Why one-button games are secretly the hardest
You learn a one-button game in about three seconds. Getting good at one can take weeks.
When the only thing you can do is press, the whole game is about when. You can't press the wrong button and there's nothing to fumble. If you die, you were a little early or a little late, and you know it. That's exactly why "one more go" is so hard to resist.
You're not faster. You're earlier.
Reaction time barely changes with practice. Timing changes a lot. After a few sessions you stop reacting to obstacles and start moving just before they arrive, because you've soaked up the rhythm: how fast the block slides, how long a swing takes, how far apart the gaps are. There's no upgrade to buy and nothing new to learn. The only thing that gets better is you.
Three ways to use one button
What the press actually does changes the whole game. We have three quite different ones.
A switch. In Gravity Dash a tap flips gravity between floor and ceiling. You read the track and flip a beat before you need to.
A release. In Tether you hold to grab an anchor and let go to fly. The skill isn't the press, it's the letting go.
A commitment. In Overstack each tap drops a block, and whatever hangs over the edge is cut off for good.
That last one is the cruel one. A sloppy tap early on doesn't just cost points, it makes every tap after it harder, because you're now landing on a narrower block.
Good for a short break
A tap works the same on a phone, a mouse or a spacebar, so there's nothing to explain and nothing to set up. Open the page, play three rounds, get back to work. Or don't, and try to beat your score one more time.