I don’t know what my west-coast cohorts at DIYGamer are doing this weekend, but about 18 inches of snow has basically shut down this city and trapped the team’s lone east coaster in his apartment for the weekend.

Because all I want to do is wear a blanket and stay in one place, I felt like now would be a great time to play a few of the one-button games I’ve seen pop up since Canabalt kicked off the craze and Gamma 4 encouraged everybody to see what they could make.

I expected most games to simply expand the concept Atom Atomic polished to perfection in Canabalt last summer. A character that moves on its own and does something when you press a button.

One Button Bob

And that’s what I got in One Button Bob. I’m not sure if the game is a Gamma 4 entry, but it would certainly qualify. Everything is controlled with the left mouse button, and in every room the button controls something different.

Sometimes Bob will jump. Sometimes he’ll throw a boomerang. Sometimes he’ll change direction. Each action is necessary to avoid whatever obstacle the room throws at you, such as pits, bats, bombs or spikes. It all culminates in a pretty satisfying boss fight.

War and Peace

The other game, however, goes in a completely different direction. Stéphane Bura did something crazy. He reimagined Civilization using one button. In this case, any button.

War and Peace takes the most interesting thing about Civilization, the research tree, and gives you control over only that. Your options are to be researching the war branch or the peace branch. Each advance gives you points in growth, research and/or power. Your civilization works on its own, using whatever technology benefits you’ve accumulated.

The only problem I ran into is that in the late game (which comes about three minutes in) both the war and the peace branches are the same. But I still played a half-dozen games, which would have taken weeks in any of Sid Meier’s games.

Both games were wonderful to play while huddled under a blanket, hiding from the snow.