Robot Unicorn Attack

Overview

Robot Unicorn Attack was originally a Flash game that was published on the web site of Cartoon Network's mature animation branch, Adult Swim. Consisting of a simplistic premise that involved controlling the titular robotic unicorn as they attacked stars and fairies in an automatically scrolling stage, the game became a smash hit on the Internet, thanks in part to the attention it garnered on sites such as 4chan. From start to finish, the game's only background song in the soundtrack is the Erasure song titled "Always," the usage of which helped further popularize Robot Unicorn Attack. The game was eventually released as an app for the iTunes store, as well as garnering a Facebook version and general merchandise.

Gameplay

Robot Unicorn Attack is a game where the only goal is to accrue as high of a score as possible. To facilitate this, players have two means of increasing their score. The first involves simply surviving the game as the stage's scrolling speed increases; doing so automatically increases the score until the player dies. The other way involves having the unicorn attack fairies and stars that are randomly scattered throughout the level, granting 10 and 100 points, respectively. Attacking consecutive fairies and stars successfully, however, gives the player increases in the points that they gain from them, with the amount again going up by 10 for every fairy and 100 for every star. Should the player miss a fairy or a star, then the amount they receive will reset until they can bring the chain back up.

For the duration of each game, players of Robot Unicorn Attack get three lives (called "wishes" ) to test their mettle. Since the unicorn can die by falling off the stage, ramming into a wall, or colliding with a star without attacking it, the game's difficulty increases quickly since those hurdles often show up in tandem with the game's automatic and relentless speed increases. After the three lives have been used up, the points from each round are combined to give the player an overall score, which can then be uploaded to worldwide leaderboards and given a ranking.

Play it here: http://vevegames.com/robot-unicorn-attack