My Brother Rabbit
Artifex Mundi
PlayStation 4
My Brother Rabbit is a puzzle based point-and-click adventure game from developer Artifex Mundi that follows a young boy’s imaginative point of view around his sister’s illness. In the story, a young girl falls ill and must stay with her brother while her parents set out to find a treatment. Within this experience, the brother copes by using his imagination. The cut scenes featuring the family versus the colorful and whimsical world of the bunny are in stark contrast. The game has no major dialogue and instead focuses on set pieces, character design, music, and art choices to tell its story.
The art of this game reminds me of storybooks I was given as a child. Often the rabbit himself reminded me of the sad but classic children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. The designs, background set pieces, and the overall art style of this game blew me away. Many scenes feature oversized mushrooms, imaginative gadgets, silly steampunk inspired robots, and designs similar to that of Winnie the Pooh or Who Framed Roger Rabbit‘s Toon Town. The game features a soft color palette of mostly primary colors with some hues of purple during darker scene thus solidifying its roots in children’s media. Another stand out point within the game is dreamy and soothing soundtrack created by Arkadiusz Reikowski & Emi Evans. The soundtrack plays like a lullaby with slight eery undertones alluding to the sad nature of the otherwise whimsical children’s narrative.
While the art style lends itself to be a children-focused game, the puzzles were fairly difficult in many cases. The puzzles within the game primarily consist of playing a game of “I Spy” with particular objects within a scene as well as few surprising difficult logic puzzles. The game itself has five levels total and the entirety of my playtime was about three hours. This is absolutely a game a parent could play with a child. It is worth noting a played this game with my Hori Mini Wired Gamepad, which is designed for children, with no major issues. However, the story is absolutely deep enough for adults to appreciate on its own.
Recently, I have been playing mostly giant open-world games so this small narrative based linear game was a refreshing palate cleanser. The heartwarming indie darling offers players and even families the chance to engage with a storybook. It is a new take on the children’s media and a welcome calm to the otherwise sometimes hectic and stressful world of gaming. If you enjoy point-and-click adventures or indie games I highly recommend this artistic adventure into childhood. Currently, the game is available on PS4, Xbox, and Steam for $14.99. Included in the purchase, at least on the PS4, is the game’s soundtrack as well as avatars.