Developer: Daedalic Entertainment
Publisher: Daedalic Entertainment
Rrp: £16.99 (Steam), £16.99 (Gog.com), £16.99 (Humblebundle)
Released: 28th May 2013
Available on: Steam, Gog.com and Humblebundle
Played Using: A mouse and keyboard
Two days left of your summer holiday, two days of adventure, games and fun in the forest. Then it’ll be back for more lessons, trapped in the dull grey building of school, which in turn is surrounded by even duller and grey-er offices. If only there were some way to make these last day really matter! Well it seems for Jeremiah Hazelnut might have stumbled on a way.
Night of the Rabbit is a point and click adventure in the vein of the classic Lucasarts games of old, complete with inventory puzzles, obtuse game logic and all the other trappings of point and clicks.
You play as Jeremiah Hazelnut, a young boy who dreams of becoming a magician one day and one who may just be getting more than they wished for.
This game is very dialogue heavy especially at the start, to the point of tedium. It doesn’t help that some of the dialogue is quite stilted and cheesy in places. In some cases you can clearly hear the cuts between audio tracks, or where the voice actor has said a line but has delivered it with the wrong tone because it was recorded out of sequence and out of context.
There’s also a lot of repeated dialogue, seems kind strange that they wouldn’t put in the little extra effort it would take to add just a few more lines so you don’t hear the same ‘I grabbed X’ every time.
Something else that I find it odd is that every character speaks in some variant of a British accent, you hear Cockney, Brummie, Mancunian, Liverpudlian, Irish, Welsh, Glaswegian and then the Queens English all within one quite short game that’s mostly set in a single location. That’s not even touching the fact that there’s a character from Japan who speaks the ‘Queens English’ as well.
The opening tutorial is… well a little pointless. I say this because in order to get to the stage where the tutorial happens you’ve already done most of the basics it teaches. So why bother telling us what we already know?
An in game hint system is provided in the form of a magic coin. Using this coin will cause items you can interact with to become highlighted, this can be done through the inventory or by pressing [SPACE]. It also, on occasion, reveals things that are hidden from you.
Once again though, you can only use this system after you’ve completed a puzzle (admittedly a fairly simple one) which soft of defeats the point.
Actually the game provides two hint systems, the second is more… traditional, as it literally gives a hint.
Throughout the game there are dewdrops, stickers stories, and cards to find and collect. They’re completely optional as collecting them all just gives access to extras in the bonus menu with exception of the cards which are used in a optional card game called Quartets.
The card game is fun but, unless you have the majority of the cards, it’s very much a game of chance. Thankfully you can find more throughout the main game if you look around enough.
I actually really enjoyed the story of the game but there are several elements of the story that go nowhere. I won’t go into specifics but there are at least two threats that are just left unresolved. I can only assume that this was done so that a sequel could be made without much issue.
The Night of the Rabbit is a hard sell for me, I certainly wouldn’t recommend buying it at the full price. It’s much too short and it feels somewhat rushed as a whole especially the resolution (at least it does to me, your mileage may vary). If you can snag it for say… £8 or less then I think you may find it quite an enjoyable adventure.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Day of the Tentacle
The Deponia Series
Full Throttle
