HomeGames & TechThe Night of the Rabbit review

The Night of the Rabbit review

The Night of the Rabbit is a point-and-click adventure game from Hamburg-based developers Daedalic Entertainment (Deponia). Previously we had chance to play through the preview build which left us eager to play more. Read on to see what we thought of the final game.

You play as twelve year old Jeremiah (aka Jerry) Hazelnut – a boy with a wild imagination and dreams of becoming a magician. After a good night’s sleep Jerry is woken up on a beautiful morning by his mother. She doesn’t want him to sleep in as there are only a couple of days of his summer vacation left to enjoy.

Before things really get going there is a short and entertaining tutorial that is presented to Jerry in the form of a radio broadcast. Fans of point-and-click adventures will probably already feel right at home though so the developers have included the option to skip this part if required.

Night of the Rabbit

Jerry is then sent off into the woods by his home to fetch blackberries for his mother. This is a nice simple task that allows you to learn how the game works and gives you a couple of simple puzzles to solve. He then happens upon a mysterious letter that contains the first complex puzzle of the game. It contains a recipe of sorts to create something called a carrot flame.

With a little bit of thought and some exploration it’s quite straight forward to gather the ingredients that you need. After completing the puzzle Jerry meets a giant rabbit called the Marquis de Hoto. As it happens the rabbit is a magician and he asks Jerry to be his apprentice.

Jerry agrees, as long as he makes it back home in time for tea, and is then transported to a different world via a magic tree. This new world is a little place called Mousewood that is inhabited by a variety of talking animals such as mice, moles, rabbits and owls. Jerry soon learns that the residents of Mousewood are terrified of attacks from evil crows.

Night of the Rabbit

The Marquis takes Jerry to meet the council who set him off on a series of trials which he must complete to become a magician. Along the way there are many interesting characters to meet, some wonderful locations to discover and puzzles to solve. Jerry carries a magic coin with him that can be used to highlight important or hidden features of each location. He can also use a spell to remotely communicate with the Marquis to obtain hints when he is stuck although we didn’t find this particular spell to be very useful.

Throughout Jerry’s adventure he eventually learns more spells which are more helpful and you often need them to solve some of the puzzles. There are many puzzles in the game of various difficulties which you can track with the in-game journal. Some are obvious, or easy to work out with some patience and trial and error, but there are others that will leave you frustrated until you finally have that eureka moment.

Certain puzzles keep you trapped in an area while you complete them. This can be infuriating when you are stuck and can lead to randomly clicking on stuff or trying to use your whole inventory with everything. Often when you aren’t getting anywhere it is worth going to a different area as some puzzles need to be solved in a particular order. Sadly the game doesn’t really make this clear.

Night of the Rabbit

The graphics are very detailed and everything looks fantastic. It uses a cartoon like aesthetic with some wonderful animation and there are plenty little touches around the scenes to make them feel alive. In addition to the main story there are dewdrops hidden in the scenery for you to find and collect. There is also a simple card game that you can play and new cards to discover.

The game features lots of excellent music that was composed especially for the game. It’s also worth pointing out that the many fantastic characters are fully voiced and the acting is rather good. So many games we see like this are let down by poor voice acting but this doesn’t look like it will be an issue here.

The Night of the Rabbit is the best we’ve seen from Daedalic and a brilliant point-and-click adventure that should please any fan of the genre. The story is interesting, the puzzles are challenging and the whole thing is just very entertaining for all ages. Fans of older point-and-click adventure games should definitely check it out.

Greg Ellwood
Greg Ellwoodhttps://8ce250469d.nxcli.io
Greg is the Deputy Editor of Entertainment Focus. He writes about Games, Tech and TV. You can find him on Xbox/PSN/Steam as Tahllian.

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