One Turn Kill is the world champion of descriptive titles. It’s a card battler where you get one turn to kill each enemy. Each battle begins with you drawing 5 cards from your deck of 20 and ends immediately when you either kill the enemy or end your turn. It sounds like a gimmick that would only be good for one level in a larger game, but OTK really does a lot with a simple idea.
Combat
The key to the battle system is that card costs are paid by drawing more cards from your deck. This turns both high and low-cost cards into double-edged swords. Sure, a zero doesn’t deplete what is effectively your HP at all, but it also doesn’t let you draw any cards, so you can end up emptying your hand if you play too many. On the other hand, high cost cards let you draw a stack of cards, but you’ll drain your draw pile in no time by playing even 4 cost cards. The tension of draw power vs deck depletion really drives the whole experience, and every boss adds to it in a new way.
Bosses
Speaking of bosses, the game has four that you can see at the start. Each one has its own mechanics, but the more interesting part is that they all also have 5 difficulty levels. Difficulty can be freely customized per-boss when you start a run, so it’s possible to have one boss be level 1 and another be level 5 if you want, but rewards are unlocked based on the total difficulty score across all four. Defeating higher level bosses also unlocks new cards and upgrade chips to spend on those cards, so you have a satisfying progression of new stuff pulling you along through the difficulty ladder. There are achievements for beating each boss on difficulty 5, but you only need to play up to a total score of 13 to beat the game.
Minor Points
OTK also does a handful of smaller things well. I like that each boss gives you a choice of three active abilities to add to your run, and while there aren’t a ton to pick from in total, they all change how you play in fun ways. The music and story are similar – there’s not much of either, but what’s here is well done. The high energy soundtrack fits perfectly with the atmosphere of the game, and there’s just enough story to be interesting without getting in the way of what’s ultimately a small puzzle game.
As far as criticisms, there are some issues with the localization. None of the dialogue or card text is wrong, but it’s occasionally unnatural or unclear, and there were a few cards that didn’t make sense to me until near the end of the game. There’s no support for resolutions over 1080p, which isn’t the end of the world, but there was also a strange issue with the card text being blurred until you mouse over it. That’s visible in my screenshots and was honestly pretty annoying.
Conclusion
Overall, OTK is a fun way to spend a few hours. It does a lot more than I’d have thought possible with such a simple gimmick, but not quite enough to be truly memorable. That said, it’s an $8 game. I think a bigger version of this that really took the decks and bosses to the limit could be something special, but we were never going to get that for $8. As long as you go in knowing it’s short and sweet, there’s a lot to like here.
Rating: 80%
Time to beat: 4 hours to unlock all cards and reach credits. Beating difficulty 20 would take a little longer.
Price: $8
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