Flex those fingers, crack those knuckles, and take a deep breath: One Finger Death Punch 2 is out now and it will put your body, mind, and keyboard to the test. The side-on brawler from Silver Dollar Games is deceptively simple, with a stream of baddies charging towards you, one button to attack to your stickman’s left, and another to strike to the right. Then the enemy stickmen come faster and faster. And with weapons. And boss battles. And sword duels. And combos. And… it gets wild, and a right lark. Death Punch 2 has a demo so you can experience that for yourself.

The thing is, One Finger Death Punch is not a game you can button-mash through. It can look simple, with most baddies felled by a single blow, but mastering the timing and assessing the flow of incoming enemies is vital if you want to become a kung fu master. Here, see that in this video of Stage 2:



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Excuse me, that’s only the SECOND stage? Ludicrous.

I’m glad to see Silver Dollar Games find fame and relative fortune with a widely-liked game. They started out making games for the Xbox 360’s Xbox Live Indie Games, releasing a great many curios from comedy dating guide Don’t Be Nervous Talking To Girls to a game about stopping your cat from eating your breakfast cereal. Silver Dollar were used a punchline because they released many scrappy and unconventional games (though I myself did like their range and weirdness and experimentation and was glad to have them out there) until 2014’s One Finger Death Punch came out and was, like, real good.

XBLIG experienced the phenomenon of self-appointed quality police long before Steam Greenlight (and especially the end of Greenlight) on PC, so we really should’ve all seen that coming. Point is, good on ya, Silver Dollar.

As for what the sequel brings, the launch trailer details and demonstrates some additions:



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One Finger Death Punch 2 is out now on Steam, with a 25% launch discount bringing it down to £4.34/€4.94/$5.99 until Monday the 22nd. The demo is over on that Steam page too, hidden behind a “Download Demo” button somewhere in that cruft on the right-hand side.