Hare-Raising: The Night Of The Rabbit
Daedalic feel like an adventure developer just on the edge of finding their hit. The Deponia games had potential, and The Whispered World came so close. So can their latest, The Night Of The Rabbit, be the one that really shines? There's a trailer now, to give us some idea.
If you're a Brit of my age, you'll likely remember those extremely odd moments when off ill from school, flicking through all four channels to find something that wasn't lifestyle tips to watch. And either BBC2 or Channel 4 would be showing a cartoon! Hooray! Except... this wasn't like regular cartoons. It was... it was... European. Seemingly exclusively scheduled for those watching in a fluey fog, these peculiar tales possessed a maturity you weren't quite ready for, along with an entire absence of wacky voices and frying pans on faces. It's precisely this that was evoked for me watching the German developer's trailer:
It's all there - emphatic talking animals, magic that operates on a level you don't think you'll ever understand, and a gorgeous collision of animation styles. And looks like it could be an alternate world back-story for a young Professor Layton.
It looks like it could even be pretty special. It looks incredibly lovely - if only the game can be as well-crafted.
I really do hope that Daedalic will have had the script properly translated - something that has hurt them in the past. (Much as if an English game were being translated to German, I would expect German natives to be the ones to QA such a transition, it only makes sense for someone whose first language is English to be responsible to the QA in the other direction. The results of using non-native translators are an ever-present burden on every adventure coming out of Germany, and there's no good reason for it to be spoiling games.) We'll find out on the 29th of this month when it's released.