Uni

Genre: Compilation / Arcade

Players: 2 Competitive (Local)

.

Review:

Uni is a compilation game that includes 40 “games”, although that’s saying a bit much, since pretty much all of them are simple and underdeveloped enough that it’d be more fitting to call them minigames. All of these games are 2-player only, meaning that if you’re wanting to play by yourself or with a group, you’re out of luck. It also means that I tested each and every one of these games out with another person. Suffice it to say, I have a very patient girlfriend.

Here’s how the games stack up:

Game	Genre	# of Players	Grade	tl;dr
Alpha Battle	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	C	Players move around a jumble of letters, trying to touch each letter in the alphabet in sequence. A cute idea, though it’s frustrating that your movement is so slow.
Assassin	Arcade / Stealth	2 Competitive (Local)	B-	Much like the game Hidden in Plain Sight, players play as identical-looking shooters trying to figure out which character is the opponent’s and take them out first. Surprisingly fun, but I really wish there were more options to expand on the gameplay here.
Bartender	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	D	Players time button presses to coincide with a bar filling up. This game is far too simple and boring.
Basket Ball	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	D	Players are both trying to line up tosses of multiple balls with a moving basket. This game is simple, repetitive, and boring.
Break Out	Arcade Brick Breaker	2 Competitive (Local)	C-	An Arcade-style Brick Breaker like Arkanoid, where players are racing to be the first to reach a score. A solid premise with a lot of potential, but the laser power-up completely unbalances the game.
Catch the Flag	Platformer	2 Competitive (Local)	D+	A simple one-screen platformer where players race to the goal. The platforming isn’t particularly noteworthy, and there’s only one level. Not horrible, but it wears out its welcome extremely quickly.
Chicken Race	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	D	Players try to stop their cars closest to the goal. Unfortunately, there’s no indication where the goal is, so this is a test of reflexes more than anything. You’ll grow bored with it pretty quickly.
Chop Wood	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	C-	A “Simon Says”-style game where players must respond to only their color objects. This game is okay, but basic, and if they’re going to have different objects, they should include a wider variety of objects to keep this game from becoming stale.
Coin Stack	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	B-	A physics-based stacking game that’s fast-paced and pretty fun, though I wish there were more options.
Command King	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	D	This is a “Simon Says”-style game, but it does nothing to keep the interest of players, who are simply competing to enter the series of commands the fastest.
Crane	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	C-	This is a physics-based arcade-style game where players drop bombs to try to push items off into a pit. It’s an interesting concept, but the physics are oddly bouncy, and it doesn’t feel like you have much control over how the bombs drop.
Crazy Soccer	Arcade / Sports (Soccer)	2 Competitive (Local)	D+	Players play soccer with cars, like a very very very poor-man’s Rocket League. Unfortunately, the ball keeps getting stuck at the edges, making this far more frustrating than fun.
Dart	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	B	Players take turns throwing darts at a spinning dartboard, ignoring the point values on the board, and instead trying to avoid previously-thrown darts. It’s an interesting and surprisingly fun test of skill, though I wish there were more options.
Do Androids Count of Sheep	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	F	Players simply count the number of sheep on-screen. This game is far, far too easy, and will pretty much always result in a draw. Don’t bother.
Dodge Racer	Arcade Racing	2 Competitive (Local)	F	Players are trying to predict the path that won’t turn into a dead end. However, there’s no indication which path is correct, and the controls for movement are horrible. This game is pointless.
Dodge This	Bullet Hell Shmup	2 Competitive (Local)	C-	This is a Bullet Hell Shmup minus the shooting, where players are trying to avoid incoming fire, which will follow them for some reason if it gets close enough. The ship movement is slow, and there’s not really enough variety here to keep things interesting.
Fly Me To the Moon	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	F	Players compete to see who can mash their button the fastest. Ugh, this isn’t even a game, it’s just torture.
GoBattle	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	C+	A simplistic sumo-style game where players try to flick opponents’ pieces off the board using their own. Pretty simplistic, but not bad. It would have been nice to have more options.
Gun Fight	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	C-	This is a Quick Draw-style game. It’s fine, but it’s basic and does nothing that hasn’t been done in countless other similar games.
Hand Tremor	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	C-	Players race through a maze while trying to avoid the edges. It’s simple, slow, and there’s only one map to play on.
Internet Disconnected	Auto-Runner	2 Competitive (Local)	B-	This is a sweets-themed Auto-Runner that seems vaguely inspired by the Google Chrome dinosaur game. It’s simple, but pretty fun, though it would have been nice to have more options.
Juice Please	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	C+	This game plays like competitive Simon, with players taking turns repeating the previous button inputs and adding one more. It’s pretty simplistic, but fun nonetheless.
Landing on the Moon	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	B+	This game starts with a concept that’s like a competitive Lunar Lander, with players competing to get closest to the goal. However, it uses interesting physics and the ability to ram into the opponent to make for some interesting strategy. This game is surprisingly fun, and I just wish there were more options.
LAPD	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	D+	Players are tossing “forks” (they’re little tongs, actually) in arcs at sweets, while trying to miss fruits and vegetables. Because, you know, cops like donuts, I guess. The gameplay here actually had potential to be interesting, but the sluggish controls really put a damper on things.
Legend Drummer	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	D	Players are racing to see who can repeatedly input a sequence (similar to the Konami code) the quickest. This gets old quick, and it’s disappointing that they clearly shouted out to the Konami code without actually using the Konami code.
Math Quize	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	D-	(Note: that’s how the game spells it). In this game, players answer math questions quickly. Simple, with finicky controls that would be frustrating in a game that wasn’t this boring.
Moles Attack	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	D	This is Whac-A-Mole. However, the controls are terrible, and the moles appear and disappear far too quickly.
Odd Fencing	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	D-	Shake and rotate their respective fencers to get their sword to touch the opponent. The controls in this one are terrible, and don’t make much sense.
Pinch Hitter	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	D-	Players must swing at the different balls that appear without swinging at other objects. Unfortunately, it’s often too difficult to see what is and isn’t a ball, and they appear and disappear far too quickly.
Pong Soccer	Arcade / Sports (Pong)	2 Competitive (Local)	C-	Like Pong, but with moving blockers in the middle of the screen kinda’ like foosball. The movement of the paddles is frustratingly slow, but otherwise this is a decent version of Pong, I guess.
Road Fight	Racing	2 Competitive (Local)	C	This game is a top-down Racing game like Super Sprint, but the game lacks any nuance to its gameplay, and there’s only one track to race on.
Robotic Vacuum Cleaner	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	D+	Players play as Roombas competing to vacuum up the most trash by turning only one direction. It’s a decent idea, but the controls are way too limited and clumsy.
Rock Paper Sense	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	D	This game is Paper, Rock, Scissors with an odd presentation that places a time limit for players to make a choice. This goes too quickly to be strategic, making it largely random.
RPG	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	D+	This is a “Press Your Luck”-style game where players can boost their power at the risk of getting reset back to 1. This is an interesting concept, but the RNG makes this too unbalanced and unpredictable, allowing one player to luck out getting to a high-powered weapon and just waiting out the game without the other player being able to do anything about it.
Space War	Shmup	2 Competitive (Local)	C-	This game plays like Galaga, with players competing to be the first to get to a set score. It’s a decent setup, but the ships move and fire way too slow to be entertaining.
Super Jetboy	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	D	A race to complete an inertia-affected “avoid the edges”-style maze. Decent concept, but it is way too hard to control your character, and it looks like there’s only the one maze.
Survival	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	D	Players use motion controls, twisting their Joycons as if they were rubbing sticks together to start a fire. Cute concept, but it’s undone as soon as you notice that you can simply shake the Joycon to win.
Tank	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	C	Players use tanks to try to shoot game pieces into the enemy’s side of the screen. It’s a good concept, but the tanks move far too slowly for the game to be all that enjoyable.
Time!	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	C+	Players are both trying to press a button closest to a specific time on a timer while the game tries to distract and confuse you. This game does some clever things to make this interesting, and it’s a fun time while it lasts, but it gets old fairly quickly.
Watch Your Back	Arcade	2 Competitive (Local)	C-	Players are driving cars with a trail of balls behind them, with each trying to pop the others’ balls. It’s a fairly unique game, but the controls feel strange, which makes it difficult to really enjoy.

So overall, looking that over, out of 40 games, only 5 of them are games with a B- grade or greater, games that I would actually consider going back to. 6 games are average or slightly above average, and a whopping 29 games are substandard or just plain bad, with 3 games getting an “F” grade. I’d say that’s not a very good record overall.

You’ll notice that for the games I rated highly, there was one comment I repeated over and over and over again: “I wish this had more options”. That’s because even for those games that I enjoyed, they could have benefitted from being expanded upon – more levels, different playable characters, variable settings and difficulties. I feel like half the problem with game collections like this that throw everything at the wall to see what sticks is that a lot of it doesn’t stick, but the other half of the problem is that the stuff that does stick always feels like it could have been so much better if it was worked on some more.

Players can select these games individually or have them randomly chosen, but there are so many terrible games here that I feel that randomizing them is like playing a version of Russian Roulette where everyone loses, and if you’re playing this game it’s better to just go straight for the games that are actually decent.

This game’s presentation is also really underwhelming, with pretty basic 2D visuals, mostly forgettable music, and some truly terrible localization (“Just hit the kind of balls”, “One who score goal before your opponent is winner”, and of course “Math Quize”). Plus on top of this there’s the fact that many of these games would be improved with four-player play.

Overall, Uni is a collection of mostly terrible games with a few pretty good ones thrown in for good measure. However, even those good games are seriously lacking content and options, and the collection’s limitation to only 2-player games means it’s already niche to begin with. If you can get a really good deal on this, it might be worth it to try out the few games here that are actually good, but overall this collection has far too much trash to be worth a recommendation.

tl;dr – Uni is a collection of 40 mini-games that can only be played with 2 players. Most of these games are outright terrible, but there are a handful of pretty good ones mixed in here, and if you can get this collection on discount they might prove to be a good distraction. However, even the best games here are seriously lacking content and options needed to hold your interest for very long.

Grade: C-

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}