Around the late nineties and early millennium, the internet was obsessed with things that are completely alien to us these days. Crazy Frog, AMVs, poorly made cartoons, All Your Base memes, and so forth. It was a weird, terrible time. But there were some things worth salvaging, like stick figure animation. Because of the very simple structure of the stick figure, Matrix addicted kids realized they could easily animate fight sequences with the little guys, and that they did for about a decade. It's a fad that has died out in recent years, as more talented animators and better programs have come out in droves, but Silver Dollar Games, a small group mostly responsible for long forgotten Xbox Live games, decided to make a game built around the premise of stick figures kicking the crap out of each other.

It's far more interesting that it sounds. With barely any assests to work with, the team cobbled together One Finger Death Punch with poor art, simple stick figure animations, and a one button set-up that eventually evolved into a two-button one. But they put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into this, and they've managed to make one of the most clever twists on the beat-em-up formula ever created, much in the same way Divekick boiled down all the complexity to a fighting game in two moves.

You play a stick figure on a screen. Enemies come at you from the left and right. You have two buttons that attack in those directions. Kill all the stick figures, which die in one hit, before they wear you down. However, things get more complicated quickly by enemies that take multiple hits, others that dodge in patterns, ones that throw weapons at you, and the boss mooks that, once engaged, force you into a quick time event where each miss results in damage, and finishing it destroys them. They come at you in large numbers, and the speed of the game changes depending on your performance.

Every stage has different objectives, from the usual kill them all brawls to deflecting knives with a sword. You go through them on a large map and select what you want to play, while also doing some stages to unlock different powers, including the ability to wield certain weapons longer or extended reach. You can have three equipped at a time, and they become a massive help as you go on and the game starts turning into a masochistic paradise.

There is an insane amount of content stuffed in here for such a simple game, and it can last for hours and hours. There are just a mountain of stages to get through, medals to gather, skills to unlock, and paths to take and explore to discover new things. The game itself doesn't really change up the formula too much, even in boss battles, but keeps you hooked in because it keeps making things harder and harder and harder. Time trial stages are especially frustration, as you have to learn enemy spawning in order to spawn the right enemies to take out boss mooks and multi-hit enemies fast, plus figure out the pattern so you can make your hits connect as fast as possible.

A two button game doesn't sound that hard, but you'd be amazed. The devs took advantage of the mechanical simplicity to work in a ton of variables, including your character's reach indicated by the left and right bars, penalties in earning medals for missing hits, and just swarming the screen with enemies so missed hits leave you open for a punch to the back of the head. Also, remember mention of enemies that throw things? They will make your life a living hell. Nothing ruins your day quite as fast as a club to the skull while dealing with two flipping purple idiots who refused to take a hit in two moves.

It's frustrating, but success is rewarded with sheer spectacle. If you time your hits just right, sometimes you'll activate special moves, like the screen going white as you're allowed to get in a bunch of free kills, or just stylish moments where you punch someone through the various movie style props in the background. There are even a few nasty zoom-in finishers thrown in, including one where you punch out eyes. The game is a giant light show as every hit and slice is show with plenty of kinetic celebratory effects, some stages keep things fresh with fights in thunderstorms or in old fashion black and white film reels, and every sound effect sounds cheap yet oh so satisfying with every nasty smash and dramatic moment.

The entire game bases itself around the era of the kung fu flick, and it gets it down pat in the sense of impact in presentation and the various moves the stick figures throw out (including, funny enough, the crane kick from The Karate Kid). There's even a cheesy narrator doing a bad dub voice usually reserved for martial arts masters, putting the game squarely in gloriously stupid territory. What could have easily been a forgotten budget game ended up being a spectacular explosion of violence, blood, nostalgia and pretty lights. Special mention must also be made to the light saber and nunchaku stages, which are just a delight to watch in motion.

Indie games are interesting because sometimes the developers prove you can do far more with less, and One Finger Death Punch is an absolutely perfect example of that. It's an absolute classic that deserves to be played for a long time to come.