In Rusty Rabbit, the world has turned to ice, humans are extinct, and rabbits rule the world. It might sound like a scary concept if the rabbits weren’t so darn cute! In this action adventure 2-D side scroller, you play as Stamp, a Sylvanian families-inspired looking middle-aged “rust hunter” who is obsessed with adventuring and discovering “trash” in this rabbit-run world. With his mech, Junkster, he goes through different dungeons to find parts that he can use to upgrade items and also fill out requests for the locals of his snowy village.

The dungeons, also called Snowstack Mountain, are dark, sometimes claustrophobic structures that feel and look like abandoned factories. One of the main objectives of running through these dungeons is to find parts that you can use later for upgrades. To do so, you will need to break blocks, which will give you XP and also break red and blue containers that contain parts that live amongst these blocks. To break through, you will have to use Junkster’s Smashter Crasher, a claw-like drill and one of many weapon upgrades that you will receive.

The variety of blocks changes as you progress, some working more as puzzles and some needing extra strength to break through. One set of blocks that was especially fun to crack consisted of some kind of explosive wire that connected a selection of blocks together. When you hit a certain block, which sometimes had to be ‘hunted’ for amongst the factory levels, they will explode in succession, clearing a new path to explore. Visually, watching them all dissolve in sequence was like watching dominoes collapsing – so satisfying.

In the way of you getting to these blocks and progressing throughout the factory, you will find nasty mechanical enemies that each have different attacks and defences. Some of these are super annoying, such as a dragonfly mech who will spiral from their position above you to attack you below, meaning you have to time your jumps just right to stop from getting hit by its sharp metal head. Also, a pretty inconspicuous enemy that moves around like a snail when provoked will curl up in its shell and bounce around the walls, hoping to smash you to pieces. Throughout my runs, I was constantly finding new enemies and having to learn their attack styles, which brings me to one of my favourite things about Rusty Rabbit. Throughout my times with it, the game consistently introduced new enemies, weapons and game modes, meaning that I was never bored whilst playing.

Another impressive element of Rusty Rabbit is its narrative and lore, which isn’t surprising seeing as the game’s developers, NITRO PLUS, are a visual novel developer and have been making these games for 25 years. It also helps that Gen Urobuchi, the game’s lead writer, is onboard as he is such a celebrated anime and manga artist working on titles such as Saya no Uta, Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Psycho-Pass. Though these anime titles are more on the serious side, Rusty Rabbit’s narrative discusses heavy topics in a much softer way, though this may be because the words are coming out of fluffy bunny mouths.

What I did appreciate, however, was how easy it was to acquire skill points, mainly because of the XP you gain from breaking a mass amount of blocks. Rusty Rabbit has an RPG skills wheel that has six branching trees that include upgrades to abilities and extra slots for Junkster’s weapons. However, I found it hard to decipher exactly how some of these skills would improve my playthrough, even questioning if some upgrades made any difference. One map skill said I could place markers on my map, but I wasn’t able to work out how. An adjoining map skill said that I would be able to “hear echoes” around me, even hearing Jed, the owner of the hardware store, grumbling away. I did not experience this skill after acquiring it, leaving me a bit weary of the Rusty Rabbit skill tree. However, this didn’t stand in the way of me really enjoying playing as Stamp and exploring his dungeon-filled world.