On paper, the game sounds boring as fuck. It's a fighting game with 2 buttons and you're not allowed to move or do anything but punch dudes. Now if you were turned off by that description, I'd ask you to wait and stay a while because One Finger Death Punch is actually a really interesting game.
At it's core, it is exactly how I described it but when you actually start playing it the game manages to suck you in with really faced paced combat that has a little bit more depth that just clicking dudes one after the other. Each level tasks you with murdering a certain number of guys and as the game goes on there are different types of guys that require certain combinations of clicks to dispatch. On top of that you have to factor in things like weapon drops, your characters abilities and the ever increasing game speed that comes with each victory and you end up with a unique but simple experience.
The game then goes to mix things up even further by adding different types of game modes to each level. The standard mode is called a mob round which is the aforementioned punch the required number of dudes. After that you get things such as sword and nunchaku rounds which are a bit faster, time trails, smash a certain number of level props and my personal favourite, the retro film round which makes everything black and white. There's a few more than that but they escape me right now.
As you play through the games absolutely staggering number of levels you unlock a variety of skills that can be used for things such as extending the life of the dropped weapons or giving you a defensive manoeuvre or even healing. These abilities become active on killing a certain number of dudes so the abilities add that little extra level of strategy to each stage, trying to get yourself in the best position to maximise the effectiveness of your abilities.
Apart from the games levels, you also have a survival mode that comes in 3 flavours that tasks you with killing and endless number of dudes until your life meter runs out. Just so that doesn't feel like a total waste of time the game features some online leaderboards so you can compare just how much of a Kung Fu master you are with the rest of the world.
However the absolute best thing about this game for someone like me is the nostalgia value. When I was a kid I was a big fan of these little stick figure animations on a site called Newgrounds that were known as Xiao Xiao. One Finger Death Punch manages to bring all the awesomeness that was Xiao Xiao into a really fun and fast playable experience. Some people may be turned off by the idea that the graphics are so simplistic they used stick figures, but for people my age who grew up with silly things like Stick Death and Xiao Xiao, One Finger Death Punch brings those happy memories flooding right back.
So I suggest that everyone goes and buys One Finger Death Punch. It's super cheap and it's a great little game that is surprisingly addictive for something so simple in concept. You can tell all the effort went into delivering something fast and enjoyable rather than something visually appealing or pandering to anything artsy which is something quite common with the indie scene. Support this game, Silver Dollar have created a really fun game here and it needs some love.
