Game Review: OneShot
My First Playthrough of an Indie Fan Favorite and 2017 Best Indie Game Nominee
Rating: ★★★★★
Status: completed (updated 2022), pay to play
Genre: adventure, puzzle, narrative, 4th wall break, pixel, 2D
Gameplay: single-player
Playtime: 5 hours
Replay Value: high, 3 possible endings + easter eggs
Difficulty Level: normal/intermediate
Gameplay and Mechanics: 5/5
Graphics and Art Style: 5/5
Story and Theme: 5/5
Ultimate assessment:
Exceptionally clever and inventive, OneShot explores the playable dynamic between protagonist, gamer and the fourth wall. With a startlingly delightful sense of paranoia — this deeply narrative and puzzle adventure implores thinking outside the box as it directly engages the gamer’s console. Where gameplay mechanics extend beyond the game window and surprise content awaits at every turn, the story continuously urges you to explore to your heart's content.
Unexpectedly emotional, Niko cultivates a profound impact on the world and the player’s perspective, leaving behind an eerie yet oddly satisfying sense of fatigue that blurs the lines between reality and fiction.
In what is undoutably one of my most innovative annd creatively immersive gaming experiences, OneShot has exceeded my expectations and redefined the very essence of breaking the fourth wall. With its dynamic gameplay, enchanting music score, diverse landscaping, and quirky character design, alongside its phenomenally clever mechanics, OneShot has firmly secured a spot among my top games played in 2024.
Originally released in 2020, and updated in 2022, this game is now beloved in the indie circle. I’m late to the party here, but happy to have arrived nonetheless. Without further adieu, let’s get into my review of the game.
Gameplay Review
The Barrens
The game is broken into three segments, mimicking chapter-like progression into the gameplay. The World is where our main protagonist, Niko, a young child who finds themselves suddenly awake in. A circular physical plane of existence, terraforming into three rings of domains knows as the Barrens, the Glen, and the Refuge.
Niko begins their puzzling quest on the outskirts of The World, in the Barrens. A cold, grey and desolate plane that has long been abandoned by its organic inhabitants.
This trickly little game forces vigilant observation to navigate puzzles, using the environment in its favor and discovering tools for your journey as you explore. I often found myself falling victim to my own gaming biases, where limited interactivity with previous experiences and the scarcity of tool modification seemed to dull my creative thinking. I humble myself here by admitting it took me almost 30 minutes to get our of the room we first woke up in. I am not afraid to admit that I had to resort to outside sources to inform my executive decisions of the puzzle. And while the small hint helped me forward, I felt defeated as if I failed to cleverly connect the dots on just the first task.
Lately, in creating Beanstalk Origins and committing to a mere serious role as a gamer, I am constantly trying to expand my imagination and “street smarts” of gaming. So I was caught entirely by surprise when my Screen Server name was pulled into the game and I was suddenly being addressed directly! As the god of The World, and Niko as my messiah.
The Barrens largely acts as a introduction into the game, and provides a level environment for gamers to test their creativity. Tasked with repairs, information gathering, and tool sourcing — Niko must find a way past the lake to progress to Glen. But I am getting ahead of myself…You see, Niko wakes in The World and finds they are the messiah of this land, entrusted with returning the life force to the world, its Sun. A lightbulb that Niko themself restored energy to.
Along this journey, we encountered three pivotal robots; Prophetbot, Rowbot and Silver.
Unlike Prophetbot and Rowbot, who are complying with their preprogrammed roles to assist the messiah, Silver is a tamed bot. Which we can infer from experience inside The World, is that taming allows them to exist outside of their programming and execute a more organic nature. Silver is our first human-like interaction in OneShot, and also provides us with the first essential key to making the trek to the tower.
Navigating the rocky and dusty Barrens, Niko obtains key tools in the world that assist their journey. But one elusive, yet vital discovery, is one of The Author’s journals. The Author is a character in The World, infamous in visage but famous for their documentation of said world. The in-game impact of The Author is evident and constantly present, especially much later in the game inside the Refuge. But predominately becomes an important player in helping me, the gamer/god, salvage The World.
Even in my first run of Oneshot, I wasn’t as diligent as I originally thought, and i missed game content — it feels like I needed to be just on the edge of excessive gameplay. Truthfully, it’s easy to get lost in the Barrens. With much of the landscape looking bare and similar, navigating the territory to discover unopened building and unengaged NPC’s tricked me into missing clues about there being more before I progressed to the Glen.
My advice? Be exhaustive. If you’re like me, game narrative is everything. Try every possible attempt, every pushback, twice. Don’t allow perceived limitations to stop you from trying again — because the many challenges in OneShot will test you, as it did me.
Finally, and most essential to progressing to the next two domains of The World, is finding a way to once again bring life to the Barrens and power the robots left behind, especially Rowbot, who is your ferry guide across the lake.
BE WARNED, WHEN YOU PROGRESS DOMAINS, YOU CANNOT RETURN!
The Glen
If you weren’t paying attention before, then get yourself together. The Glen, is the last organic stronghold of nature, holding to the dwindling light of The World to power its luminescent Phosphor trees and keeping the water open and clear. This domain is where we finally encounter the organic inhabitants of The World, left scavenging off of a falling apart terrain and in an isolated existence.
The Glen brings more life and story into the narrative of OneShot, but also more of the suffering history of the people of a dying world. This is where Niko finds the will to pursue some semblance of heroism, and attempts to be the savior they all need.
Now by this point of the game, paranoia had begun to take root as The Entity has contacted me multiple times. Reaching outside the game window and breaking the fourth wall, this unseen messenger helps navigate The World. But with help came a warning (or rather a threat) to protect Niko at all cost. Many of the puzzles in OneShot are pieced together by the 4th wall break clues and keys The Entity provides.
Here’s where I recommend a pen and paper if you haven’t already supplied yourself with one by now. As the challenges grow increasingly more difficult, and with so many details being dropped throughout the game, I found it helpful for memory recall to have this on hand.
In the Glen, we encounter many more pivotal characters like Calamus and Alula, bird people and brother and sister. By assisting in reuniting them, and foraging friendships, Niko becomes more involved in the world. And subsequently, also more invested. I particularly enjoyed having Alula join me during a part of my adventure before reuniting her with her brother, (a quest to find the lost sister which resolves with the involvement of The Entity yet again.)
On my journey with Alula, we encounter a plant spirit, hungry and dying. Maize’s only wish before she goes, is to feel the sun again — it’s up to you weather or not you let this withering spirit hold on to The Sun. Without it, you wonder The World in its absence for a while. Upon reflection, I realized that my decision to fulfill Maize's wish left me emotionally stirred and motivated, as Niko became the first witness of death in this sunless world.
In this encounter with Maize, I gained a firm understanding that there is actionable gameplay in OneShot — That there will be consequences for your decisions. This, combined with the missed content and Something called the “Solstice Run” that I encountered in my gameplay research, motivated me to label the replay value of OneShot as high.
What I found particularly challenging in the Glen, was shaking off paranoia that there was always something more I was missing (turns out I missed something in every domain anyways) so I struggled to just keep moving forward all the way through on my first attempt. But I couldn’t help but admire the relentless sense of the loss of direction and monotony of retracing your steps. Nothing about the plot synopsis or limited spoilers I gave myself, could have prepared me for the sheer frustration that came from playing OneShot. I deeply enjoyed the challenges, both self-inflicted and gameplay intended.
There are many sublocations to the Glen and if you are easily confused by a manipulated sense of direction, them I implore you to map out your own route to help you navigate. I wanted to play the game as blindly as I possibly could, but I will be executing a second (and even third) playthrough of the game. I intended to make a map of my own devices during my second run to help ease my own confusion, (or you can always look it up online, what do I know about how you want to play your game.) But seeing how I missed game content and there is a “World Machine Edition” to the game, the OneShot experience is far from over for me. (You can play the WME on Switch, PlayStation or Xbox!)
The Refuge
The storyline leads Niko to the Refuge, a final safe haven to all inhabitants living closest to the original Sun’s source, The Tower. Surrounded by a city of lost souls and dying hope, the Refuge is the most protected, and subsequently the most vulnerable, of The World. Finally reaching the final domain, and the innermost circle of The World had me excited and exhausted.
The Refuge is where the most puzzles in-game reside, and challenged me as a gamer the most. While navigating a city was easier then a barren wasteland and a drowning forest, the puzzles often stumped me and I was relentlessly humbled and tested. (I am not afraid to admit again that after 36 attempts to solve the camera lens configuration, I had to resort to outside help. I discovered my error was in both loosing my place in line of attempts and not speaking to all the NPCs. Which shocked me as I relentlessly pestered every NPC I encounters to talk to me, so I am again reminded of how exhaustive I need to be in this game.)
The Refuge had 14 sublocations to discover (and I am no including The Tower in this) all of which provided enriching world building and pulled the narrative into a more define sense of closure. It is here that we encounter the last group of our essential characters, but I was most drawn to Kip, the scientist, George, the head librarian, and Ling, the cafe worker.
George was the most crucial character for obtaining insight on The Author and also is the answer to the mysterious journal I had been carrying since the beginning of the Barrens. However through Kip you learn of her robot counterpart, Silver. Through this interaction you gain the history of robot taming. Overall, I found both of these characters really supplements the narrative of OneShot.
I found the logic behind robot dynamics and their life assistance to be almost cruel and selfish — and Kip really articulated that imbalance. Thee history of their storyline added into The World lore, and I was left with a sense that this world existed inside another world.
At this point in the game I had become so invested in the lore of OneShot that I subconsciously started to develop my own theories. During this time, I believed The World to all be inside a computer. That The Entity who became sentient was the very foundation of nature and natural order of a computer board — but it retaliated when its inhabitants started to abuse the domains at its expense. And The Sun? The Lightbulb? To be the literal power behind The World but without it over time, the world would continue to deteriorate without use. This theory solidified for me when Silver said The World was beyond saving anyway — that even with The Sun, The World will still meet its end eventually. Just as a computer does. And the glitches? They are proof of the signs of deterioration. Need I say more?
However Ling felt like an important NPC specifically to support Niko. He had the most personality and humanity shown in a character of The World. The only thing that truly reminded Niko of home was his pancakes. I believe this is the moment, for me, that I could see a second home was solidified in Niko’s heart.
The Tower
As an unofficial fourth domain of The World (which I also believe symbolizes the “fourth wall,” ) The Tower provided the most challenge; both emotionally and physically. Here we see a close to Niko and The World’s story. The Author and The Entity manifest out of game, and clash — with an ultimate choice that I alone must decide without Niko.
After multiple attempts to navigate The Tower’s maze (and even one restart) I found near the end that I had made the challenge of wondering around a dark room so MUCH HARDER for myself by not understanding the “key” in which The Author provided for us. Please don’t do what I did, pay attention to the clover. This isn’t the game Adventure, and you will get the golden egg after wondering around forever in a dark room — but the beauty of OneShot lies in finding ways to play along with the fourth wall breaks.
In the end, I saved The World. I felt a personal growth from the experience, as a lover of stories and as a dedicated gamer. OneShot is now in my top recommended “outside the box” games for new Indie players (or new gamers overall really.) All in one game it provides character growth, whimsical puzzles, an enchanting storyline, colorful landscapes, detailed pixel art, an articulate music score and amazing world building.
A Shoutout to the Team and Developers
I tip my hat off to you and your amazing team for bringing us a beautiful game and an amazing world to play.
A major congrats to Eliza Velasquez, Michael Shirt, and Nightmargin (Casey Gu) to the development of OneShot. There are so MANY people who supported and were a part of this game, and I love that you included their credits in the download of the application.
Most of all, I want to give a bouquet of flowers to Aaron Mullins, who OneShot was dedicated to. Known as “Felix the Judge,” he was a creator of a fangame inspired by OFF, called HOME. He was well loved in the OFF and Undertale fandoms but most of all, shared his love for games with the community.