Bunny Must Die Review

BMD is one of those games that I was lucky enough to find from another LPer back in the when times, like La Mulana. It looked fun so I went and tracked it down and gave it a try and, would you believe, I liked it.

Bunny, you see, is a bunny girl. Unfortunately for Bunny she was blasted with some radiation from the thermeownuclear war and grew some cat ears. This. Cannot. Stand. The cure for the curse is in the Devil’s Maze and Bunny just has to go in there and get this sorted out.

Game play is an action adventure platformer. Bunny goes from area to area gaining abilities which will eventually give her access to other areas in the Maze. And some of these abilities are silly, like the ability to turn left. Bunny can’t walk left when the game starts. You can jump and move left, but you can’t walk left.

Why? I have no idea. But the power up to give you the ability to turn around is basically the first thing you’ll find.

There is a small selection of weapons to pickup through the game and you can swap them anytime you come across one hidden in any of the destructibles you see. There’s a dagger which is weak but has great range and speed, a laser sword with a short range and slow attack but is pretty strong, a mid range and mid powered boomerang, and then there’s the super powerful and super hard to use spike hammer.

Bunny’s abilities are either movement related, like a dash and wall jump, or time related. Bunny can pause time or rewind time. This is very important for gaining access to some of the items and collectables that you’ll need if you want to get the best ending of the game. It’s not an easy thing to pull off all the time though so you’re gonna have to practice.

If you do get said best ending of the Bunny playthrough you’ll unlock the second side story called Chelsea And The Seven Devils. This story really kind of takes place along side the Bunny time line. In fact you’ll see Chelsea running around the Maze as you play as Bunny.

Bunny is all about speed and movement. Chelsea is all about breaking stuff. Her abilities are almost all directly involved with making her attacks better. Wider shots, faster, more powerful, etc. Bunny unlocks doors, Chelsea blows them up.

Bunny and Chelsea will eventually run into all of the same bosses and areas but not in the same order.

I think it’s a super neat way to go about having a second game mode. Castlevania games could learn a thing or two from this I think. Just getting to play through one of the games as a different character is fine, but having to go through the game differently I think makes it all the more interesting.

The graphics are generally pretty good. There is a remake of this game on Steam but I’m going to be talking about the OG standalone exe file that I played because they are a little different.

The character sprites and portraits are really good, the bosses are pretty well designed, the enemies generally look pretty good. Everything does have this “flash animated’ adjacent style which I don’t really love but it works well enough here in the game.

The one point I’ll take away from the graphics though are the backgrounds. Sometimes the backgrounds are just so busy with bricks and foliage and whatever else it can be a little distracting. It looks good, there’s just a lot of it sometimes.

The music is energetic and driving which really adds to the action feel the game. You can take it slow, and sometimes you’re going to need to, but the music really pushes you to hurry things along. It’s nothing I’d put on to listen to while I’m cleaning house or anything like that, but in game it’s pretty excellent.

It’s a fun game. It’s a challenging game. It’ll frustrate you. But it’s rewarding and there’s so many different ways you can approach different situations. Pick a different weapon and try and finish the game with only it. Do what NakaTelili did and don’t get the “walk left” power up.

I recommend this to anyone that likes high action and adventure with a lot of nice humor mixed in with it.