The Night of the Rabbit

This is a charming game in many ways with beautiful backgrounds, good voice acting, a nice fairytale atmosphere etc. I had to give up on it because it DOES NOT RESPECT YOUR TIME. The insult to the injury is that you almost never feel clever because the puzzles are so bloody vague and illogical that there's almost no way most people will play this game without following a walkthrough. Some games make it fun when you pick a wrong solution or are clicking random items, by giving you different short funny dialogues. NOT THIS GAME. Let me make up an example of what our main character might do if you...click on a random cupcake in the environment while desperately searching for something you can use for a puzzle 4 screens away. "Wow a cupcake! And it's red!" "I love red cupcakes. They remind me of my mother's cooking" "But my favorite thing that she cooks is definitely her blackberry pie" "Mmmmmm blackberry pie" All of this would be FULLY VOICED and would involve different animations, the character turning toward you and away from you etc. A good 5-10 seconds or more. You can only skip it with the escape key. And if you click on the cupcake again either on purpose on by accident you don't hear a second short dialogue "That's a nice cupcake", no you hear the whole ORIGINAL dialogue all over again! Unbearable.

From the very beginning, the visuals and tone of the story really drew me in; it was shaping up to be the fantastical journey of a young boy, something like The Phantom Tollbooth or the Little Nemo movie. Though it gets a bit darker toward the end, it stays on this course, filling the player with a sense of child-like wonder. The problem is that this is a game, and while these 2 concepts aren't the least bit mutually exclusive, it does have a tendency to yank the mouse out of your hand and play itself for long periods of time. Another problem it has is this encroaching sense of dread that's well-developed, but while this starts out as a major part of the plot that just drops off until briefly returning as sequel bait in the ending. Speaking of the ending, it's mostly just a long text dump, explaining events that were vital to the story, but had been left out of the main game for whatever reason. I did enjoy my time with it, but with so many unplayable scenes that go on way too long, I think it'd work best to cut this down and make it into an animated feature; it'd be a wonderful movie to watch with the kids on a summer night.

I actually really liked the Christopher-Robin-Hitchhiker's-Guide-to-the-Galaxy-in-the-Hundred-Acre-Woods semi-modern fairy tale story, with professionally voice-acted characters and beautiful artwork, but the game play itself is majorly flawed. For most of the game, it gives you too large of an area to explore all at once, without a good system of clues to help you understand what it is you're supposed to do with the items you've found in the area you're given. This space continues to expand as you unlock scenes, eventually giving you the ability to switch between night time and daytime, effectually doubling the space you have to work with. Plus, the mini-animations and long-running dialogue all tend to repeat each and every time you click on them, making you want to avoid looking at anything or talking to anybody or trying to experiment when combining items, which, since it's an adventure game, is how you're supposed to play. Would I recommend it to a friend? Yes, with the added advice that they simply play alongside the online walkthrough without feeling like it's cheating. With most games, for me, peeking at cheats feels like a stab of failure that seems so obvious once I've read the answer, which surely I would have figured it out eventually if I'd stuck it out. With Night of the Rabbit, a lot of the puzzles just don't make any obvious sense, and so I didn't feel guilty for reading the answer simply to move the story along when I couldn't get a puzzle in a few minutes. It's worth 'watching', like a vaguely interactive movie with a surreal theme and a nice score. Especially if you can pick it up while it's on sale, like I did.

I read a few recent reviews and am floored by anything negative in relation to this game. I have nothing negative to say about it immediately following completion. This is what I will say: 1. The animation is incomparably fantastic. So many styles and they are all beautiful and unique. My mouth was agape at many different points in the game. 2. The character development is on point. The actors have really done an amazing job at making their characters both believable and lovable. 3. The dialogue is absolutely NOT overdone. You learn exactly what you need and it is almost only needed one time for each verbal exchange between characters. 4. There are a few different subgames available while completing the main game. This provides a nice break, especially when you are feeling stuck for a moment. 5. The combination of inventory items is almost always logical, but not always obvious. 6. The storyline is inventine and captivating. There are twists and turns along the way that you don't even need, but increase the game's appeal and value. 7. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? If you like point and click games (I saw Sierra mentioned by another reviewer and I was raised by the same games), I'm sure you will be as enthralled as me.

(I got this on Steam but decided to also post my review here.) Visuals are nice, the music is passable. Voice acting is downright annoying and the dialog just goes on and on and on and on.... I like long dialogue in games (and adventure games are all about story and dialogue) but this one is just an incoherent, illogical, mind-numbing. non-sensical mess. You'll hear the same repeated lines over and over and try to complete utterly illogical, pointless puzzles to advance the game. You'll then grind and grind some more, pixel-hunting for the one object that you must click or the one object that you must use with something to continue. And the ending... the ending takes the cake - I've never seen such a letdown in an adventure game; the ending was bad even in the context of this game, which is saying a lot, because the game is already awful. Some reviews mentioned that this is a children's game but that's not correct: no child in their right mind would suffer through this mess of a game. They may get wooed by the nice visuals but 5 minutes into the game they'd give up in utter boredom. Only an adult who paid money for this would try to finish this game, trying to see if there's some sort of sense to it and trying to see if there's something to be gained for the money paid. There's nothing, as is the case with most Daedalic games. I should've learned this from their earlier games but from now on I'll avoid anything this incompetent bunch dumps on the markets and I advise you, reader, to do the same. You'll save your money and you'll use your time for better things.