Rusty Rabbit

Rusty Rabbit is the kind of game that sticks out because you can tell it’s made by people who care about their craft and have ideas they want to dig deep to explore. It’s not just a toy made for empty, vague metrics like fun and enjoyment. There are plenty of those, and those things have their place and value of course. But capital-p Passion Projects like Rusty Rabbit are few and far between, and offer alternatives to the norm that ask the audience to use their brains to engage with media in ways they might not be accustomed to. And there’s still plenty of fun to be had, from exploring dungeons to taking in all the silly rabbit-themed, sci-fi lore and background details that make such an off-kilter premise appealing. At the same time, this game might make you think about what you find important in your own life, or what it might be like to grow up seeing the world differently than people older or younger. This one is gonna stick for a while.

Rusty Rabbit is a cute and entertaining Metroidvania that offers such a unique and fresh experience that I found it hard to put down. However, if you're looking for more challenge and excitement then its laidback formula may not be for you.

Putting players in control of a mech-suit piloted by a rabbit, Rusty Rabbit lets them embark on an engaging adventure where they'll make their way through numerous dungeons while collecting junk, crafting new parts and unravelling the game's story. Its controls can be a little clunky and it's rather basic in some areas, but there's still fun to be had in control of old Rusty.

Among metroidvania titles available, Rusty Rabbit holds its own, though it falls short of its contemporaries due to the disruptive flow of cutscenes and narration. Its controls could be more fluent and responsive, but the dense atmosphere and writing carry the weight of the experience, making it memorable and interesting enough to stand out from the crowd in a saturated genre.

There's a video gaming trope that some of the most fondly remembered games are 7 out of 10 and Rusty Rabbit could be the poster child for this. From a gameplay perspective it's good, decent, not a bad way to spend a surprisingly large number of hours if you want to unlock everything, even if it can't quite live up to its ambitions. The game isn't just the gameplay, though, and when taken as a whole, Rusty Rabbit is the type that sticks in your brain and will be remembered more fondly than actually playing it might justify. The secrets of the history of the rabbits' frozen world are buried in the caverns of Smokestack Mountain, but Rusty knows they'll take care of themselves while he deals with a base filled with hostile rust beasts, chasing after the far more important goal of reconciling with the only family he's got left.