ONE BTN BOSSES Review Mini – Review Mini

ONE BTN BOSSES is a simple but challenging single-screen action game in the “avoid-’em-up” subgenre. You play as a tiny ship that fires automatically and controls with a single button press, as advertised. There’s an addictive quality to the gameplay that shines through and pushes you to try, try again in the face of the game’s well sloped difficulty curve.

Across 50 stages, your primary objective is to destroy a boss or mini boss in the middle of the screen. Your ship orbits around the enemy, firing automatically and at a faster rate the longer your movement is uninterrupted. You can take three hits before your ship is destroyed, and the primary way in which you avoid projectiles and other obstacles generated by each boss is to simply change direction along your orbit. The variety of things conjured and fired your way adds to ONE BTN BOSSES’ addictive gameplay.

The campaign mode has wrinkles that change up the gameplay and give the player some neat choices. In addition to new color palettes that gradually unlock, points you earn also open up new abilities and movement patterns. The first of these is a dash move, which replaces the basic ability to simply change direction from clockwise to counterclockwise. With the dash, your button press makes you speed up and become impervious to damage, but sees you rely on a rechargeable energy meter that powers the dash. When you reach a boss segment, you generally have a choice of multiple stages and only need to complete a portion of those to advance. Of course, you can take on all of the stages to earn extra points and unlock even more moves and palettes.

ONE BTN BOSSES is a charming game that executes on its straightforward premise. The music and sound effects contribute well to the experience, and the new obstacles that enter the fray make for a varied enough experience. I did encounter a softlock that forced me to reboot the game, but no other performance issues popped up. If you enjoyed Just Shapes and Beats or other titles like it, you will almost certainly have a great time with ONE BTN BOSSES.