¡Arre Unicornio! Is originally a tabletop game that is translated to video game format where you still control a character with one of the 5 possible roles as you either try to escape the madhouse or prevent others from escaping before you can switch roles and escape for yourself.
Roles
You will start off as one of 5 possible roles, Director, Doctors, Patients, Janitor or Cleaner. As the patient to win you would need to first find the Scissors card, one of the 3 Utility cards to cut off another utility card, the Straightjacket which every patient will be wearing from the start. Once it is off, you have to collect 2 or 3 Object cards (Building Plan, Uniform & Master Key) before you can break out.
Cards
The Straightjacket card will allow you to cast it on a player that’s near you if you select them. Doing so onto the Director or Janitor or Cleaner will give incentive to the Patients who will need to collect 2 items instead of 3 in order to escape. The Janitor and Cleaner cannot win a game so they will rely on swapping roles with another player. This isn’t as easy as it sounds as the roles are usually hidden from other players except until a player has the last Utility Card (Truth Serum) casted upon them, which reveals their role for a short while.
Disrupt
A swap role can be rejected if you have the Medical Inspection Card which gives you the chance to block it. Another reject card is the Syringe, which you can play when a card is casted upon you or another player. Treatment, Illness and Alarm cards are cards that are played to deter other players from completing their goal by interrupting them in a number of ways depending on the cards.
Tried and Tested
Just as with any party game, its strength tends to rely on the chaos that comes with more players. As with more added players, that is where the challenge begins, just when you think you’re a step away from escaping, a card is stolen from you or a role is swapped on you causing you to fall 2 steps back in the process and needing to alter your strategy on the fly.
Thoughts
Unfortunately, like some party games, the gameplay loop and reliance on the players to find their own fun is what left me on the fence. There’s little to go on and there’s only one map and all you have to do is go to an object with an arrow to collect the cards and try to find the right one, that’s about it. To top it off the game either crashed, bugged out 4 times during my play sessions leaving me with the only option to Alt + F4 in order to quit. The bit that is hopeful is that it is still in Early Access to iron out, polish & possibly increase its scale to make it an enjoyable title. As for now, keep an eye on this.
Purchase ¡Arre Unicornio! on Steam!
Hailing from a small Island. Huge football fan. Drinks too much tea.
Survival, Roguelikes, Turn-based or Indie games in general are my go to genres but I like to dabble in all kinds of genres. I tend to have a soft spot for Shmups and Hidden Object Games once in a while.
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