In the end, One Finger Death Punch is a fast paced but incredibly simple game that makes you come back for more. The fact that it is usually on sale makes it an easy buy and a must play.

 

Final Score: 7/10