Recommended by @DeemonAndGames for this list.

Light Spoilers

I’ve played a lot of games, but very few of those games are purely story/puzzle focused. Despite that, the few games I have played that make both of those two elements a focus seem to have two major hurdles that are harder to deal with than in other kinds of games:

1. How do you appropriately punish the player when the gameplay is purely knowledge based?

2. How can replaying the game be as good as initially, let alone better?

It’s not like these questions are exclusive to story/puzzle games, but having a focus on these elements makes answering these questions much more critical than with other genres. Different games have different ways of trying to get over these hurdles. Moon: Remix RPG Adventure is non-linear and has a timer to promote efficiency, Hypnospace Outlaw is extremely open-ended, allowing for multiple solutions to problems along with an endless amount of side content, and Ace Attorney… honestly doesn’t try to get over these problems. Oh well.

I think that those two questions are a reason OneShot appealed to me in the first place, @DeemonAndGame’s recommendation non-withstanding. I wanted to play it someday, because if you only get one shot at a game, you kinda bypass those two questions. It’s a novel concept, and in the 2014 version you couldn’t even close the window! You can’t really sell a game like that easily though, so it’s understandable that the 2016 version made some changes.

It’s about cat-looking kid named Niko who’s basically isekai’d into some world where the sun is a lightbulb. Niko, along with the help of god (the player), has to bring the lightbulb to a tower to restore the sun, which previously went out. All of this was prophesized, of course. You meet a lot of decently likeable characters who have some fairly humourous moments as you trek through the world trying to get to the tower. Kind of a nitpick, but I think it’s a bit odd that considering how important Niko is to the fate of the world, very few people seem to care about actually helping him. Like yeah, some people are pretty nihilistic and think the world is going to end even if the sun comes back, but plenty still have hope. Someone would probably try and take the sun and get a ransom for it or something. Actually, maybe that would be a bad plan, because when some robot tries to stop Niko because he doesn’t have a library card, no one seems to care. Are they ok with the world dying because the messiah didn’t have a library card? Why can’t Niko just ignore the robot? They’re specifically programmed to not hurt people.

I guess the reason is that that would be a very boring game if everything was handed to you. It’s not like the gameplay here is exhilarating or fast-paced anyway, but it is good, albeit very simple. You can select items to interact with overworld objects and combine items to make new ones. I do think it’s a bit easy to just trial-and-error item combining, as there’s no punishment for it, but that’s not a big deal. For me personally, I never really needed to. Progression was usually very straightforward, barring some very major exceptions I will get to. You just go until you hit a roadblock, explore to find items, interact with overworld objects and combine in ways that are logical, and then keep going. It’s less frustrating than a game like, let’s say, Ace Attorney, but it also creates few “Aha!” moments, which is something Ace Attorney excels at.

Well, there are the ‘very major exceptions’ I mentioned earlier, which are far more interesting and novel. Games nowadays are meta. But OneShot is like, really meta. The first time this was used for puzzle, it caught me off guard. I was afraid the novelty of these kinds of moments would wear off as I grew to expect them, and it did to an extent, but the execution of them is still rather good for the most part. They’re often hinted in ways that would make sense without the meta context, they escalate in dramatic effect, it’s pretty well done. Honestly, these puzzles are the best part of the game in my opinion. I do wish a few were more subtle in terms of actually being puzzles, but that could apply to the entire game as I said before.

In terms of visuals, the game does the job. They’re fine, sometimes looking rather good, but I don’t think they’re great, and the repetition of some visuals kind of hurts the exploration. A lot of locations kind of just blend in, so remembering where you have and haven’t been is occasionally tricky. The music, while limited, is good.

Generally, I'd say the game was really good, but aside from the meta puzzle stuff, I wouldn’t describe anything as particularly great. Most of the characters are cool, but not great (Although I did like the player interactions with Niko quite a bit). The normal puzzles are good enough, but not great. And honestly, while me nitpicking the plot was mostly just for comedic effect, it did make me realize the plot isn’t really active at all. You could probably cut out the middle area of the game, the Glen, and not lose anything in terms of actual events. That aside, the game's story is pretty repetitive. Maybe Niko really should’ve been kidnapped by some guy or something. Maybe at least one character should’ve tried to accompany Niko to some extent.

Maybe I’m being too harsh though. That’s not to say I don’t think those criticisms aren’t warranted, but if you instead look at the game as a story meant to take place over two playthroughs, this isn’t as big of a deal, because the second playthrough is more active in general. One could easily see the ending of the first playthrough as a sort of ‘second act low point’ for a greater story which includes two playthroughs. By extension, the first playthrough being formulaic and could be seen as an attempt to build expectations, which a second playthrough subverts. Really, that’s discussion of how we should critique games goes far beyond this review, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

I suppose it’s also worth mentioning that there is a second playthrough in the first place, considering the game keeps telling you that ‘you only get one shot’. So uh… I guess the game doesn’t entirely bypass those two questions I mentioned earlier, huh? Well, while you can replay the game after getting the ‘good ending’, there are some permanent consequences regardless. It’s a fine consolation prize, but I honestly would’ve preferred just not being allowed to play the game again, as counter intuitive as that sounds. Still, there is a sense of finality to it all that I’m glad the game leaned into.

My score is 7/10, close to an 8. I was harsh on it for sure, but in the end it did most of what it set out to do. It’s a game where most of it is good and a few elements are great. I’d recommend it to anyone, although it's probably a game best experienced on PC.