One Btn Bosses review

As gaming has moved forward, it’s only natural that most video games are somewhat more complex than they were thirty years ago. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve returned to a game after a few weeks and completely forgotten how to play it, leading to me just sitting pressing all the wrong buttons in an embarrassing manner. Well worry not those of you hunting for something more simple in their life, One Btn Bosses has all the fast-paced action and tough-as-nails boss fights you could want from a game – and it’s played entirely with a single button.

Explaining how this works isn’t quite as easy as you’d expect though. Each fight of One Btn Bosses takes place on a track surrounding a boss, and on that track is the little shape you play as. Your shape will move along the track and get faster automatically, and the faster it moves the more bullets it fires. Unfortunately, the bosses won’t just take damage lying down, and will fire all sorts of bullets, bombs and shapes at you to stop you. This is where your one button comes in, which (by default anyway) changes your direction to avoid incoming damage. That’s all there is to the game, but few games I’ve played this year have hooked me so aggressively.

A lot of this is down to the boss design, which is simply sublime. Each boss will have a set pattern of attacks it uses, ranging from creating sweeping bars that’ll chase you down the track to firing missiles that explode with a large radius. Learning how best to dodge these attacks while still keeping your speed up for maximum damage is instantly compelling no matter how many times you die, and lends itself to chasing higher ranks of completion speed or even the top spot on online leaderboards.

It won’t take long for you to start unlocking new ways to manoeuvre in One Btn Bosses, which change the game entirely. One of these is swapping the ability to turn with the ability to dash forwards at speed while taking no damage, effectively allowing you to dodge through all the bullets with the right timing. Then there’s the reverse which sort of combines the two into a dash which changes directions. You’re free to use whichever of these abilities works best for you on a given level, and there’s no shame in sticking with what you know.

As well as different abilities, you’ll also unlock different weapons as you make your way through the campaign. Some of these aren’t too wild and crazy, like the laser which you can power up by collecting sparks that spawn on the track. Other trickier ones have the potential to deal huge amounts of damage but are ridiculously difficult to actually use, like the juggler weapon which involves racing around the track to catch balls you launch at the enemy for bonus damage. Mastering all these weapons was far more than I could handle, but there will be some seriously committed and skilful gamers who use them to make magic.

The campaign of One Btn Bosses is a wonderful way to learn how the game works while getting beaten up by the titular bosses, but for replayability you’ll probably go back to the Roguelike mode more. In this mode you’ll get to choose your route through a web of nodes to fight different bosses, which when defeated will give you a choice between various upgrades based on your chosen starter weapon. With limited health and randomised bosses which gain more attack types as you progress, this mode is always fun and adds an extra layer of thoughtful decision-making to the twitchy shooting and dodging.

Both modes of One Btn Bosses will award you with grind points (because the whole game is themed around a bizarre robot capitalist nightmare) which are used to unlock a whole heap of things once you earn enough of them. The weapons and abilities are all unlocked this way, as well as a variety of gorgeous colour palettes you can switch between whenever you want. Most of these are based on various LGBTQ+ flags, which make for fantastic visuals and also warmed my proud queer heart.

Above all else, One Btn Bosses impressed me because it made me enjoy something I often don’t. Bashing my head against a boss fight over and over again. Late-game bosses often beat me fifty times in a row before I finally shot them down, but perfecting a strategy and learning their attack pattern is so enjoyable that I just didn’t care. The fact you’re told the exact percent of health you took off after each attempt helps too because you can see the progress build, but I’ll admit there were a couple of times when it read 98% I screamed out loud in emotional pain.

One Btn Bosses is an exceptional game, and honestly, I’d struggle to say a lot negative about it. Some of the weapons and abilities felt a bit too fiddly to bother trying to use, and perhaps with a few enforced tutorial-style stages I’d have seen the value in them better. There are also a few colour palettes that make the game hard to see, but that’s a bit of a reach as far as negatives go.

One Btn Bosses is a genius game that proves that less absolutely can be more. With ridiculously tense gameplay, some seriously clever mechanics, and the ability to steal hours of your life without you even noticing, One Btn Bosses is almost bloody dangerous in terms of how compelling it is. The fact that a game which only requires a single button to play is so high on my game of the year list right now is honestly mind-blowing, but that’s how good this game is.