Update One Hundred and Sixty-Five: 5 April 2018
OneShot
5.6 hours, 11 of 11 achievements
9/10
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
I am still currently fighting a summer bug (How hellish is it to walk dogs in 87-degree heat with a 100.3-degree fever? VERY HELLISH) so I’m not the most coherent and it doesn’t help that I’m still openly weeping from this game. Just when I thought I knew what was happening, just when I thought it was well done, cute, even, but nothing groundbreaking, that’s when my fucking heart gets ripped through my kneecaps and I’m sobbing alone in my home (my girlfriend is out grocery shopping and I’m glad bc I don’t want to scare her)
This is the House in Fata Morgana of pixel 2D RPGs. This shit has layers, each layer adding more and more until you’re a sodden wreck. OneShot stands on the shoulders of Undertale and pushes the meta exploration of story elements woven into the physical-computational aspects of a game program itself. What Doki Doki Literature Club! does, OneShot does a hundredfold, in consistent and varied and truly inspired ways.
I mean, shit, guys, I feel like reviewing this is more than useless because the joy is in the discovery, even moreso than any other game I’ve mentioned. (I’ve mentioned a lot of them in the past three sentences. That’s so much more than usual.) Even if I write the next few paragraphs under spoiler tags, it’d just amount to me going ‘When X happened, wasn’t that off the fucking charts?!’ over and over again while people who played the game nodded along. That’s not very helpful.
Oh, god, I need to actually talk about the material, for-real game. Uh. The music was amazing - just the right amount of sparseness and tone. I wish there was more dialogue amongst the characters - I wished I got to know them more, and more deeply. Niko, the protagonist, is right up there with Clementine and Nanako as video game children I care deeply about.
Play this game.
Next up: Continuing the monthly theme - a freebie!
See you soon!
OneShot stands on the shoulders of Undertale
Actually, OneShot came first (there’s a free version from 2014, and Undertale was released in 2015), so if anything, Undertale stands on the shoulders of OneShot.
It’s been a while since I’ve gotten one of your interjections! You sure told me.
I beg forgiveness, especially since the version I played is not the 2014 version. I have to imagine a lot has changed since then.
YES YES YES
I kept seeing it pop up every time you were playing it <3
bootiful
HA! Oh no, Blue! I was hoping I wasn’t annoying anyone by having to open and close the game - in my defense sometimes the game itself did that!
It was a really lovely experience, wasn’t it?
I have this in my backlog, maybe I should play this sooner rather than later
YES YES I’d definitely recommend it!
I’m glad you liked it! I took a leap on buying Oneshot and I was so glad it was the game I gambled my money on.
Spoiler which ending did you choose? I was so glad the Solstice ending was made to make me feel better about the original endings >.<
Definitely agreed.
My first ending I restored the sun. I’m VERY glad the Solstice ending was added - honestly if the game had just stopped with the first two endings, it’d just be a pretty okay game. The Solstice route/ending really pushed it tf over the top. I was already crying, but when Niko walked the fuck out of the game window and down towards home I fucking lost it.
also I can’t believe this game hit me with the Velveteen Rabbit feels. That was another hard hitter, talking with the World Machine and learning what ‘taming’ was. Things becoming Real is like my BIG CRY BUTTON