The one hit kill is an incredibly meaningful choice, and I feel like it drives a lot of other decisions as well. It forces the player to be completely unburdened by the weight of their actions, killing without a thought. The second you fret about your next move, the flow is interrupted, and your survival chances drop.

And since you spend so little time on any single enemy, that drives decisions about how success is measured, etc etc. The similarities fall into place when you hew very closely to the single guy kill mechanic.

I don’t fault Ludic at all for the similarities here, it’s an innocent case of carcinization. If you’re going to make a game whose loop is so tight that you can boot up the game and enter an extremely satisfying flow state in a minute flat, you make something like this. I’m definitely going to check out Akane next.