By Alec Meer on January 28th, 2013 at 5:00 pm.
Perfectly charming and perfectly twee, but perfectly ingenious with it, One and One Story is a two-player game for one person.
A superficial glance will tell you that it is a lo-fi platformer of the sort which litters Kongregate and similar, while a superficial play will tell you that it has an awful lot in common with the inner-monologuing and character-switching of Thomas Was Alone. Both these things are true, but both undersell what’s a tightly-executed ten minutes.
You play as a couple, separated by distance, jumps, drops and spikes, and in each level you must reunite them. Initially this just means making the apparent male perform a few simple leaps and bounds, then soon enough you must switch between each character to bring them together.
Just as that seems to be the game’s course, it has one of the characters computer-controlled, marching relentlessly to their doom unless you can intercept them en route. Then each character mirrors or inverts the other’s actions. Then… Well, it’s a finely-tuned and ever-changing creature, and though it may be said to be too short and too easy, and its visual and written style leaves much to be desired, there’s a real completeness to it. Recommended!
The music sounds rather like a more saccharine James Blackshaw to me, but of course this would have been the ideal soundtrack:
28/01/2013 at 17:37 Bracknellexile says:
The mechanics remind me of Braid in places but yeah, a nice way to kill 10-15 minutes and, for once, thankfully, no emo ending!
28/01/2013 at 17:50 gjrud says:
at the last level try going the other way, under “my” =)
28/01/2013 at 17:38 hanneswall says:
Looks like a more developed and polished version of a small game I did in college.
Ah, I miss that course. Just making short games every two weeks. T’was awesome.
28/01/2013 at 17:59 Rikard Peterson says:
Thanks, that was nice.
28/01/2013 at 18:05 Carbonated Dan says:
why can’t I scale the game beyond 300*180 without signing up to a website I almost never use?
28/01/2013 at 18:44 Rikard Peterson says:
Try another browser. (I’m using Safari on OS X, and I can easily zoom in any page, including Flash content.)
28/01/2013 at 20:50 Ross Angus says:
Lovely stuff.
28/01/2013 at 22:52 Engonge says:
Spoilers! “I was really suprised that there was no sick but emotional twist at the end.”
29/01/2013 at 07:17 broguewave says:
Very erudite James Blackshaw reference…well played.
29/01/2013 at 11:07 Esteis says:
What a lovely little game. (It would have been nice if one could have chosen to play as a girl running to a boy, or a girl to a girl, or a boy to a boy — the game/story could easily have afforded us the option. But, no matter. What a lovely little game.)
29/01/2013 at 13:18 sirdavies says:
It’s ok, but I really liked “I saw her standing there, but then she was a zombie”, which is pretty similar in concept but more fun in execution. It’s also on that website.
30/01/2013 at 15:36 wererogue says:
Surprised there’s no mention of the bonus levels, which are played two-handed, playing both characters at once, and were much more satisfying than anything in the main game.