QCF: The Night of The Rabbit

aedalic Entertainment pulls double duty as developer and publisher to bring us their game vision, The Night of the Rabbit. It’s an adventure title of the point-and-click variety that saw release on PC and Mac on May 29, 2013. Characters, story, exploration, and visuals tend to be the driving point for most point-and-click adventures, and I’m happy to report that The Night of the Rabbit delivers in all categories.

The story book scenery is flat out beautiful. From the rich warm colors of a setting sun to the aurora borealis bristling over the arctic, you can tell the art team put their very best effort into their work and had fun doing it. My wife (who doesn’t typically play video games) was immediately drawn in by the game’s presentation. That says a lot about the influence a great art team can have on a product.

Each character sticks with you from a visual standpoint. For instance, let’s talk about Mortimer Mole and The Mothman. Mortimer is a rotund little mole in victorian composer garb, complete with monocle (he is a radio jock after all). The Mothman dons a Hawaiian-style mask to hide his tiny head and massive red eyes, which is funny considering his furry, winged body is completely exposed. The developers put lots of creativity in the design of each character.

Expanding on the importance of characters a bit, let’s talk about the quirks of the young owl, Ursula. When you first meet her, she’s in a room popping out of stacks of books. One of the elders talks about how she keeps moving the books around so it’s hard to organize them. Later on in the game you have to take Ursula back to her father. Funny enough, you just tuck her away in your backpack. Every time you bring up your inventory the items have been rearranged. I was cracking up once I realized what was happening. On top of that young owl’s eyes will track your mouse as you poke through the backpack. In a few simple steps, the developers created an immensely likable character. And memorable characters are essential in any fantasy driven material.

I’m a big fan of how the crew at Daedalic implemented the controls. The keyboard is treated as an optional accessory (press key I for inventory and such), but you can actually control the game entirely through the mouse alone. Players can select and use objects, examine items in the backpack, and view the world as it looks through your magic coin. Double-clicking on arrows will jump you immediately to the next screen. Small touches like that go a long way to creating an inviting game play environment.

Without spoiling major details, I can say it’s all really well done. I never felt like I got stuck at any point. There’s always some hint, whether through dialogue or examination, on what you should be doing. That’s not to say it’s devoid of challenge because you do need to think about each situation and how best to utilize the objects you’ve collected.

My only nitpick is that some of the animations could be a little smoother. However, it’s understandable when you consider they need to the keep the download size manageable and control the cost of over animating one time scenes. So all is forgiven as far as this nitpick is concerned.

On a side note, I do want to mention that the game bugged out on me towards the end. The fog overlay was randomly loading the wrong tiles and making it impossible to see or play further. I don’t know whether I came across the magical combination of events to trigger the bug, or some issue with my computer rig. Luckily, a fresh download and install seemed to make the issue go away, so I’m chalking the incident up to a fluke.

The Night of the Rabbit brought me a lot of enjoyment; between the charming characters and compelling exploration there’s a lot to experience. After my second go through my wife plans on jumping in next. There’s some real talent at Daedalic Entertainment, and I look forward to what they come up with next.