One Person Story
Nintendo Switch

Developed By : Lampogolovii
Published By : Drageus Games
Category : Arcade, Puzzle, Story
Release Date : Nov 8, 2019

Puzzle games are wide-spread in how you can be tasked to play them. Some can be extremely intricate with the most fine-tuned controls you’ll ever see, while others can dial back your entire gameplay to pressing a single button. One Person Story on the Nintendo Switch is very much the latter, where you’ll find yourself on a journey with a pink orb and an incredibly deep story.

Everything begins simply with your pink orb floating through an empty corridor, surrounded by nothing on the outside. This orb passing down the corridor is the makeup for the game’s 100 levels where you’ll be tasked with helping guide the orb to safety on the other side of the screen. Each screen presents you with a new challenge, but it also provides you with some text that is clearly intended to produce some deep thought.

The challenges you’ll come across vary in being static in the level, or activated/deactivated by the press of a button from you. For the most part you’ll be angle-bouncing off of solid blue barriers, but eventually you’ll come across things that are either blue or red in color. The blue things are those that are static in the world, while red are ones you can manipulate.

Most of the red traps you come across are just variants on the static blue ones that you can turn on and off. These include barriers that will either appear/disappear or turn at a right-angle, spikes that can get buried into the wall, or even magnet barriers that will keep the orb drawn to it until it’s turned off.

The majority of the levels can be solved with some ease, and minimal complexity. However eventually One Person Story hits a point where you’ll need to find the optimal route to make it to the exit. This though still doesn’t require much crazy thinking, as it’s usually just waiting for the right moment to get out of the gate.

As for the bits of text that accompany your journey through the levels, I found these to be quite peaceful along with the games minimal soundtrack. It’s very clear that these texts are meant to not only tell the story of the pink orb, but also relate it to a journey through life. Occasionally you’ll come across one (or multiple) yellow balls in a second corridor close by on the screen, when the game will start talking about the necessity of helping friends and such.

In the past, I’ve generally viewed one-button games such as this as trivial at best. However, this game is not as simple as you’d imagine given its simple controls. Once you enter the areas where you’re combining the static obstacles with the ones you can control, everything gets taken up a notch as you try and search for the perfect angle and rhythm to get you through. As for the little narrative blurbs, I love that they were done the way they were. While they’re voiced over, they are not forced into a spotlight. It’s obvious that at certain points in the story these texts are meant to invoke deep thoughts, but they aren’t shoved down your throat forcing you to do so.

So whether you take the game at face value, or you look underneath it for the more meaningful message, One Person Story is a very enjoyable game to play. It’s simple in its delivery but challenging in how you need to approach it, which makes it the perfect game to relax with and work your way through a bunch of levels. The sheer number may sound intimidating but they go by pretty quickly, so the game should leave you with nothing but fun times. Grab your copy from the eShop and bounce your way through this title today.