OneShot has been originally released about 10 years ago as a freeware game made with RPG Maker 2003. It continued the wave of the games that were designed to provide experience inside and outside of the game window, like creating new files on player computer and changing the wallpaper, like it was already done in other well known titles like IMSCARED. And its biggest gimmick was in the title – you only had one shot at finishing the game. If you did something incorrectly, the game would become permanently unwinnable and you also could not replay the game from the start once you’ve finished it. Well… in theory – in reality you could make it work again, but the concept was still bold and the tone of the game was hopeful, but bleak and horror themed.
Then two years later a commercial version of the game was released, that started moving away from the whole “One shot at it” concept, but had even more crazy fourth wall breaking shenanigans and a bigger game world with more characters. Another year later, a “true ending” path was added as a big update to said version that I personally had a lot of problems with back when I reviewed the game. Fast forward to 2022, World Machine Edition got released on consoles, recreating all of the fourth wall breaking experiences within a virtual Operating System and adding some additional details and switching a lot of the backend elements of the title. And now, in 2024, this version has arrived to PCs.
OneShot is a story driven adventure game, where you help a little cat-like kid Niko along their journey to save a strange world they were teleported to. The gameplay would be familiar to anyone who has played adventure games made with the RPG Maker engine or has played classics like Sweet Home, minus the combat. This game is only focused on solving problems that prevent Niko from progressing along his path and meeting various characters. Though, as I’ve already hinted, this rather simple experience is enhanced with the “outside of the game” elements, so from time to time you need to utilize the fact that it is a game in a window of an Operating System to solve problems or find hints, some of which may appear in different “folders”. In the older Windows-only versions of the game, those would use actual folders, but in the World Machine Edition you will be utilizing a virtual version of a desktop instead.
While I still maintain that the brevity and atmosphere of the original free version of the game led to a better OneShot, as it was originally made, experience, I cannot ignore the fact that both 2016 release and especially this version are, for all intents and purposes, a very different game in its intent. And in that World Machine Edition is a far better experience than the previous version ever was, as now the title fully embraces its more wholesome storytelling nature, without putting much pressure on the players that, in the original free game, were stressed to make a mistake and ruin the playthrough. One of the key puzzles was even designed around this fear. Either way, the soundtrack is still fantastic, visual direction is cute and writing, in the main game, is solid enough for the length of experience.
The “true ending” path, however has remained absolutely dreadful. It’s restrictively linear, to the point of introducing busywork tasks and backtracking at times. It thinks far better of its own storyline and character writing than what it is. It’s long, tedious and fails to be cute and wholesome story it’s supposed to be. As it’s far more likely to make you like the characters less, not more. It’s a real shame nothing about it has been changed for the new release, as the only genuinely good moment in the entirety of that terrible experience is the literal ending of the game that still feels inventive and well done.
Back in 2017 I argued that it’s better to just play the original freeware release and skip the commercial one, if you could. But with the release of World Machine Edition, I think that this is the best version of what the developers wanted OneShot to be. Just not what it used to be at the beginning. It’s definitely worth playing, if you haven’t already, and is the version that I’m sure will remain playable without issues for far longer than the older releases, because who knows what future Operating Systems will change to make the older versions fourth wall breaking elements stop working.