The Night of the Rabbit is the latest game from Daedalic Entertainment, developers of other point and click adventure games like the Deponia series. This title takes a more inclusive approach to its target audience. Can this point and click adventure be a good introduction to the genre for kids? It’s a good start.

The game is about a young 12 year old boy named Jerry Hazelnut. He dreams of becoming a great magician one day, and after a tutorial segment via the radio, Jerry summons a humanized rabbit calling himself Marquis de Hoto. The Marquis tells Jerry that he will get the opportunity to train as a magician and become a Treewalker. After going through a portal, Jerry and the Marquis arrive in another world, in a place called Mousewood. The inhabitants are all humanized animals like the Marqui and there are even dwarves. From there the story truly kicks off: Jerry will have to do various tasks before he can begin his training. These tasks include fixing a boat and doing other deeds to work towards fixing the boat, and other related chores. Tasks are written down in a journal so the player can use them as a reference as to what needs to be done, if they take a break and need a refresher. You also get additional help with a hint spell that contacts the Marquis. Unfortunately the developers made this service rather redundant, as it only tells you much of what the journal does. The hint spells tell you nothing in the way of what items to use to perhaps get past an obstacle, or whether or not items could possibly be combined. This forces the player to be extra thorough and pay close attention to every NPC’s dialogue. But there are better and more effective hint systems out there. Jerry can also use a magic coin that reveals all points of interests to interact with, which is nice.

The game does seem to go out of its way a little in telling players that everything only needs one click to be interacted with, but I suppose that’s just extra user-friendliness for the younger crowd. As for the dialogue, the NPC’s and Jerry’s exchanges are amusing, even though Jerry isn’t that interesting of a character, although that’s the point. An ordinary boy’s journey becomes an extra ordinary journey.

The sounds effects are nice and crisp, as is the music. The music is very relaxing or adventurous as necessary, but nothing outstanding or memorable. Voice acting is surprisingly well done, with a totally European cast. The story starts off slowly but it picks up in the second half. The game is set up at about an 8 hour runtime.

The game also features the usual achievements, but it tosses in some extras like audio books you can unlock by seeking out a certain character throughout Mousewood. There is also a trading card game to play. I have to wonder whether or not the card game was the result of some kind of focus testing though. The game does have multiple save slots and cloud saving, but strangely no auto-saving. And although the game is done in a terrific 2d hand-drawn art style, the game seems to lack optimizations. The framerate seems to dip randomly, and lip syncing on the dialogue can be off at times as a result of this. I’m sure a patch is forthcoming. It does have rather low system requirements to its credit though. This is a decent game for adventure fans, and good for beginners or children. Hopefully future games will polish up some of the rougher aspects and expand the world. It’s also 20 bucks on steam and Good Old Games.

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