One Finger Death Punch 2 hits April with a demo out now
Stick the landing
You can kill a stickman ten thousand ways using just two buttons in One Finger Death Punch 2. Sequel to Silver Dollar's original manic pseudo-brawler, you can try it for yourself now before it lands on April 15th. Baddies approach from either side - when they're within range, a left click strikes the target on the left, and a right click strikes the target on the right. And then there's projectiles, dodging, bosses, weapons, enemies that switch sides, bonus rounds and a hundred more complications without ever needing more than two buttons. Grab the demo on Steam here.
The irony of One Finger Death Punch is that it's best played with two fingers. Punch left, punch right, that's all you need to remember. Except that when you're riding a horse you want to swing when an enemy is passing underneath, and when you've taken a ranged weapon you can attack outside of your normal range. And that when you attack a tougher enemy you should hammer out the falling attack string as fast as possible, or any of a dozen other sub-rules and twists the game throws at you. The demo does a good job of letting you know what kind of escalation to expect.
It's like playing a very fast game of Simon Says, constantly introducing new rules and quirks. While as a player you'll be mostly focused on the indicators telling you what enemies are within range, letting you know how many times you need to click, spectators get to watch an absurd cartoon kung-fu battle. Sometimes everyone has guns. Sometimes you just punch people's heads clean off. Sometimes there's lightsabers for no good reason (beyond lightsabers being good). It's distracting information overload, and part of the challenge is filtering out the noise to click the right button.
The full game promises over 400 levels, four different endless challenge towers and 26 unlockable skills, each adding one more twist to the game. One Finger Death Punch 2 lands on April 15th. You can find the demo on the side-bar of its Steam store page here. One note: The demo doesn't appear to save progress, so you'll have to do it all in one extremely violent sitting.