King Rabbit Review: Return of the King

RareSloth’s King Rabbit is a puzzle / action game that plays much like last year’s Furdemption, which is also from RareSloth.

When I played Furdemption, I wondered what its twitchy-nosed protagonist had done to deserve hell. Don’t rabbits have enough to worry about, given how their role is “nature’s favorite fast food meal,” both figuratively and literally?

Thankfully, the titular rabbit hero in King Rabbit is (mostly) above ground this time. The quest to save his people (so he is Watership Down’s El-ahrairah after all!) is no less brutal than it was in Furdemption — though it is familiar, despite the change in landscape.

“Familiar” isn’t necessarily bad in this instance, though. After all, Furdemption got nearly everything right the first time around: It remains one of the best puzzle / action games available for mobile platforms. King Rabbit is more of the same, but if you’re a fan of Furdemption, that’s very much OK.

Each level of King Rabbit is compact, but full of traps and pits. There’s invariably a caged rabbit who needs to be rescued, and that’s your job. You are King Rabbit, after all.

As in Furdemption, you hippity-hop across each grid-based level by swiping in one of four directions. One swipe carries you over by one hop. RareSloth evidently decided against monkeying with King Rabbit’s controls, and that was the right choice. Like its predecessor, King Rabbit controls beautifully. You never take a step too many as long as you play with the requisite amount of care, which means you’re responsible for determining when it’s time to move slowly and carefully, and when it’s time to bolt like the bunny you are.

Not surprisingly, the levels in King Rabbit offer ample opportunity to perform both actions. There are hazards galore — some new, and some returning from Furdemption. You have to contend with pits, traps, slime-firing canons, spiders, The Grim Reaper (who’s never more than a step behind any rabbit on earth or in hell, I imagine), and fire. Tons of fire. It’s enough to make you believe you haven’t escaped hell after all.

What makes King Rabbit a supremely fun and challenging game is that it encourages you to use stage hazards to complete your mission. Sure, the game’s myriad buzzsaws are deadly to rabbits — but they’re deadly to your foes as well. With some quick, clever movements you can lure pursuers into a forest of rotating blades, or a nest of fire.

Environments can be destroyed in interesting ways too, which becomes vital if you want to collect all three of the golden coins hidden in each of the game’s stages. Many of the coins are hidden in crates, which can be bombed, ripped apart by the aforementioned saws (which, in turn, can be triggered with switches and levers in some stages), or burned. Traps can be combined in useful ways, too: When brought together, a slime-firing canon and a fire pit can become a fire-flinging force to be reckoned with.

King Rabbit is very much like Furdemption, which should immediately tell you whether or not you’ll find it a worthy play. If you liked Furdemption, King Rabbit is a must-play. You might be put off at how similar it is compared to its predecessor, but it’s hard to fault RareSloth for that. Furdemption is good, and fans want more.

And if you didn’t like Furdemption, well, clearly you’re just anti-rabbit, and you should think hard about your prejudices.

The good

• Great puzzle-solving.
• Cute graphics.
• Original premise.

The bad

• Game plays very closely to Furdemption.

90 out of 100

Nadia Oxford

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In the early aughts, Nadia fell into writing with the grace of a brain-dead bison stumbling into a chasm. Over the years, she's written for Nerve, GamePro, 1UP.com, USGamer, Pocket Gamer, Just Labs Magazine, and many other sites and magazines of fine repute. She's currently About.com's Guide to the Nintendo 3DS at ds.about.com.