Kick or Die is a stationary beat-em-up by Boomfire Games reminiscent of One-Finger-Death-Punch except, you guessed it, the game uses your gams and not your guns.

The title is incredibly accurate. In this game, you either kick, or you die, and you can take 3 hits per stage before you give up the ghost. I encountered a few different kinds of reflex-testing enemies while playing; the basic black-clothed ninjas who die in one hit, seemingly mask-wearing ninjas who take one kick and rise up again for another mouthful of foot, and the white ninjas who attempt to trick you by dodging your first kick and appearing on the other side of you. Those in particular gave me trouble. But never fear, because each successful kick builds a meter for your ultimate attack, which conjures some sort of serpentine creature and launches tornadoes on either side of the player character that clear the map when you get a little too overwhelmed.

I am always a sucker for a nice art style, and this game doesn’t disappoint. Set in aesthetically pleasing Asian-themed pixel art backgrounds, the graphics, music, and sfx harken back to the old side scrolling arcade games of yore.

This game boasts 10k downloads on the Play Store with an overall rating of 4.4, however upon installation it asked for a surprising amount of credentials including access to my camera, microphone, and location. Somewhat worrying for a game of this kind, but nothing worth deterring a download.

I died a lot while playing, my reflexes are not what they used to be and mobile games are not my forte. Unfortunately this meant I encountered a lot of ads, which play almost every time you go through a loading screen. Typically I could skip them after 5 seconds, but the sheer amount was off-putting. The game also features a system of continues. You get a certain amount of continues, I believe I started with a maximum of 9, and a ten-minute timer replenishes them one at a time. Fortunately for both of these issues, for the paltry sum of .99c you can permanently banish the ads and give yourself infinite continues for unlimited, uninterrupted play. Honestly I believe that’s quite a fair deal given the content of the game.

In closing, I don’t regret the download and I’d recommend giving it a shot if you’ve got a buck to spare on removing the ads and enjoyed One-Finger-Death-Punch enough to want a mobile version with pretty pixel art.

My rating: 3.5/5, would probably have been higher without ads.

Kick or Die is available for Android and iOS