Everything you need to know about the new bullet hell game One Btn Bosses is right there in the title. You press one button and you take on a series of bosses. It’s a simple premise that developer Midnight Munchies delivers on and then some. With just one button, you might think that the game would get boring quickly or lack depth—but it’s just the opposite. One Btn Bosses is an enthralling game that constantly adds new challenges to master.
I already explained the premise and it truly doesn’t go much further than that. Each level gives you control of a moving object stuck on a track. The one button you use changes your direction of movement along the track (which can be shaped like a circle, square, a straight line, and more) so as to get out of the way of oncoming attacks from enemies. You also have the ability to attack, but with your singular input already taken by directional control, One Btn Bosses ties attacks to movement speed. The faster you move, the more projectiles you fire back at your opponent; switching directions lowers your speed, after which point it must be built up again. This creates a balancing act in the deceptively simple game. You have to avoid hazards but you also want to make quick work of enemies, which means you have to strategically choose exactly when to shift direction in order to maintain your highest speed as long as possible.
Staying true to its name, One Btn Bosses never gives you more than a single input, but each level still changes things up thanks to differences in enemy attack patterns. At the start you’ll face enemies who just shoot projectiles back at you, but over time they’ll start launching bombs with large areas of effect, missiles that home in on you, and special bullets that ricochet around a track—and that’s only a few of the tactics you can expect to encounter. It turns what could be a repetitive gameplay loop into a frantic fight for your life. Not long into the game, you’re faced with situations in which the screen is almost entirely filled with attacks you have to avoid with just one button at your disposal. But to give you a fighting chance, One Btn Bosses does offer up alternatives to your basic direction switch.
By collecting GP (Grind Points) after completing levels, you slowly unlock different abilities to equip that change what your button press does. One early skill you acquire can switch out your basic directional movement for a dash that lets you speed through attacks instead of having to turn around to avoid them. But new abilities don’t just alter how you move; they can also change how you attack, replacing your bullets with a laser or allowing you to bounce enemy attacks back. Midnight Munchies boasts that there are over 100 combinations of abilities to try out. However, the game’s levels feel tailored to the basic setup you start with. I spent a lot of time trying other skills, and really liked how the dash felt in certain levels, but I found myself returning to the default abilities often as they felt best suited for every challenge.
One Btn Bosses has a short, four-hour campaign that’s mostly an extended tutorial to get you into the game’s headspace. There’s a cute—if basic and unimportant—plot about working your way up the cutthroat corporate ladder, but gameplay is king here. That’s why One Btn Bosses’ roguelike mode might be the best thing about it. Once unlocked in the first fifteen minutes or so, you can dive into roguelike levels at any time. As per genre conventions, you run through a series of levels and unlock random skills after each boss to use on the next level. While abilities don’t always seem that useful in the campaign, the roguelike mode makes using and mastering each new skill fun. One Btn Bosses is all about momentum and the roguelike mode perfectly distills that. Yet even when going through the campaign, the game’s tight level design never ceases to amaze.
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