PAX East 2019: One Finger Death Punch 2 Offers More Than You’d Actually Think

For games especially today, many hold a higher standard for the title’s expectancy either it being from what the title offers in gameplay or the game’s overall look when giving a first impression. But sometimes a game might contradict what people might have for the game’s initial expectation and exceed it unexpectedly with contrast to what is ready to play.

For this piece, I’m talking about One Finger Death Punch 2 from Silver Dollar Games. When I first stumbled upon this title I did not shares as much anticipation for the title originally compared to some of the other game’s I’ve already covered at this year’s Penny Arcade Expo in Boston. Following the nearly 30-minute hands-on demo with the game, I discovered that what I first saw was only the top layer of this project.

This fast-paced, stick figure fighter unlike games that use the entire game-pad to control what the fighter does; instead the title only offers two buttons to initiate combat and simplifying your expectations even more. But playing the 16-part tutorial of the game, you can go pretty far with only hitting X and B on an Xbox controller. When an enemy approaches you, there is a diameter which highlights either red or blue that prompts which respected button to press.

Then the gameplay continues to unravel as you face other obstacles to watch out for such as throwable projectiles to dodge/throw/deflect, more hardened enemies with a beefier health bar, kung fu specialists, and even bosses. Which to a point later in the demo as you match against nearly all variants in one fight leaves you overwhelmed by the end of the confrontation.

Following the demo, I spoke with creator John Flook after playing to ask about what’s changed between the upcoming sequel compared to the predecessor. Flook explained that the true difference isn’t majorly centered around one major feature, but rather it is focused on a lot of minimal fixes from the first one ie. better performed animations, more enemy variants, and the amount of levels present.

Another addition is the amount of abilities that players can have active when fighting. Previously in the first title, players could only have 3 activated when playing, but now you can have up to all 26 skills stack on top of one another. Flook even shared for those who are unsure what to choose is to us the Earthquake skill which is both very helpful by taking out mobs of enemies and looks really cool with the environmental effects.

An overhaul of weapons also made it’s way into the new game with roughly 20 different weapons that will be present. Flook made it clear that most weapons don’t really offer anything besides visual appeal either it being throwing knives, swords or nunchucks, they all practically do the same thing. The only exception that Flook said is the sniper rifle is unique as the gun’s round will shoot through every enemy in the direction it is going.

One question that I had was the choice for a game with so much detail in its combat to have the simple stick figures in place for their fighters. Flook mentioned that despite his interest in creating intricate 3D models with previous projects, the lesser detailed figures models help with creating more complex fighting animations for the game. To contrast with the character’s simplicity, the studio partnered with several artists to make highly detailed backgrounds to contrast the models.

The fighter also features a co-op mode for players to enjoy with a friend: giving them three lives each, they can tag one another in & out to heal up with a beefed up difficulty. Flook said that the online portion is the most minor feature of the game as he does not want to sell the title for it to be seen as the main mechanic and skew what he intendeds the title to be seen as.

Next month on April 15th One Finger Death Punch 2 will be available for Steam. Then the developer plans to bring the game to Xbox and Nintendo Switch after: PlayStation 4 following that. Even Linux is in mind, but that’s after all major platforms are covered first.