Pink dreamscapes, Erasure and robotic single horned hoofed animals. Robot unicorn attack has ridden its rainbow to Android phones.
Robot Unicorn Attack was a massive success when it was released on the iPhone nearly a year ago, despite the mechanics being very much the same as many other platformers such as Canabalt which was released just a few months prior. But what Robot Unicorn Attack lacks in technical originality it makes for by providing an experience that’s quite unlike any other, and is equally as hard to explain. Guiding a robot unicorn across abstract pink dreamscapes while Erasure’s ‘Always’ loops constantly in the background has the power to tingle those pleasure centers buried deep in the back of your mind.
Your robot unicorn has two controls: jump and dash. These controls can be combined to keep you airborne through the levels by double jumping and then dashing into an additional jump, but you don’t want to stay too high as you’ll have to constantly be aware of colliding with the areas of the level above you. You’ll also want to keep an eye open for faeries and stars that you’ll want to collect and smash through to collect more points, which is your real goal. Using the OpenFeint system you can compete for high scores cross platform both globally and with friends, this is a real hook to keep coming back if you have a few buddies on iOS or Android to compete against.
Much of Robot Unicorn Attack’s popularity is due to the geek mentality behind the idea of a dreaming robot unicorn leaving a trail of rainbows that makes wishes come true, but ask anyone who’s never heard of it what they remember the most after playing for the first time and I’ve little doubt that they’d say that it’s the music. The constant looping of Erasure’s Always [YOUTUBE] oddly doesn’t get old as quickly as it should and suits the obscurity of the rest of the game. Visually the purple and blue hues are striking but some of the quality degraded in the port to Android. Backgrounds are missing shading and look like they’re heavily compressed and all the smooth gradients have been replaced by hard edges. This doesn’t make the graphics bad, but it does make them feel a little less magical.
