My Brother Rabbit

Genre: Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

My Brother Rabbit is a Graphic Adventure that came out on multiple platforms in 2018, including Nintendo Switch. This game focuses on the story of a young girl who becomes seriously ill, and the imagined adventures of her stuffed rabbit that mirrors her own struggles.

The presentation in this game is wonderful, using beautiful, imaginative hand-painted visuals in two different styles to depict the two different stories being told here, and pairing it with a gorgeous soundtrack with some lovely vocal performances. In particular, the title theme, Dreams is really wonderful, and some other good examples here are The Rabbit and Out of the Water.

The gameplay here has players looking through the various environments they find themselves in for objects to interact with, and generally they’ll be given a task to collect a certain number of some object or another hidden throughout these environments. I will say that the inventive mechanisms players find work in interesting ways that are a delight to see play out, and occasionally you’ll find a clever puzzle or two as well.

However, most of the time you’ll be hunting for some random tidbit or collectable you need to continue, and the game doesn’t make this easy for you. Players aren’t shown what objects in the environment are “clickable”, players cannot pick up items that are obviously going to be needed later until they get the assignment to collect that item. And if you get stuck, there’s nothing here to help you find what you’re missing. Making things worse, you’ll frequently be tasked with collecting multiple types of collectables, but will be unable to collect all of one type until you find all of another type, and the game doesn’t indicate what order to get them in, meaning that players focusing on finding the wrong kind of collectable may be finding themselves sent on a wild goose chase.

At the very least I can say that usually there aren’t too many possibilities to get lost in, so players likely won’t be stuck for too long at any given time, but there were definitely times where I just tried clicking everywhere on the screen in case I missed something, and for me that feels like a failure of design in a game like this. Oh, and speaking of failures in design, this is exactly the sort of game you want to have touchscreen control in, and My Brother Rabbit does not have it. Disappointing.

Still, despite the frustrating design issues that make this game far more tedious than it needs to be, My Brother Rabbit’s presentation still draws me back to it. The beauty and creativity of this world are undeniable, and while the gameplay frustrates me, fans of the genre may still find this game well worth playing just to explore this unique world. Just remember to bring your patience with you.

tl;dr – My Brother Rabbit is a Graphic Adventure following the story of a sick girl and the imagined adventures of her stuffed rabbit. This game is beautiful and imaginative, but also frustrating in the way its puzzles are designed. Fans of the genre may find the game’s better qualities still make it worth playing, but only if they have the patience for its gameplay.

Grade: C+

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