TimeWasters highlights many of the excellent, free Web-based/lightweight downloadable titles that you can dive into within the space of a lunch break. This week, Laurie-Anne Vazquez explores Robot Unicorn Attack.
Unicorns are a problem in this nation. They clutter up notebooks, stationary, and party favors. They adorn the clothing and accessories of every 10 year-old girl who believes she’s a pretty, pretty princess. They hog shelf space in our toy stores, stealing precious room away from action figures and water guns.
Now they’re taking over our video games.
Robot Unicorn Attack is a flash game on AdultSwim.com. It is as bright, shiny, and happy as those holographic stickers on your kid sister’s Trapper Keeper—rainbows on the robot unicorn’s mane and tail, the flashes of light that your horn emits as it collects butterflies, the giant, shiny stars you smash through. Yes, you really play a robot unicorn. And the entire game looks like it was painted by Lisa Frank.
Why should you care? Because it feels like something from the wacky minds of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force guys. That makes it the most awesome unicorn anything ever.
The whole point of the game is to run free. To that effect, you collect butterflies, jump chasms, and smash through stars that block your path to freedom. You use two buttons – jump (x) and dash (z) – for the entire quest; miss with either and you explode in a fiery ball of rainbow-colored doom.
To aid you in your quest, the opening screen exhorts encouragement like, “You will fail!” and “Over the Rainbow!” while the continue screen urges you onward with “You became a star!” and “You exploded!” You get to stare at your disembodied robot head as you make your decision, too, because that’s what happens when you’re a robot unicorn running for freedom.
Since all you can do is rack up a ridiculously high score, your unicorn speeds up as you get better at smashing stars and jumping chasms. Obstacles increase, the layouts switch up, and the game hits Ludicrous Speed as you pursue your quest of freedom. Dolphin friends jump alongside you in your quest, though, so that sort of makes up for the mind-numbingly impossible speed. So does the score. It’s “Always,” a hit record for vintage 80s band Erasure whose copyright happened to expire. It is the most perfect soundtrack for running unicorns ever; if you don’t believe me, here’s the song’s original video.
Damn you, Robot Unicorn Attack. You made me comfortable with the unicorn invasion. Oh, well: run free, robot unicorn. Run free.
