Rusty Rabbit

I love rabbits. I love mechs. I love Metroidvania games. Thank goodness I was able to play Rusty Rabbit then! The latest in 2.5d side-scrolling, Metroidvania fun, which features Rabbits, Mechs, and a whole lot of junk that needs sorting out. Does Rusty Rabbit live up to the fluffy, adorable hype and sit among the greats like Shadow Complex or Hollow Knight?

Read on.


What on Earth is a Rusty Rabbit?

Rusty Rabbit brings us to a world where humans are gone, and rabbits remain. In the cold, yet peaceful Brass Village, a rabbit known as Stamp, also called Old Rusty and Gramps. He's a gruff old timer who specialises in taking out the trash. And oh boy, there’s plenty of trash where Stamp is concerned. In this charming 2.5 Metroidvania, we play as Rusty as he embarks on a venture through Smokestack Mountain, a giant natural structure which hides much trash and many dark secrets waiting to be discovered.

Rusty’s call to adventure comes about when a group of keen, inexperienced explorers ask him to join their quest for The Tree of Life, a mythical place within Smokestack Mountain that can grant unknown rewards and dangers. Rusty reluctantly doesn’t join the group, but finds himself looking out for the young explorers as they venture forth, protecting them, helping them out, and getting a useful tool, allowing further progression in the mountain. It also doesn’t help matters when Rusty discovers messages from a ghost of his past, only pushing him further into the junk and the depths of potential despair.

With his trusty Mecha, Rusty aims to dig deep into the trash, discover lost treasures, help those in need, and take care of a few vermin along the way to finding someone he lost long ago.


Rabbits and their religion!

Now, for a quirky game about a rabbit in a mecha dealing with cubes of trash, there is quite a compelling narrative and a bit of lore to this world. The plot itself is nothing new, with your basic call to adventure, unlikely hero making wonderous discoveries, and that personal connection which draws them deeper into the mystery. It has all those familiar beats, and Rusty Rabbit executes them just fine.

We have a likeable protagonist, with a ruff and gruff rabbit who smokes carrots, doesn’t like mingling, and loves destroying trash. The entire cast of characters was quite enjoyable to observe and interact with, even if most of them felt a little jarring towards Rusty. There were a few good laughs, some nice titbits of drama, and overall, the voice work is rather excellent. We have the likes of Nolan North, David Hater, Kayli Mills, James C Mathis III, and Yong Yea himself. I find Yong’s voice work hit or miss, he does a brilliant job here, to the point I didn’t realise it was him until I saw his name in the credits. He does the part incredibly well, and I give him a ton of credit for pulling off the old timer guy, who has secrets and past pain like a pro.

Another aspect I truly admire was the world-building and the lore of the rabbits, from their day-to-day politics and the sincere beliefs they hold. Including the fact, they worship Peter Rabbit as though he were Jesus. There’s a whole lot of cool lore which I was pretty fascinated to learn as much as possible, the world itself and Smokestack mountain were thoroughly enjoyable to explore and learn about with each square foot I traversed, and knowing more on how the rabbits saw us humans, or Giants they refer to us as, was amusing but also had it’s dark side. I admired that.

Lastly, it was quite amusing how Rusty would call out certain plot devices and cliches, with the story jumping over them rather than sticking to them. Again, I admire that. But I will say, my big gripe is just how much the game pushes everything onto you at times. In the first two hours of play, there were way too many cutscenes, it would make Metal Gear Solid slightly blush. Ironic since David Hater is in this. So the first couple of hours dragged, and in general, there is still a lot of dialogue exchanges and exposition which were overly long. This made the script feel like a first proper draft, requiring refinement.

This does spill over into other lesser things, such as backstories you hear about when completing certain side quests, which go on and on and honestly didn’t add much to the story to me.

In the grand scheme of things, there’s a lot I do like and even greatly admire. I love the premise, the characters, the world building, voice work and how much fun is made of the cliché stuff. But the nonsensical dumping of exposition, long-winded dialogue, and just boatloads of information did get on my nerves a few times. Still, vastly enjoyable and interesting than any game with talking rabbits has to be.


Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit

If you know the song ….

As for gameplay, Rusty Rabbit is not the most innovative of Metroidvania titles, but it still managed to captivate me quite a bit. To the point where over the weekend I spent a good 2 to 3 hours solid just playing it, and only a few games in recent years have made me do that (my time as an adult is for chores and boring stuff …).

The formula is something you’ve seen before many times, being dropped in a massive world broken up into sub-sections, interlinked with one another, and you having to progress bit by bit, gathering tools to open new paths and backtrack for hidden loot you couldn’t reach before. It’s a staple of game/world design that we all love and cherish. And yes, I know the genre is known as Action/Search … but Metroidvania sounds cooler.

The gimmick here is that Stamp is situated in a little mecha that can drill through cubes of trash, hook his way about allowing for interesting traversal, and best of all, use a shotgun on nasty critters in Smokestock Mountain. The world design is very much grid-based, with a system of tightly woven corridors leading to treasure, danger and the odd puzzle or two. Environments vary quite drastically, which is nice, with different biomes providing industrial trash heaps with rooms filled with molten hot magma, lush greenery with indoor forests, deep, dank, and dark cave systems, and much more. I love the variation in biomes, the different hazards they brought, and while being quite maze-like, never overstaying their welcome or feeling in any way tedious after exploring for a good chunk of time.

While backtracking is not as intense as Shadow Complex, which held some great secrets and hidden rewards, Rusty Rabbit still provides good excuses to go back on yourself, find extra rewards and gears, and invest in patience by gathering all the needed tools for the most complex secrets in the game. There’s enough here, and it’s confident that it kept me invested. I will say that movement and melee combat feel quite clunky, taking quite some time to adjust to the jumping and attacking. I got the hang of it and worked with it just fine, but there were moments when a simple hop would over- or under shoot, meaning I missed plenty of marks and ledges.

It's also a shame that key hunting and puzzles are limited, with there being a handful of neat lateral set pieces, but not enough. And finding keys to locked doors felt like a joke at times, with keys usually being very close to locked doors, so I wondered why even have them half of the time. It would have been nice to spice things up, say with explosives, or more puzzles that allowed me to lower a bridge, or open a gate. But key card hunting was repeated quite a bit, and it never got any more interesting than the first one I found.

The world design is engaging, I love the biome variety, and while I wish there was some more compelling backtracking or problem solving, the simple task of destroying cubes of trash was just so satisfying, I would’ve loved to do it in an endless runner style mini-game if there was one. There’s something weirdly simple yet rewarding about smashing trash.

Aside from the core gameplay loop. We have progression systems, crafting, and earning extra rewards from chatting with residents of Brass Village, doing side jobs, and restoring old cars humans once drove. These are all fine, if not a little too basic at times. My main issue with progression and crafting is that the pacing is quite slow, meaning you don’t get a lot of weapons and gear to craft. So you end up with lots of resources and not much need for them. But character progression for useful traits felt a step behind what I needed in the game world. If there were more weapon types to craft or upgrade, while allowing me to invest in more perks and skills quicker, my playstyles and exploration would be more exciting. Again, it’s fine, but by the third act, I still had a lot of locked perks and skills which would have been useful much earlier.

But I still immensely enjoyed my time as Stamp the old rabbit, destroying trash, exploring Smokestack Mountain, and engaging with the dozen other mechanics added little layers to the experience.


Overall?

I have a soft spot for Metroidvanias, as I do with survival horror as a genre. Some of my favourite games are from the genre, with Shadow Complex, Hollow Knight, and Metroid Prime on my list. And while Rusty Rabbit doesn’t top the list, I still found it a charming, enthralling, and confidently put-together game that I can easily recommend it to anyone.

While the delivery of exposition and some areas of gameplay left much to be desired, I can’t deny the quirky gravitas and appeal Rusty Rabbit had, and it hooked me in quite a bit over the last week. The world of Rusty Rabbit is immense and grander than it needed to be, the gameplay is simple but offers a hearty exercise in discovery, progression, and good old taking out the trash. And it has cute Rabbits voiced by amazing voice actors.

Rusty Rabbit is that sort of oddball gamey game you can’t help but love. Plus, it has a rabbit in a mecha. It’s cool, fun, and a good time in my book.

++ Awesome world-building and design
++ Nice bit of depth to the backstory, and quirky narrative
+ Good voice acting and presentation
+ Solid Metroidvania gameplay loop with some addictive traits (i.e. smashing trash!)

-- Some mechanics needed more refinement and expansion
- The story is a little heavy-handed and tedious at its lowest
- Clunky movement and combat


The publisher kindly provided a review copy of Rusty Rabbit.

Rusty Rabbit is out now for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC