You want only one button on this bullet hell gem

One Btn Bosses is true to its title: You want just one button to tackle its chaotic, bullet-hell bosses.

Launched Aug. 6 by developer Midnight Munchies, One Btn Bosses seems to be easy: On a 2D aircraft that’s principally shapes and features, you management a small spaceship (a tiny little dot, primarily, à la Asteroid) that routinely shoots its personal bullets on the enemy, which concurrently return hearth — plenty of bullets, lethal floor-is-lava-esque shapes, and lasers.

With its top-down view, One Btn Bosses places every thing on the identical aircraft, limiting the ship’s motion as you attempt to dodge bullets. The ship strikes ahead or backward on a hard and fast rail within the form of what’s normally a circle, sq., or curved line. The one button impacts the ship’s motion. Whenever you first begin the sport, the button adjustments path; in case your ship is transferring ahead, a button push reverses its course, which is useful in dodging enemy assaults. However if you change path, the velocity at which your weapon spits bullets slows down.

As you progress, you’ll unlock completely different talents; as an illustration, one early improve adjustments the button from a toggle that impacts directional adjustments to a one-time sprint, which blasts you rapidly by means of enemy bullets. There are additionally assault upgrades for weapons, like including lasers to your ship, that, like talents, could be swapped out and in between ranges.

The artwork fashion and design is clear and polished. The gameplay is simple. The assault mechanic is restricted to, after all, one button. Nevertheless it’s inside these constraints that One Btn Bosses shines — it makes a single button a bastion of risk in a world with plenty of guidelines.

There are two modes to work by means of, the primary of which is a brief (4 hours or so) marketing campaign the place you’re a grunt worker taking up literal company bosses who throw assaults at your ship. Rapidly, you’ll unlock the second mode — the roguelite piece of the sport, known as Rifts & Developments, the place you struggle by means of procedurally-generated ranges. You possibly can change between modes at any level, however your marketing campaign unlocks don’t apply to the roguelite mode. That’s as a result of One Btn Bosses’ roguelite is pretty conventional in its construction: You begin with nothing particular, and acquire upgrades and skills that change with every new spherical. It’s a enjoyable technique to check out a complete bunch of various talents whereas blasting by means of fast-paced, really difficult ranges.

One Btn Bosses retains issues attention-grabbing stage after stage by barely adjusting the bosses’ assaults or the sector of play. One Btn Bosses isn’t sluggish, nevertheless it does begin out easy, with enemies sending their bullets straight at you — no complicated patterns to dodge. Nevertheless it rapidly ramps up so as to add increasingly complexity, and fewer and fewer room for error. Typically, there’s a quirk to the extent — there’s a curved line observe that’s received portals on every finish to imitate the fixed motion of a circle with out, effectively, being a circle. It takes a mixture of reflexes and methods to stability when you have to push the one button; pushing it, like I discussed earlier, slows the speed of the assault, which implies you’ll have to struggle the boss — and keep alive! — for longer. (The speed of assault slows any time you hit the button, truly, whatever the capability that’s chosen.)

So what do you prioritize? Properly, that’s as much as you. I’m the anxious type of participant who’s all the time tapping the button to dodge the boss; I don’t thoughts staying in a stage longer as long as I’m taking part in it secure. However the speedrunners on the market will need exact pushes that preserve the speed of assault up excessive to finish the extent quick. That’s the great thing about One Btn Bosses — it permits for complexity and differing methods even throughout the strictest of guidelines.

One Btn Bosses was launched Aug. 6 on Home windows PC. The sport was reviewed on a Steam Deck utilizing a obtain code offered by Midnight Munchies. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These don’t affect editorial content material, although Vox Media might earn commissions for merchandise bought by way of affiliate hyperlinks. You could find further details about gamerlifemedia’s ethics coverage right here.