The Night of the Rabbit

The Night of the Rabbit is a point-and-click adventure game developed and published by Daedalic Entertainment, released in May of 2013. Originally created for Microsoft Windows, the game has since been met with an OS X release.

Daedalic have a knack for creating amiable and endearing works. The first game from Daedalic I played was another point-and-click adventure game titled Deponia, which went on to spawn a trilogy of games set in its universe. I enjoyed Deponia for its charming cast of characters, soundtrack, and its beautifully hand-drawn graphics which gave Deponia its signature. Needless to say, I went into The Night of the Rabbit with a certain set of expectations that derived from my experiences with Deponia and came out rather pleased, despite some of the games more critical flaws.

The game follows the adventures of Jerry Hazelnut, a young boy with only two days left of summer vacation. Spending his days outdoors in the forest, Jerry longs to be a renowned magician one day. His dreams have a chance to become reality as an enigmatic rabbit, the Marquis de Hoto, promises Jerry apprenticeship in the art of Treewalking, an ancient and magical tradition used to traverse different worlds to help others in need. Together with the Marquis (and promising Jerry he'll return to his family before dinner), Jerry enters the world of Mousewood, a small town that resides in the woods Jerry played in and is invisible to the ordinary human eye. Now with the the perspective of a mouse, Jerry travels and explores Mousewood and its surroundings, helping out its inhabitants and occasionally traveling to mysterious locations to learn the spells of the Treewalkers. However, it becomes apparent that the Marquis knows of an impending danger not only to Mousewood, but to all the worlds intertwined in the roots of the First Tree which acts as a bridge between worlds the Treewalkers use. Jerry Hazelnut's training is for an ultimate destiny, but the Marquis himself seems to harbor a pivotal secret.

how do the crows just not eat all of them

The Night of the Rabbit's premise clearly draws inspiration from Carroll's Alice in Wonderland while the game's visual style is reminiscent of a Miyazaki film; both sources lends the game its sense of fantastic wonder and charm. The ambience of the environment coupled with a fitting soundtrack effectively commands the tone of the game whether it is a jubilant party or a dark and sinister moment in Jerry's adventures. For older audiences, the game dips itself into issues regarding urban sprawl, environmentalism, and the pastoral genre, but its awkward narrative arc and pacing keeps those themes from being as effectively or fully developed as I hoped. However, such themes are present and while their full discussion is probably outside the scope of a first impression statement (perhaps in a future blog post), they are wrapped in a fairytale delivery that fits the narrative and setting without feeling tacked on. Better communicated themes such as friendship and courage against large odds (the mouse-sized perspective lends itself well) are more readily developed and accessible, important for a younger audience.

the last place i expected to be

Gameplay is what you'd expect from a point-and-click game and is actually well streamlined for simplicity, making the game more accessible to younger players. Some point-and-click titles had a multitude of actions you could perform with an object or character via a wheel of verbs; interactions in The Night of the Rabbit are one-click deals. Now, you might think that a simple interaction model may affect the depth or complexity of the puzzles involved, but the simple interactions aren't a factor in dumbing down puzzles. In Chaos on Deponia, a similar interaction system is involved but the puzzles involved were more creative and just as challenging because the fundamental design was different and there was a variety in its puzzle design. The puzzles in Chaos on Deponia involved more mini-games and self-contained puzzles where rules are more readily contained and consistent whereas the puzzles in The Night of the Rabbit consist mainly of environmental interactions and combining items together. This leads to some rather inconsistent and sometimes illogical solutions to puzzles. There is a hint system in game, but it is far from helpful and only serves as an audio playback feature of what the Marquis said to Jerry.

i'm willing to accept anything

The Night of the Rabbit's ultimate strength lies in its amazing audiovisual presentation. The game's introductory acts are drawn out and the ending is strangely rushed, but the game's narrative do have interesting twists and turns that did catch me off guard. A fair chunk of the game's universe is largely unexplained and can either be telling of a sequel or can be left to the player's imagination. After all, Jerry and the Marquis are in a day of summer vacation where anything is possible.

"but perhaps someone is going to step up?"

Why You Should Read: James Joyce’s Ulysses

A Turbulent Run Down Stream of Consciousness or: Yeah... We're Covering It.

Merry [belated] Bloomsday: the holiday most often abandoned within minutes of starting!  Go out for an extended morning walk, indulge in the sights and sounds of the town, and enjoy your kidney breakfa—wait…hold up…the title alone triggers sirens to blare, so let’s do some clean-up: James Joyce’s Ulysses is notorious for its difficulty, with its pages of experimental prose, allusions to the most esoteric literature, and most notably, stream-of-conscience writing style, so much so that its reputation as “unreadable” and “high-brow” has come to overshadow all other elements the work has to offer.  While, yes, Ulysses can be difficult and arcane, the collective view on Ulysses is rather unfair and not actually of Ulysses itself, but instead what people believe Ulysses is—a caricature of the actual novel where some of its most memorable, but not its only, traits come to be exaggerated to the point where they are not only the defining traits of the work, but the only traits of that work in the minds of others.  When people talk about Ulysses, it’s rarely the novel itself, but their idea of it.  (Chances are, that person hasn’t even read it all the way through!)  Basically, Ulysses’ reputation as impenetrable and high-minded is not exactly accurate and misses the finer points of the work, to the point where its reputation is an entirely separate entity from the text itself: Ulysses is boisterous, vulgar, silly, and largely accessible, not some holy codex written in languages reserved for the cultural elite.  (If you want to talk about impenetrable nonsense, try Finnegans Wake—it’s basically what people think Ulysses is.)

Pictured: A Major Sex Symbol Being Read By Marilyn Monroe

So far, this have been largely defensive and before we get into why Ulysses is worth reading, there is still that massive hurdle of reputation to get over, so here we are: “How Not to Read James Joyce’s Ulysses”.  We’ll get through this quick … 

• Don’t Fret Over Every Line:  You won’t understand every single reference, and that’s okay.  The vast majority of it doesn’t matter.
•  Ignore Allusions: Allusions to the Odyssey and other works are inconsequential to most readers.
• Don’t Give Up Within the First Three Chapters:  The main character, the shining star of the book, is not introduced until the fourth chapter, or Book II, roughly fifty pages in.  With his introduction, the narration really picks up and the stream-of-consciousness becomes less reliant on obscure (and at times, insufferable) intellectual references which are dominant in the first three chapters.  At Book II, the text actually becomes consistently fun.  (Ulysses…fun?!  Incredible, isn’t it?)

...and most important...

• Be Cognizant of Narratorial Changes:  Joyce employs stream-of-consciousness often, but not always, which will mean the narration will weave between third-person narration and a character’s inner monologue.  These transitions are never overtly labeled, often happening within the same paragraph with no textual indication of change.  The reader must look for tonal changes, or the easiest indication, first-person pronouns that are not part of dialogue.  The divide between character’s internal and external worlds is not always clear-cut.

This stream-of-conscience technique is the book’s greatest strength, though it is also the biggest hurdle for unsuspecting readers.  Unlike knowledge of the story beats in the Odyssey or the geographic layout of Dublin, being able to decipher what is internal and what is external is crucial to understanding, and enjoying, Ulysses.  For example, here is the first instance of a narratorial swap, which may go unnoticed by unsuspecting readers:

—Look at yourself, [Mulligan] said, you dreadful bard!
Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by a crooked crack. Hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too.

Catch it?  It should become apparent with “As he and other see me.”  No indication of a change, and this is one of the easiest ones to spot, it is an introduction after all, with its frequent use of the first-person pronoun “me”.  Okay, the disclaimer is over, here is why you should read Ulysses:

Sigh... That disclaimer was longer than Ulysses itself...

In its simplest form, Ulysses is the story of Leopold Bloom as he spends his day, a Thursday, June 16^th, 1904, which is not a remarkable day—just another day in Bloom’s life.  At least that is Ulysses from a story approach, what it is actually about is transporting yourself into the life of another human being, one Mr. Leopold Bloom, for a single day, with no details spared, in all its mundane glory.  Nothing grand happens in Ulysses, and it is all the better for that, and nothing too dull is cut out.  Nearly 800 hundred pages of someone else’s day, with every action, every thought that goes through Mr. Bloom’s head, revealed and cataloged.  (The reader also peaks into the minds of Stephan Dedalus, an arrogant intellectual from A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, who through seeing his inner-workings, the reader begins to sympathize with, and Molly Bloom, Leopold’s wife.)  Ulysses is an intimate look into the human condition, with all its glory and down-falls.  The brilliance of Ulysses is seeing life from another’s point of view, without all the glorious edits cutting out the “boring” parts seen in every other work of fiction, or even non-fiction.  All the random, meaningless thoughts a person has throughout the day don’t make it into other works, and for good reason, but Ulysses is a celebration of those elements.  Just about every character in any medium, this could even be expanded further into other people who aren’t you, are more than human because you, the reader or observer, never sees them at their worst and at their most boring the same way you see yourself.  People can put on a “Best of” reel for others, withholding all that isn’t to be shared.  You are with yourself twenty-four/seven, so all those thoughts you’d rather not share, all those sly little actions you’d never admit too, are hidden from everyone but yourself.  Ulysses is one of the few books that embraces those secrets aspects of human life.  The reader is with Bloom, inside his head, when he is at his highest points for that Thursday we spend with him…and the reader is also with Bloom as he sits on the toilet reading the morning paper.  The latter is not enjoyable to read, it is an aspect of being human that we’d prefer to overlook, but one that we can never escape, and for that reason, Ulysses is one of the most accurate portrayals of being human. 

James Joyce’s Ulysses is the transplant of the human mind, in all its grand, dull, sometimes gross, and scattered fashion, onto paper: its greatest power is its ability to do so accurately, allowing the reader to leave their own and venture into another, at least for a day, to prove that, no, the reader isn’t alone in that silly quirk, isn’t weird to have that reoccurring thought, and ultimately that we’re all flawed animals…that we’re all human.

Munin

From developers at Gojira, a Portuguese indie studio, and publishers at Daedalic Entertainment comes Munin, a puzzle adventure game set in the universe of Norse mythology. Munin is available for Microsoft Windows and OS X platforms.

i'm in if munin

If you've never heard of Gojira, they were the folks behind creating a virtual car commercial K-pop star experience in which players got to sing and dance alongside the lovely Kim "HyunA" Hyuna (I don't blame you). Aside from creating car endorsement products, Gojira are focused in natural language processing, interactive fiction, and of course, indie games. 

ios app if you're curious

Munin is a puzzle adventure game immersed in the world of Norse mythology. Players take on the role of Munin, one of the messengers and eyes of Odin. Munin has been transformed by the trickster god Loki into a flightless human girl and must traverse the nine worlds found within Norse cosmology to find her feathers to fly back to Asgard.

the backgrounds look amazing 

While basic in its platforming elements, the core gameplay of Munin arises in the ability to rotate and manipulate set portions of levels. Rotating a piece of the level can open up different passages and affects environmental objects that are key to collecting all the feathers in a level. The different sets of levels are stylized to fit one of the nine worlds of the Norse Yggdrasil and each hold their own unique variation on the rotational mechanic. Players will be able to figure out and toy with spirit orbs, geysers, and rolling stones, just to name a few variations. There are also smaller mechanical details that can be worked out. For example, rotating a piece actually removes the momentum of any object in that piece, allowing players to guide objects into specific areas.

spot the ladder

Although the game's mechanics are interesting and reminded me of Braid or The Bridge, the game's flaws are small but frustrating. Several of the earlier stages presents immediate flaws in art direction. The cave levels are atmospherically dark but when it becomes difficult to make out foreground and background elements, it becomes a problem. There aren't any gamma options so the only thing you can really do is either lean in really close to the screen or adjust your monitor settings. Another quality-of-life issue I ran into was the ability to only rotate pieces clockwise. This means that if you miss your exit, you're going to have to click a piece three more times to get it aligned. The controls are typical of a platformer but can sometimes be stiff, especially when climbing ladders and jumping over terrain obstacles.

Munin's puzzles aren't overly complex but still encourages planning and experimentation. While not exactly a one-trick pony, the game's mechanical variations can run stale rather quickly. The variations can be fun and interesting but not all of them are successful or effectively game changing. Because the game requires you to beat all levels in a set before advancing to the next one, you can get stuck at a level and forced to drag yourself around to figure it out. There isn't an option to skip a level to come back to it, making the experience tedious. The lack of stage selection or stage skipping damages the game's pacing.

hello there

Despite its flaws, Munin is still a solid game with a firm foundation in its core mechanics; the game does seem a little too tenacious with what it offers, however. The game's unique aesthetics and the Norse mythology theme salvages aspects of the game that otherwise weigh it down. Although the game does have nine worlds and a plentiful number of levels, even puzzle game enthusiasts may find themselves bored after a rather repetitive set before they can enjoy another mechanic. I couldn't bring myself to sit down for more than thirty minutes at a time as the game's engagement wanes, but if you do find the game on sale and you liked games like Braid or The Bridge, do give Munin a try.

Hammerwatch

Hammerwatch is an arcade hack-and-slash created by Jochum Skoglund and Niklas Myberg with music by Two Feathers studio. Released in August 2013, the game is available on Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux platforms.

I remember first seeing Hammerwatch when it made its debut on Steam and being immediately drawn in by its scenes of hordes of monsters and its pixel aesthetics. Say what you will about pixel graphics, I still think they hold up a timeless charm. Speaking of timeless charm, the game was inspired by the 1980s Gauntlet series and also contains elements from Diablo as well. Hammerwatch offers several hours of co-op or single player dungeon crawling hack-and-slash as players scour the levels for loot and secrets accompanied by an energizing (at times a little repetitive) soundtrack.

The co-op experience offers its own server hosting and supports up to four players with six classic fantasy archetypes for players to play as: Paladin, Wizard, Ranger, Warlock, Thief, and Priest. Starting out with only two abilities, players will smash through lines of enemies together and picking up coins and various upgrades, which include new and powerful abilities, increased speed, more damage, etc. There are no skill trees or level ups for players to advance through; shops and vendors in the game sell upgrades to players in a Diablo fashion with several stores hidden away in secret rooms.

insert 1 coin = 600 life. microtransactions!

As your party weaves in and out of terrifying traps, hordes of monsters, locating keys and opening doors, you may come across several hidden switches or cryptic puzzles. Secrets are an essential component of Hammerwatch as they can provide a great gold boost or a means forward. False walls, hidden switches, and mysterious sequences dot the map for players to find. Despite its dungeon crawling genre and appearances, the game is not procedurally generated; map layouts are constant which leads to some great speed-running potential and appeal.

Although the game may feel slow-paced in the first few stages, challenging difficulty modifiers can be activated to amp up the game. Play with only one life among all four players, one-shot deaths, and my personal favorite that calls back to the Gauntlet series, negative health regeneration. If you are having trouble just getting around the levels and are feeling frustrated, you can also turn on various crutch modifiers to ease your game. The challenges and crutches settings allow for a customizable, but slightly rigid, gameplay experience.

if you're at a puzzle, just push buttons randomly

Hammerwatch's pixel graphics are accompanied by tone setting ambient lighting and exciting particle effects. Sooner or later, the game will become a bullet hell as you duck and dodge between projectiles that fill the screen. The controls are responsive and comfortable, but some of the default keybindings can be a little awkward and may need some adjustments before you begin. The user interface is simple and easy to handle. The map is intuitive as well but you aren't able to zoom out, making figuring out where you've been or haven't been a bit more difficult.

If you thought the primary campaign was short, you'll be happy to hear that a free expansion was released back in September 2014. Titled Temple of the Sun, it's available to anyone who purchased the base game and is essentially a whole new campaign for you and your friends to experience. There is also a survival mode and a tower defense styled mode to play as well. Hammerwatch also includes a level editor outside of the game so you can create your own levels and campaigns for your friends or enemies to enjoy or suffer through.

here's a great tutorial on how to use the level editor

For me, it's interesting and fun to see how the precursors of modern games have created lasting impressions on the genres we know and love today. Hammerwatch successfully captures the charm of older titles and presents it all in an easy to access but difficult to master package.

By the way, if you're curious, here's the 2014 release of Gauntlet.