SAVE THE UNICORN

Warning: Asset Flip!

SAVE THE UNICORN is a Digital Homicide style asset flip, or what Valve calls a "Fake Game". The "developer" paid for/pirated a few Unity asset store packs, dumped them all in a blender, and submitted it to Valve as if they're real game developers. It's important to also note the "developers" here didn't credit any of the artists and real, actual game developers who created the assets here, so this is plagiarism, as well as cash grab shovelware.

The "developers" here took a basic template for a hybrid 1-button "Flappy Bird" game coupled with a 2D arcade shoot 'em up aspect, and slapped together some unfortunately popular panda bear and other assets to make it look like an original game, but this is just asset flip garbage.

Taking this shovelware seriously as if it was a genuine attempt to make a game, it doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

While there are options to change the resolution for the game, all this does is scale up the simplistic 2D art assets used to make the game, which makes little or no difference to the graphics quality. Without any other substantial graphics tweaks, it's not possible for gamers to improve the lacklustre 2D visuals.

This looks and feels like a mobile app, but I wasn't able to find it on the app stores. Maybe it was removed, maybe it was rejected by Apple and Google (they do have more rigorous quality standards than Valve does for Steam, after all... they certainly have no tolerance for asset flips like this).

Regardless, for all intents and purposes "SAVE THE UNICORN" might as well be a mobile app, it has the same limitations and dumbed down qualities. It's impossible to recommend such a game to PC gamers. We don't spend all this money building gaming rigs so we can pretend they're iPhones and play games that might as well be mobile apps.

These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

The poor quality of this game is reflected in the general public reception. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the game all-time peak player count was only ONE player. That's right, only one person ever played this at a time. When I played this for the purposes of reviewing it, I equalled the peak player count for the game. OUCH. The only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in the game is to be expected. Gamers just didn't take this low quality game seriously, and for good reason.

Warning: Review Manipulation!

This game features a couple of fake positive reviews from accounts known to be in the business of review manipulation/paid reviews. They're written in either Russian or broken English, appear at almost exactly the same time, they have a direct Steam purchase of the game, and the accounts are used consistently to write fake reviews for asset flips and other cash grabs/scams. The "Positive" review score on this game should be disregarded due to this blatant, unethical review manipulation. This is done to deceive and scam gamers into paying for a bad product.

SAVE THE UNICORN is relatively cheap at $1 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, and the questionable ethical nature of the developer and/or their associates (as outlined above), this is impossible to recommend. Because this is the kind of game you can just play for free on mobile phones, it's impossible to recommend anyone should pay money for the same experience on Steam.

Note: Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not count towards your Game Collector counts, achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.

Something about this game feels like an asset flip. A big hint is that they didn't replace the word "survivors" with "unicorns" on the stage completion screen. Another is that coconuts become coins and bananas become gems on the stage completion screen. It's also clearly a mobile port. But whatever the original was, it's a unique mix of a jet-pack runner game (NOT flappy-bird) and a side scrolling shooter at the same time, all while also being a one-button game. It may be the only one-button side-scrolling shooter I've seen (unless the original asset was used somewhere else as well).
There are some other problems. At least one level does not register the "destroy all enemies" achievement. There isn't much reason to avoid damage because you can retry for free and you can accumulate achievements separately. The "money" keeps accumulating and prices show up even when you can't "buy" any more.
I found it amusing for a while, but I wouldn't bother unless you have time and can get it for 49 cents.

If you play this game on the highest video setting, it will give you full on epilepsy. If you drop the video settings considerably, it's a fairly run-of-the-mill shooter with mouse controls and a few upgradeables. It's almost worth playing, but not quite.