Game was good enough. I got it on sale. I probably wouldn't have spent the money on it, otherwise, but I had fun playing it through a few times, trying to get different outcomes. Never played a dating sim before, but the concept was unique enough, I figured I'd give it a shot. So. I don't know what happened, but I'm seriously contemplating pigeon adoption, now. There's a quick scene in the game where one of the characters suggests you google Brian Pigeon, a pigeon blogger out of the UK. I didn't think anything of it the first playthrough, but by the third time, I realised the game developer had been serious, so I googled it. That led me down some sort of random internet rabbit hole about pigeon rehabilitation, and how many birds are dropped off at shelters who often don't really know what to do with them. They need homes, and apparently they make pretty good pets. And let's face it, they're sort of adorable. Hey, I'm game. Who can say no to a cuddly little animal? The main rehab seems to be in SoCal, and unfortunately I don't live anywhere near there, so I may have to look around a little. I'm just saying, the game got into my head.
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.
