One Clone Left Reviews

Interesting top-down survival game. I get an old-school vice from it that is enjoyable

One Clone Left is a fun, surprisingly diverse & replayable little twin-stick shooter in which you manage hordes of enemies by using a curious duplication mechanic. Most missions involve using a cloning machine to strategically defend & fall back to in order to duplicate resources, including not only items & ammo but also yourself in the form of competent AI partners (which your control switches to upon your characters' death). This results in an accommodation for not only a strong offense but also defensive play rarely seen in twin-stick shooters, putting OCL somewhat adjacent to real-time strategy in certain scenarios. You'll be forming a small troupe at the start of levels, trying to stay alive & grab stronger weapons from fallen foes as you're being overwhelmed at the border of enemy territory, then dashing back to the cloning machine to make better-equipped clones to replace your fallen selves and make a stronger attack. Those scenarios range from straightforward timed survival & map-clearing missions to experiments such as tower defense & even light-dungeon crawler emulations. It's impressive how much mileage ButtonSoft gets from putting their simple yet reliable mechanics (dashing in particular feels responsive) into all sorts of different map & objective designs. There's also various progression systems for abilities, buffs, weapons, & companion AI, which all unlock rather slowly -- not "pay-to-win design" slowly, but expect to spend some hours before getting to the high-tier stuff -- yet do have noticeable enhancement on play without handing you victories on a platter. [I particularly recommend unlocking the modestly powered but infinite ammo laser guns] The clean, cartoony graphics & plain UI make One Clone Left an unassuming low-budget title, but there's a lot of content with pretty tight hands-on execution here. It's got the charming low-fi look of a Newgrounds classic or what have you, yet with a much deeper progression loop & mission variety, as well as responsive controls & some smooth animations. It's one of those cool little finds among games cheap enough to pick up even when not on sale that you can pick up & play for short & sweet sessions for a long time.

One of the coolest ideas I have seen as a concept, pretty terrible execution. I'd wait longer before buying it though as it isn't much right now.