Game Reviews

Robot Unicorn Attack

Star onStar onStar onStar onStar off
Get
Robot Unicorn Attack

Stranded in a boiling, cramped train carriage? Sick of someone else’s N-Dubz mix blasting out of tinny mobile speakers nearby? Want to get some non violent revenge?

Then fire up Robot Unicorn Attack, and if after five minutes of headphone-less play you haven’t had a magical gaming experience, cleared the carriage, or maybe sparked an Erasure-themed riot then, well, that’s what refunds are for.

Chasing rainbows

From the genius minds of Adult Swim, the cult Flash game is at heart a Canabalt clone.

Rather than casting you as an office worker running from an unmentioned alien threat, Robot Unicorn Attack instead puts you in the hooves of a magical unicorn who dreams of becoming a star.

Press 'start' and you’re given three ‘wishes’, or lives, with which to gallop at ever increasing speed from left to right for as long as possible without fatally crashing.

Tapping ‘jump’ on the left helps your steed reach stars, for bonus points, or avoid obstacles like rocky bumps or deadly chasms between platforms.

An extra tap gives you a handy double-jump, but this needs to be carefully applied to avoid collisions with stone stalactites or higher platforms.

Meanwhile, a button on the right is reserved for rainbow-dashes, where you burst forward in a colourful flurry to crash through otherwise fatal giant stars for score boosts.

Immaculate timing and an intuitive knowledge of what’s coming next, forged through countless replays, are the only way you’ll ever reach the impossibly lofty heights of the OpenFeint-enabled scoreboards.

(Era)surely, you can’t be serious?

The game's improbable Midas touch, though, is the perpetually looping of pop duo Erasure’s 1994 hit ‘Always’ as gameplay muzak.

The twee track provides both a rousing accompaniment to your successes and soothing whisper to get you back on the horse after yet another failure.

It's the one quality that the sequel on iPhone, Robot Unicorn Attack: Heavy Metal Edition, lacks, and it ends up making all the difference to the atmosphere.

Yes, it sounds ridiculous and repetitive on paper, but this magical concoction of perpetual running gameplay and synth-pop joy will steal your heart, your time, and the sanity of anyone within earshot.

Robot Unicorn Attack

A sparkling confection of high score chasing pleasure that, while repetitive by design, is still an unmissable Android experience
Score
Paul Devlin
Paul Devlin
A newspaper reporter turned games journo, Paul's first ever console was an original white Game Boy (still in working order, albeit with a yellowing tinge and 30 second battery life). Now he writes about Android with a style positively dripping in Honeycomb, stuffed with Gingerbread and coated with Froyo