My Brother Rabbit (PS4) REVIEW – Hop On This Game

Developer: Artifex Mundi
Publisher: Artifex Mundi
Platform(s): PC, PS4, XB1
Review code provided

Truth be told, when I’m playing any kind of game after a long day at work, it’s to get away from the grind of daily life and, for the most part, running around, shooting things and generally being a zombie to the world is more my bread and butter. It stands to reason, then, that the last thing I want to be reminded of is my own mortality – the idea that our time on this earth is finite and that life can often be a scary place.

That was until My Brother Rabbit hopped onto my radar (which will be the first and last rabbit based pun, I promise). My Brother Rabbit invites you into the story of a nameless but happy family abruptly thrown into turmoil, when the young daughter is taken by a sudden illness. Using the power of imagination, her brother endeavours to take her mind off of this infliction, transporting them, and us, into a strange and magical land, far removed from the grim, grey reality of the hospital.

As quickly as the game introduced me to the story, it took me just as promptly to various locations of this make-believe world. The story and game as a whole is completely without dialogue, encouraging you to really pay attention and interpret the messages for yourself. I took control of the toy rabbit, acting as the boy in imagination form. My understanding of the world I was in came from drawings on paper. Even the ‘real world’ arc of the young girl fighting with her condition outside of the journey of the main game was told in hand drawn style, albeit an understandably more mature style.

Beginning in the rabbit’s den, it didn’t take long to get the grips with the controls. At its core, this is still a point and click game, operated by moving a joystick and pressing X. Clicking on the rabbit character to start, my first clues were communicated through images in speech bubbles. I needed to find a way to get out of the den and get to my friend, a sickly flower, and take her to the bear doctor. The doodles told me he had made a little mushroom much better before, so it only made sense she would do the same for my little plant pal.

My Brother Rabbit never explicitly told me what to do to progress, but I was given the freedom to look and click around the landscape, locating objectives and obstacles to overcome. Each location did follow a similar pattern – gather enough of the required items, either allowing you passage to another room and section of the world, access to a new puzzle to solve or another of the items you seek. One of my favourite examples of this came early in the game but also reminded me of both the grander narrative and how this was still very much a child’s interpretation of the world. As the rabbit, you need to find three ice creams. These three ice creams allow us to get past a barrier standing between us and the next part of the area:thermometers. What could help make a kid feel better as much as ice cream?

Although a small detail, it was one that really stood out for me. Along with a muted yet sinister purple plant that would lurk to the side of screen, entangling and crushing parts of the world, they all acted as prompts, reminding me once again of the girl’s sickness: we have no way to understand its rhyme or reason, but its mere presence, along with the moments of worry conveyed by the rabbit, urged me to carry on.

The puzzles I faced in the game were challenging, forcing even a regular dunce like me to actually take a step back and think logically, but they were never overwhelming. At no point did I feel frustrated in my attempts to solve them. Even the more difficult puzzles would have a simple enough logic behind them. Some would be telegraphed through earlier puzzles, others become evident just based on the pieces or colours alone. Each puzzle had a picture clue available by pressing triangle, offering just enough to point you in the right direction without ever spelling out what exactly to do next.

Most puzzles can be figured out fast enough. Some of the puzzles can be lucked into, as I, admittedly, found out. Press the R2/L2 buttons enough times of the wheel-based conundrums,and you essentially take stab in the dark and strike lucky, as I did on more than one occasion. Although this is not a fault of My Brother Rabbit, I would argue it’s more of a testament to the accessibility of the game overall. I never felt like the challenges were hard enough that they were trying to exclude me, nor did I believe that they were easy enough that my intelligence (or lack thereof) would be insulted.

I certainly would be doing no justice to this game if I didn’t talk about the art of My Brother Rabbit. Simply put, it is beautiful. The attention to detail, in addition to the warm and welcoming colours in every location, was wonderful. There were multiple instances when I made it to a new chapter or environment where I found myself putting my controller down, purely to drink in the vibrancy and delight of the world. As the illustrative art style projected the game’s surreal landscape, I was given flashes of Lewis Carroll and the Wonderland-esque influences that surely went into the design. The human faces of background objects, such as watering cans and giant pears, contrasted with the foreground, drawing my attention and somehow never stealing focus from the gameplay itself. The care it must have taken to craft this dream-like world is something Artifex Mundi must be commended for.

With all that said, if I had any real drawbacks it would be that in an handful of instances, the composition was so busy that it became a challenge to find many of the puzzle items needed to move forward in the game. Many of the parts I was seeking (and you will spend well over half of your time looking for various bits and pieces) would blend into the scenery, making them something of a grind to look for, especially when you only have one or two left before you can carry on with the actual game. When you are on a roll and then get stuck scanning every pixel of the screen, it does hurt the momentum.

A lot of the time, I had no real choice other than to sweep my cursor over the screen from top to bottom, clicking like a madman in the vain hope I would chance upon that final, elusive piece after inspecting every portion of the level countless times.

These, however, are minor niggles in the larger scheme of what is, frankly, such an elegant and emotive game. In the just shy of five hours I spent with My Brother Rabbit, it never outstayed its welcome and I always found myself looking forward to the next step in this personal adventure. The strange world is delightfully crafted and the story, even without a single word spoken, was both compelling and subtle. A day removed from finishing the game, it has stuck with me and, although the ending felt a touch too rushed to make a neat conclusion for my liking, the time I had with it was a real treat.