I’ll admit, I didn’t think much of Rusty Rabbit when I first saw it on the Nintendo eShop. If I’m brutally honest, it was the thumbnail, veering a bit too close to those AI-generated thumbnails that accompany the hack garbage that typifies the Nintendo eShop nowadays. But it was this same kind of flippancy that genuinely made me interested in reviewing it when the option came up—was there more to this game than it was letting on?
The answer is…kind of. Thankfully, Rusty Rabbit is not a zero-effort AI-generated piece of garbage interactive novel; it’s actually a game! However, it’s also kind of a bog-standard game that doesn’t really do anything to offend but doesn’t really stand out in any meaningful way either—what can I say, the rabbit hole didn’t go very deep on this one.
Players take on the role of the Stamp, a hard-boiled Rabbit who, after becoming estranged from his wife and daughter, devotes his life to scavenging junk from the mechanical labyrinth they call Smokestack Mountain. However, things get complicated when a scrappy group of young bunnies move into town, looking to scavenge their own riches from the mountain—also known as Rust Digging.
Somewhat against his will, Stamp’s continuous encounters with this young crew, known as the BB’s, cause him to open up a little bit and push him to venture deeper into Smokestack Mountain than ever before. Along the way, several mysteries about the world they live in and maybe even more devastating truths. It’s a fine enough little story, albeit a little cliche-laden, what with the power of friendship and not closing yourself off after a trauma, but it suffers from an issue I’ve really come to hate in games recently.
Much like I complained about in my Monster Hunter Wilds review, Rusty Rabbit has a way of frequently interrupting its gameplay in order to interject its story. I’ll get into it in more detail in a second, but at its core, the game is a somewhat old-school action-adventure game, so it needs to follow a particular pace in order to make its gameplay satisfying. But in the middle of exploring each level, the player is consistently stopped so characters can slowly deliver copious amounts of dialogue, and it just becomes tedious.
Games like these need to delegate their cutscenes to moments where the action stops naturally—like returning to the hub world or at the start or end of a level run—otherwise, if you’re anything like me, you’ll just end up skimming the subtitle text to get the same information in five seconds that it would’ve taken two minutes to deliver.
“I like the way Rusty Rabbit utilizes its narrative setting in fun ways.”
Although I will say, I like the way Rusty Rabbit utilizes its narrative setting in fun ways. One of the silly details about the game is how humans, referred to as “the Giants,” seemingly abandoned the world and Rabbits became the dominant species, using the book Peter Rabbit as their bible. It results in a lot of fun worldbuilding, like the way “McGregor” is considered a dirty word and other fun details taken from the Beatrix Potter classic.
As I mentioned above, the gameplay is a bit of a mix of old-school action adventure with a dash of RPG elements. Stamp doesn’t explore the ruins on his own, instead piloting a destructive Mech Suit named Junkster. While Junkster is useful for battling some of the mechanical monstrosities mulling around in the mountain, its primary function is smashing junk. Moving through each “dungeon” requires methodically punching your way through giant cubes of junk not just to progress but also to gain materials and experience points required for upgrading both Junkster and Stamp.
And this is where Rusty Rabbit’s gameplay gets a little bit tedious. So much of the game is designed around methodically smashing cubes that exploring each level is never really as engaging as it should be. Junkster is given a lot of unique features almost immediately—the ability to boost and wall jump most notably—so there’s never that satisfying sense of Metroid-like exploration. And while you can equip Junkster with a lot of unique weapons, combat is so mindless and rudimentary that it mostly serves to alleviate the tedium rather than add any layers of depth. It’s not terrible by any means, but it gets pretty boring pretty fast.
Visually, Rusty Rabbit is fine, albeit a bit uninspired. While it does look really good and has a lot of detail—from the fur of the rabbits to all the little background and level details of Smokestack Mountain—I’m not sure I love the ultra-realistic style. Considering the game’s plot and world, I think it works, but I can’t help but feel like a game like this needed a more distinctly unique art style.
Audio is equally serviceable. The soundtrack isn’t particularly memorable, but it works in adding a little audible flavour to each environment. Where it does stand out, however, is the voice acting. Despite my gripes about the constant pausing of gameplay for cutscenes, I will admit the voice cast definitely showed up, particularly Yong Yea as Stamp. Yea brings a loveable gruffness to the character and creates such a fun contrast to the rest of the characters, who end up sounding more or less like stock anime characters—and I don’t mean that as an insult.
Like I said, Rusty Rabbit isn’t a terrible game, but it wasn’t particularly memorable either. It’s got some unique ideas, but most of them feel a little too undercooked to really stand out against games like Metroid or, more specifically, Blaster Master Zero—which this initially reminded me a bit of. I think there is some fun to be had with it, but for my money, there are much better games like this out there.
