The Night of the Rabbit Hands-on Preview

I’ve been checking out a 90-minute preview of Daedalic’s upcoming game, The Night of the Rabbit. It’s a beautiful point-and-click adventure. Each new environment was filled with things to discover – rocks that, on closer inspection, turn out to be statues. Fruit trees that look to be background until you need them later. Everything in the forest is the gateway to a new adventure, quite fitting for our young protagonist Jerry, on the last day of his summer holidays.

Jerry wants to be a magician. By a marvellous stroke of luck he’s quickly apprenticed to our titular rabbit, The Marquis de Hoto and brought over to Mousewood. Each room in the town is just as lush and filled with wonder as the forest. Ring a bell on the shop counter and the floppy-eared proprietor whooshes in, accompanied by clouds of smoke and the burble of exciting, back room action. A grumpy-faced rabbit scowls and grumbles when you trespass on his lawn and a dancing mouse brightens up the town square. It’s a world straight out of childhood fantasies with new discoveries around every corner.

I set Jerry to exploring the town, where we quickly took on a series of challenges. You’ll find plenty of inventory combinations and fetch quests, brightened up with odd characters and a deliciously slow reveal for much of the world. There’s always a mystery to turn over in your mind – why do the crows keep attacking the town? Where do I find the dwarves? How do I stop that damned dancing mouse from shouting “Wa-hey!” every 30 seconds?

In typical modern adventure game style, The Night of The Rabbit could do with a walk-speed option. I can’t stand it when I have to watch a character slowly meander his way across the screen. It also suffers from the worst type of puzzle – the one that only makes sense when you know the answer. Late in the preview I needed to scare off a crow. I couldn’t run at it with my trusty adventuring stick. I couldn’t shout at it. Throwing a cupcake would “only make it madder” but apparently twanging it in the face with a broadcast radio antenna is a-okay.

The game has a hint system but that’s either not yet been applied or is completely useless. In this preview build it would only repeat the main goal instead of providing a contextual clue. They will presumably be applying contextual hints in the full game. On that note, I’ve been told that this build is approximately a sixth of the game, so you can expect the full game to be somewhere between 8 and 10 hours long.

I do love The Night of the Rabbit’s world and the majority of puzzles were complex enough to require a bit of thinking while still making perfect sense. I do hope they find a sensible way to reject undesirable solutions for the rest of them too. Check out the trailer to get an idea of the scripting and voice acting quality.

The Night of the Rabbit is coming to PC on 29th May.