rabbit & steel | 2024 | mino_dev | action roguelike | demo | posted 20 august 2024
the cute bnnuy game! it came out on that day (was it week?) that was like a whale fall for indie gamers, and did not disappoint. i hesitated at first because it's a little on the expensive side (strong currencies dni) but i played the demo and couldn't stop thinking about it... definitely worth it. this game's not that danmaku-y, especially in coop and lower difficulties (solo lunar is a whole other beast), but it also has a big focus on dodging and every attack deals the same amount of damage, which is counted in lives, so it's pretty similar in some aspects and definitely worth of the bullet hybrid corner (it's my website!). and it's a damn good game.
in rabbit & steel you're investigating the moonlit kingdom, where a spell suddenly made everyone angry and violent. you're looking for a fellow rabbit that went missing, and potentially for a way to break the spell too, while fighting a variety of animal girls. there's a surprising amount of dialogue, and it takes a lot of runs to view all the little events and finally free everyone from the spell (which rewards you with a cute illustrated scene and the satisfaction of a pretty rare steam achievement [at least rare for now]. also unlocks the art gallery). it's a cozy story like the one in mino's other game, maiden & spell (which i will be reviewing here as well, i love it), and progressing through it is just a little extra motivation to keep playing when the game kicks your ass. the slow drip feed style makes a lot of sense for a game like this, it keeps the pace fast.
now as for the game: a run (lasting around 30 minutes) has five stages, and i'll get to the areas soon. and it's pretty hard duh. but cute mode is very forgiving with its 9 lives that get fully replenished after every battle, so it's great to practice and learn the different boss mechanics and your character's rotation and ideal builds. and you can still unlock new story events, items and classes when playing on cute, so you'll also be making meta progress (other than just your ability improving).
there's a lot of unlockables, including five classes, making the total bunny count 10. the "standard" way to unlock them is through clearing stages on hard, but you can get them (and everything else) just from beating enough bosses — i really appreciate the multiple ways to unlock things, since beating bosses is as much of a commitment as getting good at hard mode. a lot to choose from and see what playstyle works best for you. i saw a tier list on reddit but i don't put much stock in it, because it has bruiser as S and i didn't like playing as her (she does silly high damage but her range is very small and i always end up getting hit stupidly). i'm currently a defender main — though i'm not sure i'm using her defensive right when playing multi.
i wanna talk about each stage because i really love what this game does tying mechanics to theme. i really like being led to move a certain way by the hazards. the structure they provide is nice too. a run goes like this: outskirts, three main areas, pale keep (and final boss). you get a shop inbetween the areas, which is also where story events happen. in every area except the keep you have two fairly simple introductory fights, a mini boss, an item (chests heal you for 2hp), and the boss.
the intro, you're here mostly to get your build started with its two items. enemies aren't very tough, you can get through all three in well under five minutes. they're pretty simple versions of the main area counterparts (each has two possible fight patterns), having similar vibes but none of the specific mechanics. i'm pretty sure two of these will be from areas you won't visit in the run, but i always forget to keep track of these things, they may well be completely random.
the crows. mechanics here are gravity, which pulls you in one direction, binding, which restricts your movement to one axis, and teleporting, which uh teleports you in one direction after a set amount of time. it's the easiest in the game imo, especially when solo. i like how the nerd wizard area forces you to think ahead with the teleports (and the boss gimmick), and the astrological theme is nice.
the frogs. they're artists so the mechanics are follow the color, where you have to go to a specific color circle (colorblind friendly, there's also shapes), tethering, where you're bound to someone or to a fixed spot, and stop / keep moving, which i don't think i have to explain. the fights here have you moving rhythmically and in set patterns, including some fun osu-like shenanigans. it keeps you on your feet at all times. and the song is very catchy.
a fun little touch is mav, the seamstress frog, having patterns where it's almost like you're a sewing needle. one of her normal patterns, where you go vertical then horizontal to avoid the alternating hazards, has a lockstitch quality to it. it's cute!
the mice. maybe my favorite area. mechanics here: stretch the tether, where you need to be a certain distance from a point (or player), heavy, which decreases your movespeed (it might actually set it to a certain value and not affect you that much in certain classes. don't quote me on that), and hazards on paths (terribly named by me), which are the big round hazards but they move along specific (and well marked) paths. the girls here are soldiers, and there are two duo fights (plus their outskirts counterparts), the second of which is pretty tough.
but what i love about the area is how the fights have you march around. patterns have you standing between lines, and bullets (some cutely shaped like arrows) and beams tend to be strictly horizontal or vertical. the mix of tethers and path'd hazards often forces you to move in a very specific way to sync everything up, which gives it all a parade-like feel, in particular on coop when you're tethered to someone else. great music too, a nice fun march.
the wolves. this area has cleaves, which draw a line across the screen and hurts everyone in that area, turbulent winds, which move you a fixed distance when you press a direction, like sliding on ice, and field limits, which restrict you to a specific area of the arena. this girls are always competing with each other and trying to prove themselves as the strongest, so they get the flashy cleaves — they aren't too hard to avoid, but are great shows of brute force. same with the territorial field limits, while turbulent winds gives a bit of an artic feel. the enemies here dash horizontally a lot, make them very annoying to hit.
the dragons. very aggressive and territorial. we have rotating bars, self explanatory i think, they're like fire breath, expanding bars / circles, idem, and expanding crosses, which i'm sure you can imagine as well. basically the enemies here corner you and force you to think ahead a lot — there's very few safe zones at times, and you need to be able to visualize where they'll be. karsi, the mini boss, is very tough, especially if your defensive doesn't give you manevourability. to be honest i also struggled with fast characters against her because i kept running into the perma hazard at the center. but i think that was a skill issue i've since improved a lot on.
the queen's arms. no animals here, we're killing objects. it makes a lot of sense given the queen's main thing is how lonely she is. the three pre-boss fights are not too challenging, serving more as a break before the final boss (though the axe is a pure dps check). it's a way to get some levels too (and there's a chest at the end). their mechanics echo those of other areas (like the spear and shield acting like mice, and the daggers like wolves etc), making for nice symmetry with the outskirts.
so that's the game! it's pretty dense (a lot of items and upgrades and stuff) and it took me over 20 hours to really git gud at normal (well, reasonably so; i still haven't got that hitless run, but i've come close), but maybe i was also hindered by sticking to a poor class choice. i still have fun even when the game kicks my ass though. it's just very good! i love its style and presentation, and it's great both solo and coop. and i'm always more interested on coop than pvp. and i really appreciate cute mode. i'm not much for extreme difficulty afterall.
i'm still pretty mid at the game! haven't beat a single hard boss yet! so just what's been helpful on normal — the game's fairly complex so turns out i wrote a lot. here's a nice hard solo guide, it's still helpful for normal because the patterns are mostly the same, only less crowded. this game really could use a practice mode, as i feel is the case with basically every run-based game like this.