This is another deep and interesting story from Daedelic Entertainment. These adventure games often make me love what they do, but at times their games can be a bit too tough for me and I got through this one alright. It wasn't too difficult, but like all of them it has a really interesting story.

The kids voice is not as annoying as the kid's from Whispered Word, but this one is tolerable. There are a lot of interesting ideas here with how trees can be used to travel to new worlds if their roots have gone so deep that they dip into dreams and a interesting metaphysical world to come out of it too.

The characters are bright and colourful and sure to leave an impression on anyone who plays this. If you're a fan of their stuff (Deponia, The Whispered Word, Edna and Harvey) you'll certainly enjoy this. If this is the first game of there's you are considering buying, I'd certainly suggest you get this game if you're looking for a much more likeable protagonist than Rufus from Deponia and you want to try out a quite imaginative adventure game too.

Fantasy stories, especially fables, continue to be popular decade after decade for a reason: they are magical. No, I don’t mean magical in the sense that they contain spells (although they can), but that they are as enchanting as they are idyllic. We get transported to this new world full of talking creatures, new rules, and mesmerizing environments that evoke feelings of pleasantness. Yes, there can be evil in this place, but the overall atmosphere is charming, inviting, and tranquil. You wouldn’t mind living here for a year or two, making it ripe for adventure and discovery.

I never got that level of immersion from The Night of the Rabbit, which was a harbinger of things to come. It has all the right ingredients: an innocent boy thrown into an altered reality, anthropomorphic fauna, and a brand-new setting that conjures up images of iconic fantasy locations like Redwall and Inuyasha’s Japan, but outside of the zing of the first few minutes, I found the culture shock wearing off very quickly, and I have been trying to figure out why that was, and then it hit me- in his review of Shark Tale, the animation critic TheMysteriousMrEnter pointed out that the underwater mise-en-scene was essentially just real-world things given an aquatic coat-of-paint. There was nothing unique about its submerged status: you could have placed it above water and the story would have played out exactly the same. Compare this to Finding Nemo where everything that happened was custom to the genuine plights/fears faced by sea critters.

That’s the case here. The Night of the Rabbit’s characters and setting of Mousewood mostly consist of ideas you wouldn’t be hard-pressed to find…practically anywhere in your local municipal. There’s a coffee shop that sells baked goods hosted by a joyful barista chock-full of customer service; you have a town hall with two idiot politicians who have no business running a household much less a town (one of whom literally cracks dad jokes); a spoiled brat child; a shock jock; a sullen farmer, I could go on. Sure, they’re technically animals, but would you have noticed a difference if they were made human? Even some of the more distinct stuff are just stock fantasy tropes taken from better works (i.e., a greedy leprechaun, a grumpy dwarf).

All that being said, I did say “mostly” for a reason- Night has several aspects that do invoke that feel I was talking about earlier, specifically characters relegated to the magick-side of the world. You have the two magician mentors, the Marquis de Hoto and the Mousewood Sage, as well as a female fox named Kitsune (borrowed from the Japanese folklore, but at least given a distinctive personality compared to the dwarf and leprechaun). These figures were all excellent and spiced up the narrative whenever they were on-screen. Unfortunately, as you can probably imply from my wordage there, they aren’t in the story much compared to the others. Maybe 30 percent to the former’s 70%, which is the primary reason Night faltered.

Honestly, part of me feels that the world just wasn’t well thought-out. A well-made high fantasy novel takes its time to explore small minutias and rules, indicating that the author spent a lot of time fleshing out the laws, mythology, and histories governing their overworld (though on the other end, they could fail the 5 Finger Rule!). In Night, there are so many small flaws that build and build on top of the other, exposing holes in the patchwork. For example, you have a number of residents not believing in the existence of magic despite their being a resident sorcerer; you have several kids running around Mousewood without parental figures; you have the Mousewood military depicted as being on high alert in response to a rise in crow attacks, only to then station a single soldier out in the habitat where the crows are most likely to strike and have a visibly sleepy soldier arming the only cannon in town. Minor things like these indicate to me that there wasn’t much interest from the writers in creating a detailed strata, and that’s just the stuff I remember off the top of my head- I’m sure if I dug deeper/replayed scenes I could come up with more.

All of this is a long way of me saying the story, which is what PNCs rely on for their lasting appeal given their lack of strong gameplay, isn’t good. It starts off with in typical fantasy fashion with a young boy getting pulled from his world into another dimension where magic and mysticism roam free, but quickly takes a huge pacing hit when you’re given your first large task: get supplies for a party.

….seriously, was this seen as a good idea? The developers thought the best way to introduce the players to their new locale was to have them run dumb errands? Think about other games of the fantasy genre and how they set off the player on their grand odyssey- Oblivion had you deliver a king’s amulet to a knight after said king was assassinated; Skyward Sword had you train for a ceremonial flight; even Gothic, a game that I wasn’t a fan of, had you trying to join a camp via raising your reputation in this cold world.

Regardless of my issues here, Night’s set-up does somewhat succeed in getting players accustomed to the geography and cast; however, given my aforementioned complaint about the characters and town lacking magical individualism, it’s not exactly much of a feat. Most of the baseline characters are more annoying than entertaining, though thankfully not to the point of being rage-inducing (minus this one shopkeeper and his mentally-messed up son that no, does not contribute to any plot twist down the line).

There’s not much more to say about the story other than it squanders its potential, has major pacing issues, and, most importantly, is vague to a fault. Characters have you doing things without giving proper explanations as to why other than generic “the fate of the magic world is at stake” and “you need to do this to become a true magician”. Again, it goes back to what I was saying about there being little thought put into the lore- who designated these trials that main protagonist Jeremiah “Jerry” Hazelnut has to go through? How were they constructed, why are they specific to Treewalkers, how were they meant to be solvable to apprentices if I can only resolve them through using items from another dimension? A lot of questions, no answers because the developers needed some generic gameplay sections. And on the note of vagueness, it turns out all this was done because the writers just didn’t know how to incorporate macro narrative developments with player advances- you get a nice big exposition dump at the very end that finally puts things together, lasting a good 5 minutes. At least these guys are Kojima fans. Worst of all is this left-field attempt at fitting in an environmentalist message that is so out of the blue as to be pathetic.

I can be nicer graphically as Daedalic has once again triumphed in conceiving a storybook aesthetic. This was my first game by them, yet their distinct art style of bolded outlines, varied facial expressions, and yellow/brown palettes has entered the computer game consciousness and manifested itself as a signature of the company. The Night of the Rabbit looks like a fable brought to life, with character models occupying this strong humanoid build that gives them bipedalism and human clothing without sacrificing their animalian features. Mousewood and its surrounding woods, swamp, and alternate planes of existence was always a splendid sight to behold, no matter where I went. There were even some minor details thrown in for good measure like blinking and (inconsistent) lip syncing, though some shortcuts are present as well like the lack of outlined shadows.

Sound is good and so-so at the same time. The voice acting is consistently solid, with Jed Kelly doing a particularly great job as Jerry. He manages to combine that childlike wonder with a genuine understanding of what’s going on around him, especially as things take a darker turn. Peter Marinker as the old guru and Wayne Forester as the Marquis also stand out as noteworthy performances, though I couldn’t help but think of Forester as a discount Mark Hamill half the time.

SFX has its moments to be sure, but they aren’t consistent enough to warrant recognition. The snap of the Marquis’s fingers or Jerry’s feet crunching on snow or the cranking of dwarven machinery are good quality, but then you have things like most footsteps not even resounding, the same din for each spell, and weak ambience.

It actually kind of hurts me to critique the music because it could have been amazing if the story hadn’t been carved in such a lukewarm way. There are hints from composer Tilo Alpermann at this sweeping, majestic fantasy orchestra that would have easily matched Jeremy Soule’s and Koji Kondo’s had he been given that opportunity to indulge in it. But unfortunately, this is where bad pacing and mishandled story beats can have a larger impact- the music is tempered, restricted to generic background tunes that only escalate to moments of grandeur momentarily before being cut short prematurely (the exception being this one duet performed by Kitsune and Plato at the end). It is such a dang shame.

Lastly we come to gameplay, and there are some innovations here that deserve recognition. Daedalic has crafted a system that does not require any keyboard inputs whatsoever- through the mouse, mouse wheel, and right button, you can successfully move, interact, use/combine items, pull up inventory, access menus, and all. Now, if you want to utilize a keyboard you still can, but I am surprised that more PNC-focused companies haven’t built up a similar system given that the cursor is the primary drive of gameplay.

Unfortunately, that’s the only strong praise I can give here as Night of the Rabbit got frustrating at times. Unlike Grim Fandango, you aren’t expected to come up with out-of-the-box solutions, but instead what you have are answers tied to small observations about the world that you wouldn’t think twice about and finding items that aren’t distinguishable enough from the backgrounds. Here’s a solid example: you’re briefly told by another individual that Anja is babysitting this spoiled kid, but when you talk to her she doesn’t say anything on the subject and there are no additional dialogue boxes that open up with the new information. Because of this lack of set-up, how am I supposed to know that a poster about violin lessons needs to be given to her so that she can swoop in at the right moment and get the pestering kid away from blockading the way forward?

I can think of other instances like this, such as having to figure out the connection between acquiring a birthday cake and a glowing nut or knowing that a giant beet can have a tap stuck onto it like a keg container. I fully concede that I did not grow up with PNCs and so the genre and its quirks are inherently not for me, but I do think tying the solutions to small things about the world without any type of help was a legitimate flaw. Case in point- the swamp is flooded, and examining a sign nearby says to go to the town hall if you have a problem with the blockage. Guess what, you go to the town hall and there are no dialogue options present at all; the solution instead involves you getting a joke list filled out and then trading it for a nut. It’s like, why not at least allude to some fruit being the only reasonable thing to getting through the swamp rather than have a red herring in the form of a signpost about an unrelated thing? The first two chapters are relatively fine, but with the third it takes a nosedive into this territory and does not stop, particularly when magic spells are involved as part of the solution. This wouldn’t inherently be bad if the spells were straightforward, but two of them (illusion and glimmer of hope) are so vague that you couldn’t possibly know when to use them outside of haphazard guessing. To add more insult to this, a lot of the spells don’t even get utilized much after you learn them- you’re lucky if you get more than 4 usages.

So yeah, it should come as no surprise that I cannot recommend The Night of the Rabbit. I fully concede that these games are not inherently for me (though I do consider myself an adaptable player), but the failures at world building and the poor story prevent it from being recommendable, even if I could get over the gameplay flaws. Daedalic does succeed in the arthouse department, the score exuberates potential, and the all-purpose mouse is innovative, but they can’t overcome the other problems. The worst part is the game ends on a semi-cliffhanger that would have set-up a potentially more interesting sequel, but given that it’s been almost 10 years since TNOTR came out, I doubt it’ll ever happen.

Also, please note, that if you are using a Nvidia Graphics Card, like I was, there WILL be lag in the game, no matter how powerful your rig, as Night is not completely compatible with Nvidia.